6 weeks in bottles?!

Alright, I've brewed 3 batches using extract with specialy grain, and have my 4'th batch (1'rst time AG) bottle conditioning. I've noticed a general trend. My beers take 3+ weeks for good fermentation (primary and secondary), then wait 6+ weeks before they finally peak in the bottles.

That's a total of 9+ weeks! I'm not being terribly impatient here, but how is it done commercially? Do they really wait nearly 3 months for a batch. Somehow I don't think brewries would stay in business...

Commercial brewers use fining agents to clear the beer more rapidly, and also often filter the beer to rapidly remove yeast and tannins.

Here are a few suggestions I put together for making crystal clear beer that will also help you enjoy your beer more quickly.

Cheers,
Brad

Look up wortmonger's pressurized fermentation. It is a very long thread, but at least partially answers your question. They use various techniques to rapidly increase the fermentation and conditioning process. If I remember correctly, major breweries (BMC) go grain to glass in a few days, then again they are producing pee water <insert bad overused joke about farm animals and lavatories>.

It is an interesting topic, but to give you the short answer... no, they don't wait that long. Your timing sounds right, various beer styles take longer or shorter to peak, as do peoples perceptions of taste.

Cheers!

chemist308 said:

My beers take 3+ weeks for good fermentation (primary and secondary), then wait 6+ weeks before they finally peak in the bottles. That's a total of 9+ weeks!

Click to expand...

Yeah, it's terrible. "Time taken to get carbonated" is sadly not the same as "time taken to get good". The only solution, which I ignored for ages despite everyone on here telling me it repeatedly, is to brew another batch of beer straight after the last one.

I went on a brewery tour a couple of weeks ago, and noticed exactly the same thing as you - that breweries just cannot afford to have beer sitting around and aging in tanks, as it slows their production right down. They're also really screwed by the hop shortage, as they have to buy so many. I swear, I never realised how much of an advantage we have as homebrewers: we can leave our beer in primary for a month so that the yeasties clear up after themselves; and we can leave it in secondary for a month so it bulk-ages and clears; and we can store the bottles for months until the flavors have melded together; if we want more hops, it's a few extra bucks, not a few thousand; and we can experiment with any damn recipe we want, without needing to sell the beer we make to fund the next batch. I'm SO much happier running the nano-brewery in my kitchen cupboard than running the microbrewery down the road.