how quick is too quick for a wheat beer?

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EthanDH

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I read the post about the yeast condom and being able to serve a four day old fully carbonated wheat beer. I am not using that techniques so heres the situation. I brewed six days ago and had massive airlock activity which is common for the first three days. I have taken three consecutive hydro reading and my beer is down from 1.045 OG to 1.008 and has been for three days. Can I keg this beer? I have put it in a secondary for a day now. I would like to know if anyone has had any success with aging wheat beers or is it best to drink this style young? Is six days too young? If you've had experience with this please let me know what your experiences were.
 
I do a lot of wheat beers as it's a staple in my home bar. Here's the thing; it naturally tends to be hazy based on style (e.g. hefeweizen). My wheat beers tend to be very slow droppers, giving about a week of solid fermentation and a week of slow bubbling through the airlock...if anything. After 2 weeks, dropping it in a keg will probably give you more haze than you need. To clear it of impurities I'd give it a month solid.

You can keg it now, but expect more flocculation later on. With the high volumes of CO2 in wheat beers, it's hard for it to settle in the glass too. It tends to remain suspended. Keep in mind, I've had this experience after 2 weeks, so 6 days will probably yield you more "clumps" in the end. As always there are different things that affect this. If your liquid side dip tube is cut short you'll pick up less sediment, etc.
 
I have taken to cold crashing my Hefe's. A day is usually enough, I'm not looking to drop ALL the yeast, just thin it out.

When kegging, the yeast tends to settle out in the kegerator, anyway. Plus, I think I get a better yeast selection for harvesting.

The beer still tastes great.

My latest Hefe, brewed with extract this time (Zymurgy experiment), went NUTS with Wy3068 and pretty much finished in three days. I plan to keg it Thursday, it will be 12 days old then.
 
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