Can't wait?

How many of you guys also "sample" a few bottles before your actual ready date? I find it so hard to wait two weeks to try a bottle. I usually try one about 4 days after, then a week after. By that point, it's GAME ON. I just can't wait.

Have you built up a pipeline? That makes it a lot easier to wait for the next batch.

Yep. When you have a half dozen brews ready, and 3 or 4 in various states of recipe formulation and fermenting, you generally grow the patience to try your beers. In fact, you may find that you have beers sitting longer than intended because you're just too busy to muck with them.

Works well for making mead. If you have 8-9 going, it's hard to get up the urge to start bottling them all too early.

It can be hard to wait, but I only had to drink flat, green beer a couple of times to learn patience.

Think of it this way. Every green beer you drink is one less fully mature, fully carbed beer you have to drink.

+1 on building the pipeline. However, I think we learn a lot about the conditioning process by tasting these as they condition, so drink up!

I start to get excited and drink a lot of beer from a fresh batch, then forget about it as I start my next batch. It works out better because I think "oh yeah, I should drink more of that batch I made a few months ago" and it has had time to age and tastes a lot better. It's easier to do with bottling than kegging because unless you have a lot of kegs you're anxious to drink down the keg and fill it again. With bottles I'll find them in places and go "oh s*** I have another one of these?" Sometimes I wonder how the bottles get the places they do. Wife...pets...wife...me while drunk...

I was just thinking about this as I was kegging my most recent creation. I have learned that due to having a good supply of beer at all times and pure laziness makes my beer sit longer than I would if I was over anxious to try it. Though I am not going to lie I will pour probably 4 glasses off a keg before it is fully carbonated (again too lazy to force carb). But does anyone else think that being lazy (a man) helps to make better beer because it conditions that much longer?

There is no way that the last case of my imperial hefeweizen will last until Sept. 18th when my first AG Pilsener is ready. Thankfully, I'll be brewing a Northern English Brown Ale in about a week or so.

Yeah, when I used to bottle I'd try one every week or so before it really started moving from green to delicious... then drink to my heart's content!

I've become better about it since; I have a barleywine that's been sitting since my birthday last year (9/26.) I stupidily threw out the idea, "Oh, let's not drink any of this until it's my birthday again!" Grrrr... now I'd love to try one but SWMBO is enforcing my idea with a iron fist. She's probably doing the right thing... there's only 13 of them and they're ~12%

She's doing the right thing. My wife asks "hey why haven't you had a homebrew in two days?" It makes it difficult to age them.