Yooper seems to like the "fresh taste" of beer with lots of yeast so she advocates bottling quickly. I don't like that taste so I wait longer. Yooper wants her stout drunk up in a month for the taste, I liked the taste best when the stout had been bottled for 2 years. Your taste is your taste, you'll have to decide when it is best bottled based on your hydrometer readings.:rockin:
No, the "fresh taste" isn't a yeasty taste.
I pick up far more yeast character from a beer that has spent a month sitting on a yeast cake than a beer that has been properly fermented, and bottled when clear.
Some yeast strains are quicker to flocculate than others, of course. A strain like Wyeast 1450 (Denny's Favorite) takes longer to clear than one like WLP002 which clears the beer about 24 hours after FG is reached.
Drinking a well made beer doesn't mean drinking yeast sludge.
Some stouts require a long time to age, but some do not. It depends on the recipe and the complexity of the ingredients along with the OG.
For anybody who wants to see what they like best, they should try it for themselves. Make the beer, and split it into two batches. Side by side, bottle the first one when the beer is clear. Let the other sit weeks longer, and then bottle it. Taste them. If you prefer the latter, that's what you should do. If you prefer the first, that's what you should do. But you should NEVER let a beer sit for a month, or only a week, because someone on a beer forum told you that would make the best beer. They might be right. But they may be wrong.
There are differences in the taste of the beer compared like this. Interestingly, a group doing this on Basic Brewing Radio all noted differences in the beer. However, the group was pretty evenly divided on which they preferred. Some preferred a short primary, while others preferred the longer one. The clarity was the same in all of them. It was a flavor difference.
