Too long in primary

I made a california blonde with a San francisco lager yeast as my frist all grain it has it been in my primary for almost seven weeks. I wanted to bottle it but with my workload and my school load I have not had the time. My main question has it been too long to bottle or should I try kegging it? Also would there be any off flavors from sitting in the primary this long?

Why did you use lager yeast? What temperature has it been fermenting at? I'd just bottle and drink - if you are worried you can use CarbTabs but yeast are still alive in there and you can still bottle prime with corn sugar or DME, just bottle condition for 3-4 weeks.

farfromrice said:

I made a california blonde with a San francisco lager yeast as my frist all grain it has it been in my primary for almost seven weeks. I wanted to bottle it but with my workload and my school load I have not had the time. My main question has it been too long to bottle or should I try kegging it?

Also would there be any off flavors from sitting in the primary this long?

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if you're worried about enough viable yeast for carbonation in bottles, it'll be fine.

if the primary has been kept at a reasonable temperature, i doubt you'll have off flavors, but you won't know till you drink it.

You'll be fine. I had two beers stay in primary for even longer than that last year due to life's insanities...when I finally got around to bottling them, they turned out great.

7 weeks is a little long, but not unheard of... Crack the lid and taste a sample! I am sure its good, bottle it up and enjoy =)

Thanks for the input's I thought it should be fine. I used a steam beer lager yeast to experiment a little and the temp has been between 53-55 the whole time

For similar reasons (I'm a new parent juggling parenthood and profession) I let one of my recent brews go in the primary for 3 months before kegging. I didn't bother with a secondary. I tasted a sample and it was outstanding. More surprising is that I've made this brew before, and the yeast kept chomping on it and it finished 6 gravity points lower than it typically does. This certainly changed the results, but it was fantastic.

It's still conditioning in the keg. In a month or so I'll find out if the 3 months sitting on an old yeast cake affected it, but from the sample, I don't believe it did.

Cheers,
Scott