How long is too long in primary? Apparently 5+ months is not too long.

I brewed My "Nelson's Eldorado IPA on October 7, 2016. Kegged it about a week and a half ago. Hopped with one ounce Nelson Sauvin and one ounce of Eldorado hops in my new dry hop filter. https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=590731

I sanitized the filter added the hops and put it in the keg, I then transferred the beer after having given it a taste to be sure it was not already bad.

There are probably off flavors from sitting for so long, I will never know how much, or what off flavors there are, unless I brew this recipe again, but the beer is quite good.

So, if someone says your beer is going to be an autolysis nightmare if you leave it on the yeast and don't do a secondary, just be polite and tell them that they don't know what the crap they are talking about.

It is actually good enough that I kind of wish I hadn't left it so long to see how good it might have been fresh.

This would make a good exbeeriment. Make a beer, leave it in primary for 5 months, make the same beer and ferment for 2 weeks so they are ready at the same time and compare them.

Do eet.

My concern would be more about the freshness 5+ month old IPA to begin with over yeast autolysis.

kingmatt said:

My concern would be more about the freshness 5+ month old IPA to begin with over yeast autolysis.

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Well the dry hop is only at 7 days...

I don't know how it would have tasted fresh, but as is it tastes like an... IPA!

Update on this one. Since it was a custom recipe with hops that I never used before, I have no idea of what it would have tasted like fresh. But it didn't last the whole month. Not one of my best but certainly not one of the worst either. Fair to middling I would say.

My siphon broke, so I left an IPA in primary for 3 months so far. Haven't dry hopped it yet. The airlock is still burping every couple minutes! Guess I just have to get a new siphon and dry hop it and finish it up.

kingmatt said:

My concern would be more about the freshness 5+ month old IPA to begin with over yeast autolysis.

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It's sitting under a blanket of CO2, so it shouldn't lose freshness.

IPA's were originally developed with a large dose of hops because they act as a preservative. So leaving your IPA for 5 months didn't hurt anything, but the hop flavor and bitterness were probably somewhat subdued compared to the same beer fresh.
Last spring I made a Peanut Butter Stout with very little hops. I got busy with other things and it sat there for about 6 months. I finnaly tasted it and it had a sour beer lactic quality to it. Definitely infected, which isn't surprising since I run lots of wild yeast and sour beer experiments.
I did the same thing with a high ABV Belgian quad a few years ago and it came out fine, so that indicates that not all beers benefit from sitting on primary for 6 months.