imperial stout - secondary for 6+ months or bottle it?

so i'm planning on putting it in the primary for a month. the instructions say i should transfer to secondary for 6+ months, but couldn't I just bottle after primary and keep it in the bottles for that amount of time? would it make any difference?

Unless you're gonna add something to the secondary like vanilla beans or something I would just bottle it up and forget about it. Free up the carboy for more beer!!!

Supposedly it conditions faster in bulk, but I couldn't tell you why. Aging in the bottle definitely won't hurt anything, you may just have to wait a bit longer for it to reach it's full potential.

For big beers I leave them in primary for a month to finish fermenting (they tend to be slow anyway) and to let the yeast clean up, then I rack to a secondary for several months to bulk age before bottling. Bulk conditioning tends to be mellower, and it all happens together. It may or may not change the timeframe of the final conditioning in the bottle, some things still need to have the co2 of carbonation to clean and mellow, so don't look at it as a way to speed anything up...look at it as a way to make great beer.

BrookdaleBrew said:

Supposedly it conditions faster in bulk, but I couldn't tell you why. Aging in the bottle definitely won't hurt anything, you may just have to wait a bit longer for it to reach it's full potential.

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I have known it to be the opposite, bulk conditioning is slower since there is more liquid to process where if it is in a bottle .......... you get the point.