Aging Question

[MarkZ56]

So I just put the finishing touches on my new mash tun. I went round with a false bottom and haven't had a drop leak or seen much of a drop in water temp after several rounds of testing so I'm ready to brew with it. I'm going on my 3rd All Grain Brew with the first 2 being very good thus far. I've been given the green light by my brewery operations manager (wife) that I can do back to back brew days. I'm going to make Yooper's Pale Ale again because it turned out awesome for the first round.

I want to make something I am going to age a little longer. My Brother in Law is a big fan of porters and stouts so I want to make one or the other as a way of saying thanks for building\providing a lot of hardware for my brew set ups (he's a metal worker) but want to age it until around Christmas. Since I only have two fermentation vessels (one bucket, one glass carboy) I am scrapping secondary fermentation. I know what I'll do for the pale ale-3 weeks in primary, 3 weeks in bottle-but regarding the beer I want to age (recipe not found yet), should I leave it in the primary any longer? Or should I stick with the 3 weeks\completed fermentation and then let the bottle aging do the rest?

Any thoughts on the topic would be greatly appreciated.

 

[porterpounder]

If the aging beer is of moderate strength (<1.070), 10-14 days in primary with an initial healthy yeast pitch is really all you need before bottling. You can leave it another week if the FG hasn't stabilized, but that really shouldn't be an issue.

 

[orionol73]

You could certainly still do a secondary with this bigger beer if you just ferment your pale ale in the carboy and the stout/porter in the bucket and after bottling the pale ale, transfer the stout into the carboy. As said above, if it is a big beer this will benefit the beer to have some bulk ageing in the carboy before bottling