ideal bottling time

i plan on keeping my first ever batch in the bottle for 3 weeks. should i do any longer, or will nothing be gained by my extra patience?

It will probably take a couple of weeks to fully carbonate and depending on what beer you have made, how long you fermented it, and aged it could effect the flavor. Some beers are great immediately and others are better with age. My suggestion is try a beer after 2 weeks and see how you like it. Congrats on your first brew!

It depends on the style of beer, some styles are better after aging to let's some of the components settle down. I'll be impressed if you wait a whole 3 weeks. Most "first batches" suffer from " why is my beer under carbonated after 4 days of bottle conditioning. The only way to figure out if it has sat long enough is to crack open a bottle

Depends on what kind of beer your making and what temp your keeping them at. 3 weeks at 75F is a good start for most beers. I typically put a weeks worth of beer in the fridge and wait another week. This gives the carbonation a chance to bond with the beer and the yeast to flocculate on the bottom of the bottle. Then when I take a beer out I put a fresh one in. Sometimes I can tell the difference between the first beer and the last.

im doin an american wheat ale. its stored at 65 degree room temp. the bottles are cold to the touch. ii've already waited 10 days, and i not really that anxious to open it up. i took good advice and bought a second kit, to keep me occupied. and im spending all my time on that one.

It depends on lots of factors, especially style and priming sugar used. Remember, beer primed with DME takes longer to carbonate that beer primed with corn sugar.

Also, the longer the beer sits in the bottle, the less hoppy the beer will be. Hops mellow out over time. So, for example, if you're making an IPA, you don't want to age it forever.

I opened up one of my IPAs after 2 weeks. It had plenty of carbonation. I am going to let it sit one more week to see if it gets better taste (good but not perfect) then move them to the fridge and share my work with friends.

I think 3 weeks is the magic range for bottle time

it may or not be carbed....it may be carbed and still taste like crap still. It's not something you control. You don't go "my beer's going to be ready on x-day..."

You're not in charge of it, the yeast are. The 3 weeks at 70 degrees, that we recommend is the minimum time it takes for average gravity beers to carbonate and condition. Higher grav beers take longer.

Stouts and porters have taken me between 6 and 8 weeks to carb up..I have a 1.090 Belgian strong that took three months to carb up.

And just because a beer is carbed doesn't mean it still doesn't taste like a$$ and need more time for the off flavors to condition out.

Basically you take a bottle or two (usually from different cases) chill it for a couple days and see if they're ready..if they're both carbed and taste where you want it. If the answer's no...then you check back in another week or 2...

I've heard that the time spent in the fermenter can make a difference to the total conditioning time, in that the beer conditions faster in bulk than in bottles. Hence the '1week ferment, 2week condition, 3week bottled rule of thumb. I'm not implying you bottled straight away, just thought it was worth a mention.
I'm going from Palmer here, no actual experience myself