How Long Will Wort Last?

I brewed a pale ale on 3/14/11, racked it to a secondary on 3/31/11. I then promptly forgot it existed until last night. I am currently bottle conditioning my beers - how long will the wort last and still carbonate up alright? I am hoping it's still good to go, planning to bottle on 4/11/11. Am I good?

Yes, many of us leave it in the primary for a month. You'll be fine.

I always primary for at least a month. People leave it in for months sometimes, no problem

If you leave it in the primary for a month, do you go straight to bottling or kegging?

If you rack to a secondary do you risk the yeast falling out of suspension, and then have troubles with bottle conditioning?

I ferment in a bucket with a spigot, so i let it sit in the primary for a month or more and bottle directly from their. most people rack over to a bottling bucket from their primary, which is fine. yeast usually needs a pretty significant drop in temperature to fully drop out of suspension.

cehoudek said:

If you leave it in the primary for a month, do you go straight to bottling or kegging?

If you rack to a secondary do you risk the yeast falling out of suspension, and then have troubles with bottle conditioning?

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If you primary for a month, there's really no need to secondary anyways - unless you're putting it on fruit/adjuncts or dryhopping it.

Yeast will stay in suspension for a while - if you're that worried about a secondary, you can always rouse the yeasties a little bit just before bottling. Save for a long-term cold crash, you shouldn't have any issues with bottle conditioning. The only time I've ever had issues with bottle conditioning was after a long cold crash (1+ week where I forgot about the carboy in a room where the temp dropped into the 30s). Even then, it only took about a month longer to fully carbonate.

You'll be fine.

You could probably leave the beer in a closed secondary (I'm assuming you're using a glass carboy) for 6 months without ill effects. It's probably not ideal, but it's not likely to hurt anything. And it would still probably carb up just fine without any additional yeast additions.

In your case, just bottle it when you're ready. Your yeast should be perfectly healthy and the beer should be tasty and clear at this point.

+1 to everything said. Don't need to repeat.