Observations on fermenations and conditioning time for beer

When I first started homebrewing, my yeast management was less than ideal. As a result I brewed some beers that took quite a while to ferment and even longer to age and become fairly decent.

Now as I have matured in my brewing, I am pitching lots of healthy yeast, using O2 and pitching/fermenting at the proper temp. For beers under 1.070 or so, depending on style, it is rare for a fermentation in my system to last more than 5 days. I usually bottle or keg on day 10 to allow for settling and clearing.

I know there is a lot of preaching about extended primary, and I agree that it is great advice, but I am noting that if you run a proper fermentation your beer conditioning time is greatly recuced. I can be driking a %7 IPA after 3 weeks and it is delicious..the same goes for big stouts and porters.

I still am an advocate of bulk aging via secondary vessel, imperial stouts, barley wines, etc.etc..etc.. to allow for mellowing and merging of flavors, but these beers are different animals.

Just a post on an observation of mine

I agree.. since I have good temp control and proper yeast pitching rates I get fast fermentations and a good clean taste in average ABV beers in 2 weeks. Then I crash with gelatin to clear for a few days and then force carb in a keg. 3 weeks after brewing I can enjoy some beer. 4 weeks if I spend a week dry hopping.

For big beers I am running longer bulk aging as well

Bottle conditioning still needs a few weeks or more to carb and get rid of that taste the active yeast create.