Start mash to drinking = 7 days 10 hours

[bobtheUKbrewer2]

The beer was a SMASH, maris otter and citra hops, 3.4% abv.

Totally clear, reasonable carbonisation, tasted great. Fermentation time to bottling was 3 days.

I admit only one bottle in this process, I left fermentation for another 2 days and then bottled the rest of the batch. I will give feedback on the taste / quality of the rest of the brew in due course.

I do not see why beer should improve linearly with time in bottle (up to around 8 weeks) . There could be little "peaks" at say 4 days, 10 days and 20 days - I do not know. I do know a UK brewery printed on their bottles " drink before <date>" to enjoy the beer at its best and this date was only a very few weeks from bottling

 

[RaHarmakis]

I do not see why beer should improve linearly with time in bottle (up to around 8 weeks) . There could be little "peaks" at say 4 days, 10 days and 20 days - I do not know. I do know a UK brewery printed on their bottles " drink before <date>" to enjoy the beer at its best and this date was only a very few weeks from bottling

Its all going to depend on the beer your making.

Hop Forward Beers as a general rule should be enjoyed as soon as possible after packaging. The Hop Flavors and Aromas degrade quickly. If your processes lend themselves to O2 Pick up after fermentation starts, your beer will oxadize and stale quickly, necessitating quick consumption.

Other styles, actually rely on a small amount of Oxidization processes to develop a rich malty flavor profiles. Things like Russian Imperials, sours and other big beer beer that play well with barrel ageing are prime examples of this.

As for your process.... 3 days seems like an extremely short amount of time to fully complete fermentation and have the yeast drop out of solution. My instinct is that you ran this fermentation Really hot or massively over pitched, both of which can lead to some significant Off Flavors and aromas in the beer.

Did you measure your gravity? How close to the appropriate attenuation for your yeast strain were you? at 3 Days, its a good bet that a significant amount of fementeble sugars and yeast still in your Green Beer. Adding priming sugar to this, has the potential for a great big ol' bottle bomb!

The 5 Day stuff is very likely closer closer to done, and I wager will turn out to be much more drinkable.

So with out knowing your process, or your numbers... will you get beer.. yup. There will be malty hoppy alcohol there.

Will it be good beer... Well... Only your pallet can tell you that. If you like the results you got your self a process.

 

[bobtheUKbrewer2]

Pitching rate was the same as every beer I brew. After 3 days the wort was pretty clear. I agree if I had left that single bottle for 8 weeks it might have been a bit fizzy. Fermentation temperature outside in my garage estimated at 22 C days 17 C nights. I use a refractometer. We will see then....

the 7 day beer was better than each of 3 cask beers I drank in a pub the next night...

 

[catdaddy66]

You win!!!

I know some brewers are keen to set time records for grain to glass but I've never been one them. I wait about a month (2 weeks in primary and 2 carbonating) for most every brew I have done. I am a very lazy person by nature though...

 

[oceanic_brew]

I submitted a beer scoring a 38.5 in a bjcp comp that was grain to glass in 7 days. I can and have repeated it. It was a dark mild where the intent was to capture yeast byproducts before they clean themselves up by lowering the temp when the beer reached around 60% attenuation.

If you let this beer sit on the yeast cake for more than a couple weeks it cleans up and becomes lifeless.

However you cannot make a delicious Belgian dubbel in 7 days. You're looking at a couple months and the improvement is certainly not linear, but also is not relevant.

 

[bobtheUKbrewer2]

I have started drinking the rest of the brew now - it is " no better" than that first bottle. By the way I am not trying to set records - it was an " experiment", just as I experiment by growing different tomatoes each year, in different pot sizes. I am an ex metallurgist, enough said..........

 

[MSK_Chess]

its really interesting. My understanding is that high krausen, that is when yeast production is at its peak is around the two day mark for a normal ale. Fermentation is usually complete after about 4-7 days depending on what maltose is left for the yeast to consume. The additional time after consumption of sugars is given for the yeast to reabsorb VDK's (vicinal diketones) namely diacetyl and pentanedione. I was reading that this process is usually complete in a period of about a day, Yooper I think it was that stated it. So if your fermentation was complete on day 3 and the residual yeast was allowed to assimilate and synthesize these post fermentation VDK's in the bottle its entirely plausible at least to my mind that your beer really was well and truly finished by day four and drinkable by day seven.

 

[kh54s10]

Imagine how good that beer could have been if you let it finish. When I bottled I would sample beers at 1, 2 and 3 weeks. IMO all of them tasted better at 3 weeks or longer. It is true that light, low alcohol beers changed the least.

I have also watched my fermentations and very few were done fermenting in 3 days. But then again I don't think I have brewed anything less than 4.5 ABV.

But it is what works for you that is the most important thing.

 

[JONNYROTTEN]

I remember reading a thread where a guy working at a brewery said they turn around beers in 3 days all the time. Not sure how they do but we cant. I think he said they pitch WAY more yeast ( relative to size) than we do.

Just like the endless experimental/trial/testing stuff that happens around here I think trying to get a quick turnaround is a good trial and error experiment.

My next IPA I think I'm going to dry hop during active fermentation and crash around day 4 or 5 to see what happens. I'm wondering if I'll get more of a "fresh hop" taste than the normal way I brew

 

[MSK_Chess]

probably they ferment under pressure and filter

 

[robcj]

Turning beer around quickly is my thing right now. It's fun to see how far you can push it. I've taken pale ales and IPAs from grain to glass in 12 to 14 days this summer and I thought they were great. I also turned around a hefeweizen in 7 days--also great! Though we killed that keg in 9 days. Should have made more.

You can move pretty quick if you control and ramp your fermentation temperature, cold crash, keg, fine with gelatin, burst carbonate and dry hop in your serving keg. I really like knowing how a beer turned out quickly enough that I might even be able to tweak it and make the next version before the keg is done. Really helps with optimizing your recipes.

 

[bobtheUKbrewer2]

fermenting under pressure will slow a fermentation imho. Why would breweries over pitch when the books say that this lowers the quality of the finished beer, more likely thay ferment at 25 to 26 deg C, I continue to drink the rest of this beer and it is no better than the 7 day bottle.

In the future for every brew I will bottle just one bottle as soon as the beer begins to clear from the top in the FV, no priming sugar and bottle filled to 1 cm from the crown cap - that should nail the issue for me at least.

 

[MSK_Chess]

fermenting under pressure will slow a fermentation imho. Why would breweries over pitch when the books say that this lowers the quality of the finished beer, more likely thay ferment at 25 to 26 deg C, I continue to drink the rest of this beer and it is no better than the 7 day bottle.

In the future for every brew I will bottle just one bottle as soon as the beer begins to clear from the top in the FV, no priming sugar and bottle filled to 1 cm from the crown cap - that should nail the issue for me at least.

The idea of fermenting under pressure is that it allows you to ferment at higher temps without producing off flavours.