If you keep the pipeline going, you'll never be forced into drinking young beer.
+1 to this!!!
The only "diminishing returns" come from wasting your beeer while drinking it while it is still green, and not giving them some time to come into fruition...the only law of diminishing returns has been in discovering that the last bottle in the batch ia ALWAYS the best...and if we had delayed gratifcation, then
they all would have tasted that way.
Suck it up Yeasty, IT WILL BE WORTH THE WAIT!!!
....You're not making coolaid...you're making something fantastic...You're own excellant and fresh beer. It's very common for new brewers to voice arguments like you are, but it doesn't take too many batches, or finding a couple of 8 week old bottles you forgot about, before you too will become a convert and realize that patience is a virtue in brewing...and waiting improves most beers.
You want more, then brew...and you will have things at various levels of readiness...
Hefes and milds can be made and drank young..the rest of them benefit from our waiting...even Lagers take a couple months..
You will get to a point where it won't bother you and you will be brewing beers THAT NEED time to reach their peak.
I leave 99% of my beers in primary for a month...then I bottle...and right now I can't get 70 degrees in my loft to save my life...so I don't expect ANY of my beers to be carbed on time....so in the interim, I buy mix sixers of various beers to try as research for the next beers I plan on brewing and to build up my bottle stock.
For Example, I brewed my Pumpkin Ale for Thanksgiving on Labor Day...figuring at 8 weeks, I MIGHT have some ready for Holloween...But they were still green, so I only brought a couple to my annuual Halloween thingy, along with a sampler of commercial pumpkins...BUT come Turkey Day the beer was fantastic, and was a hit at the holiday.
Right now this is my current inventory...
Drinking....IPA, various bottles of Oaked Smoked Brown Ale, Smoked brown ale, Poor Richard's Ale, Biermuncher's Centennial Blonde (but as a Lager,)
Avoiding....Marris Otter/Argentinian Cascade SMaSH (It sucks)
Bottle Conditioning..... Chocolate Mole Porter, Belgian Dark Strong Ale, Peach Mead
In Primary.....Schwartzbier, Vienna Lager
Bulk Aging....Mead
Lagering....Dead Guy Clone Lager (Which I am going to be bottling this weekend...
I also have year old apfelwein, that is smooth as pornstars genitals, and much more tasty (and potent.)
Pretty much anything still in Primary or Lagering I will not be drinking til the end of March, but more than likely April....The Mole Porter needs a minimum several more weeks as well....but the Belgian Strong is prolly going to need 3-6 months to be ready...
The Swartzbier has 3 weeks more in primary, then another month lagering, THEN 3 weeks at least in the bottles...
Some weeks I take a break from my own beers to drink a couple sixers of samplers, so I don't drink ALL my current and other ready beers before the others comes online....Plus I'm craving a couple of styles that I don't have ready (like Vienna Lager) so I will make a bottle run....I also get to try new styles to come up with new ones to brew down the line.
And I'm also probably going to brew something this weekend...don't know what yet...maybe a low abv mild that I would only leave in primary till fermentation is stopped then bottled..so hopefully in a month they will drinkable.....
But do you see...you too one day will have a pipleine....and the wait will be nothing...you will have things at various stages...
This quote from one of my friends sums it up....
The nice thing is to get to a point in your pipeline where you are glancing through your BeerSmith brew log and realize that you have a beer that you have not even tried yet and it has been in bottle over 6 weeks. This happened to me this weekend. The beer was farging delicious.
Patience is a virtue, Padwan.
You wanna See a convert to the waiting thing? Look for threads by Joemama, he was a beerpedophile in his first batch...practically drank it out of the bottling bucket...then he got ahead of the game and actually got to taste some of his beers when they matured...now he is the first one to jump into threads about letting your beers mature a bit...