How long from brew to bottle?

Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum

Help Support Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

eighteez

Well-Known Member
Joined
Apr 22, 2009
Messages
143
Reaction score
0
I'm preparing to puchase my starter kit, and one thing I'd like to know is how long do most ales take to go from boiling to the bottles?

This will tell me if I need multiple fermenters. If it sits for a long time in there. I'd like to be able to work on batch #2 while batch #1 is fermenting, if fermenting takes a long time....
 
Fermentation time is dependent on many variables...but generally speaking you will hear anything from 7 days to 3 months.

For your basic starter kit with an OG 1.040-1.050, fermentation is usually complete in 7-10 days, but additional time in the fermentor allow the yeast to do some clean up. Alot of experienced brewers here leave it in the fermentor for 4 weeks as a general rule.

Buy more fermentors :D
 
You sound like me in that you're impatient to get your beer. I'd recommend getting two. A secondary will help to clarify your beer, and also help to free up your primary for brewing batch 2.

My scheduling for a basic ale is 14 days in the primary, 7 days in the secondary, then in the bottle for a min of three weeks. This could be longer, depending on the beer. But I'd say bank on at least 2-3 weeks before you bottle
 
I wouldn't go less than 5 weeks. 2 weeks fermentation & 3 weeks bottle conditioning.

Make sure to use your hydrometer to make sure fermentation is completed before bottling.

My standard ale MO is 3 weeks primary & 4 weeks bottle conditioning.
 
There are a ton of threads on this, but here goes....

It depends on the type of beer you are going to brew. Some take longer to ferment, usually the higher gravity beers, but not necessarily. Most will say don't pay attention to the airlock and look for consecutive days with identical hydrometer readings. Some will say let it sit for 3-4 weeks and then bottle and let that sit for at least another 3 weeks.

You're looking at 3 weeks for something resembling beer in a bottle that can be consumed, but it won't be all it could be. As age increase quality follows.
 
typically 2 - 4 weeks. I purchased the cheap starter kit with ale pale and bottling bucket. I brewed my first to make sure that I enjoyed it. once my 1st was happily fermenting away, I quickly ordered my second batch of beer and included with it an auto syphon and a new 6 gallon better bottle so I could brew 2 at a time.
My $0.02 is to go slowly, make sure that you enjoy it and upgrade as you go along.
 
I'm not concerned with the "sitting in the bottle" time.

It can sit as long as it needs to there.

As I said, I'm planning my kit and concerned with the time it will sit in my buckets. If it needs to occupy the bucket for 3-4 weeks I'll want another couple of buckets.
 
If you're not getting a hydrometer just yet, and this is an ale, the best rule to follow is probably the 1-2-3 rule. One week in primary, two weeks in secondary, and 3 in bottles. Some people rack to secondary as soon as the hydrometer doesn't change....other people just keep the beer in primary for 3 weeks or so. I've tried all methods and get good results with all.....but for taste and clarity, I still prefer transfering to secondary right as fermentation stops.
 
If I wanted to make a 2nd batch inside of 3-4 weeks it looks like I want a 2nd primary fermentation bucket.

Great info, thanks guys!
 
It typically takes me 4 weeks to move from boil to bottle. Then at least 3 weeks in bottle.

My suggestion is to buy another fermenter/lid/airlock, maybe two. They are cheap, and they will allow you to brew the first few batches in quick succession. Here's what usually happens...

New brewer brews a batch, gets real paranoid about screwing up the beer, etc. Brewer bottles beer and is very impatient. Brewer starts drinking beer a few days after bottling and complains that beer is flat and doesn't taste right. Brewer lets the beer go for a couple weeks and presto, the beer is 50X better. Brewer shares beer with impressed friends and the two cases of homebrew become 12 bottles of homebrew in no time at all. Brewer thinks, "Geez, I'm running low, I need to brew again! But it took weeks to get to this point!!!!" Panic sets in.

To solve this, brew your first batch. One week later, transfer your first beer into the second fermenter and use it as a "secondary" which will help your beer clarify. Brew the second batch and put it in the cleaned, sanitized fermenter you just emptied. Beer should stay in the secondary for a couple weeks, so its nice to have the third bucket around so you can put batch 2 into the secondary a week after brewing. If you want to brew batch 3 on the third weekend, that's even better! I would plan on brewing about 5 batches of "simple" beers in pretty rapid succession. That way, you build a stockpile of beer.

When you quickly blow through the first batch of beer, the second batch will be pretty close to being ready to drink, and the third batch will be waiting in the wings. Pretty soon you'll be drinking beer that has aged properly, (the 4 weeks or more that the beer needs to start blending, mellowing out.)

sorry for the long post. and remember... when you are brewing, relax... enjoy... Its easy.
 
I do have patience on my side so that helps. From what I have read it seems that 90% of ALL PROBLEMS are related to rushing things. Either before bottling or after.

I've been drinking store bought beer for years. Drinking it for another 3 months while I get this all worked out isnt going to hurt anything. In fact it sounds like just the ticket to it all going great!
 
maybe, but if you're like me, you'll graduate to wanting a couple stainless steel conical fermenters. The only thing stopping you will be the $600 bucks it costs and your wife. :D
 
If you're not getting a hydrometer just yet, and this is an ale, the best rule to follow is probably the 1-2-3 rule. One week in primary, two weeks in secondary, and 3 in bottles.

This is actually NOT a good method without a hydrometer, since we know that sometimes Fermentation can take 48-72 hours to start, then if you just arbitrarily move it after a "week" you actually could only be getting 4 days of good fermentation contact with the yeast.....that's one of the reasons people start panic threads because their beer suddenly krauzens in secondary...or that down the line they say it has a yeastie taste to it....

If you don't have a hydrometer, it is actually better to wait 2 weeks before doing anything.....

But you will find that many of us leave our beers in primary for 3-4 weeks, skip secondary and bottle. Just search for the 10,000 threads under "long Primary" or "no secondary" and you will see all the reasons why we do it, and the explanations behind...There's at least one thread a day on the topic, so it's really not hard to find the discussion pretty much hashed to death....There's at least 5 threads a day asking the same question....

Even Palmer recommends not rushing the beer out of primary.

From How to Brew;
Leaving an ale beer in the primary fermentor for a total of 2-3 weeks (instead of just the one week most canned kits recommend), will provide time for the conditioning reactions and improve the beer. This extra time will also let more sediment settle out before bottling, resulting in a clearer beer and easier pouring. And, three weeks in the primary fermentor is usually not enough time for off-flavors to occur....
 
I was wondering this as I was reading the book I have.

The real reason for secondary at all. Why not just leave it in primary.... Good to know my mind is working properly here!

With all of this fermentation timetable stuff, I have to ask: Can you leave it in primary too long?

Will it over ferment?
 
Even Palmer recommends not rushing the beer out of primary.

And Dr White from White Labs actually has recommended racking to secondary before complete active fermentation is finished.

from White Labs:

How long does the fermentation take to complete?

Most fermentations will be complete within 14 days. Lager fermentations can take up to one month, plus aging time. The typical ale profile is to ferment very actively for 1-4 days, which is called the "exponential" or "log" phase. Then the yeast enter a stationary phase, which helps to mature the beer and can last from 3-10 days. The beer should be ready to bottle at this time. It is important to check the final gravity (FG), and calculate the percentage attenuation to make sure the fermentation is complete. If the particular yeast strain is not very flocculent, it is hard to gauge when fermentation is complete without calculating attenuation %.

Now we're both generalizing, obviously....so with a typical ale (and Georgia temperatures) I have normally gotten active fermentation to stop in 1 week or less (usually it's much less). Now whether one wants to debate about whether leaving in primary longer for better attenuation is a seperate, more advanced discussion. The main thing that primary fermentation and conditioning is doing is converting those sugars to alcohol, flocculating spent cells and proteins, as well as expunging all CO2. Whether you subscribe to keeping the beer in primary for 3 weeks (and even forego secondary at all) vs the old 1-2-3 rule..that's a preference...they're both recommending 3 weeks before bottling. There are many methods that lead to good results: even the 1-2-3 method is not BAD. When I first started making beer, that's what I did. I never had a bottle bomb, attenuation was good, and my results were good. I'm not trying to flame or anything....just that the only time I heard 1-2-3 method was BAD was when I joined this forum: when I already had been brewing for 2 years. Hopefully we can all agree that no matter what advice a beginer follows (be it 1-2-3 or nothing but primary), whatever they should do, they should bottle in 3 weeks minimum.

With all of this fermentation timetable stuff, I have to ask: Can you leave it in primary too long?

One of the main reasons the older mantra was to get out of primary ASAP was that autolysis might happen. But with the beer community, folks started finding that even weeks on end....they weren't getting autolysis. As you have seen the posts here, there are some who believe they get better conditioned beer by leaving in primary. There are others who believe in secondary. Either method works....best advice is to try both and see which one you like. Beer is a lot more forgiving and dynamic then what we tend to give it credit for, and it's just like cooking. There is not just one ultimate method or recipe for getting great beer.
 
One of the main reasons the older mantra was to get out of primary ASAP was that autolysis might happen. But with the beer community, folks started finding that even weeks on end....they weren't getting autolysis.


I actually think the yeast autolysis might have had merit at one time...several decades ago. Remember back even before 78 the amount of yeast available to hobbyists were very limited, and were usually dry cakes.

If you've heard some of the interview with the oldtimers on basci brewing, they talk about the yeasts being very old and cakey, and not very good to begin with...

Like Palmer says as long as the yeast is HEALTHY several months on the yeastcake is OK...but back then the yeast may have not been very healthy to begin with. It could have been several months or years old with a very low viability.

And they did notice autloysis in their beers.

And Papazian was writing his book from right around that time period, when yeasts cake in dry cakes and may not have even been stored properly, and many people just placed towels and cookie sheets on their ceramic crock pot fermenters.

So he and his contemporaries influence the knowledgbase back then just like we affect and alter the brewing culture today with these ideas.

This is an ever evolving hobby...Places like this is where you find the most state of the art information/wisdom about brewing, because of the sheer number of us trying new things, hearing new things, and even breaking new ground and contributing to the body of info on the hobby...Look at some of that inventions that came out of here, and then ended up later in BYO articles by our members...

It's just a shift in the culture, it doesn't mean that beer won't be made either way...someday some enterprising brewer from here or using forums as a reference is going to write the NEXT brewing bible, and talk about long primary. and it' gonna be "beery canon" for a number of years, or it will end up as an article in Zymurgy or BYO, and people on places like this will be quoting from that for awhile...then the culture will shift from that idea...

Heck even the last update of Papazian was 7 years ago. Just think of all the technological changes in the last 7 years, and you'll realize that knowledge doesn't exist in a vacuum....Just look at this place....the "culture" and ideas shifts over time...like I said, places like this, we, you and me and everyone else here, are the cutting edge of brewing....

Those of us who opt for the long secondary usually do it because of what we have read, but mostly because we have noticed an improvement in our beers from other methods.

I joined the long primary camp, precisely because of my contest scores last summer....I kept getting feedback and higher scores for the beers that long primaried....They were described as "jewell like" and "crisp and clean tasting."

As opposed to the beers that I entered using the more traditional means. I mean I had some of the same recipes I brewed that overlapped, like my amber ale, and Dead guy clones, and I could tell that the version 2's of my batches, the longer primary tasted and looked much better....
 
My Hefe is 16-18 days to bottle, then 2 weeks to carb/condition
my Oktoberfest is 14 days to bottle, then 4 weeks to carb/condition
 
If you've heard some of the interview with the oldtimers on basci brewing, they talk about the yeasts being very old and cakey, and not very good to begin with....

Very good point! No matter whether you believe in primary only or secondary conditioning, I would agree that having a good healthy yeast cell count, proper tempurature, as well as plenty of O2 and fermentables is what's going to effect your results the most.

This is an ever evolving hobby...Places like this is where you find the most state of the art information/wisdom about brewing, because of the sheer number of us trying new things, hearing new things, and even breaking new ground and contributing to the body of info on the hobby...Look at some of that inventions that came out of here, and then ended up later in BYO articles by our members...

It's just a shift in the culture, it doesn't mean that beer won't be made either way...someday some enterprising brewer from here or using forums as a reference is going to write the NEXT brewing bible, and talk about long primary. and it' gonna be "beery canon" for a number of years, or it will end up as an article in Zymurgy or BYO, and people on places like this will be quoting from that for awhile...then the culture will shift from that idea...

Yes, exactly....hence why I don't think one method should be considered BAD. Sometimes certain late breaking ideas are ones that happened many years ago :D Just as there are many different recipes for beer, it's probably a good thing that there are different methods to try for making beer.

Hey, I also appreciate the new ideas and mantras started on this forum or the next "breery canon". I tried the 3+ weeks in primary for a few batches. I did notice some difference in flavor.....but honestly, I personally find I get the best clarity from going to primary to secondary right as active fermenation has stopped, then racking, condition for a few days, then crash cool to get all sediment down. That's what I've found has given me the best results for the type of clarity/ flavor profiles I like (which tends to be American style ales and stouts). So if I can think of an analogy......I think making beer is just like making pizza. Hey, they even both use yeast! But anyways, if you try to follow recipes for pizza dough....some people swear by using active dry yeast, proofing it, kneading the dough a lot, and then letting it rise in a warm place. Other people swear by using bread machine flower, using an instant yeast, not kneeding it for as long, and letting it slowly rise in the refridgerator. Well both methods do give slightly different results. From a taste test....some people would probably gravitate towards one or the other (assuming the ingredients are the same). Why is it that everyone has different taste buds and preferences:D :mug:
 
Back
Top