How long to bottle condition?

[adamhimself]

Alright guys, I have some questions concerning bottle conditioning.

How much does this impact flavor?

How long should I leave it?

Is it personal preference?



I am about to be done with an Irish Red and really enjoy the idea of brewing something and letting it sit a good while in a fermenter then tossing into bottles and letting them sit for a few months. Maybe something like brewing a Christmas Ale sometime in June/July and letting the flavor improve till Christmas.

Just wondering.

 

[Revvy]

You have no control over how long a beer needs to condition. It's not arbitrary like deciding to rack to secondar or adding moss in the boil...It's not a personal preference, unless by that you mean voluntarily drinking green beer.....some noobs do that, but most folks will give the beer the timeit needs.

it's a natural process, and it;s done when it's done.

And there is no set time either, gravity and storage temp are the two biggest factor, but ingedients play a role in how long something will take to mellow.

The 3 weeks at 70 degrees, that that we recommend is the minimum time it takes for average gravity beers to carbonate and condition. Higher grav beers take longer.

Stouts and porters have taken me between 6 and 8 weeks to carb up..I have a 1.090 Belgian strong that took three months to carb up.

That belgian strong needed another 6 months before it even became drinkable....

Everything you need to know about carbing and conditioning, can be found here Of Patience and Bottle Conditioning. With emphasis on the word, "patience."

If you are brewing for an event, like a holiday and it's a normal graivt beer you can add a couple weeks cushion time to make sure that the beer will be carbed and conditioned.

My normal turnover on a batch of beer is 2 months from grain to glass for an average beer...if I were aiming for a holiday I would add another two weeks to the bottling time...

But if it's a barelywine you want to serve for next x-mas, you are already a month late.

Now having said that, spices will fade, so you have to consider that for you x-mas beer. You want to factor in the gravity, knowing it's going to need to mellow if it's high grav, but you don't want your spices to fade either. So if your figure your beer may need 3 -6 months to mellow, you might want to over spice it, knowing it will fade.

 

[Pappers_]

Alright guys, I have some questions concerning bottle conditioning.

How much does this impact flavor?

How long should I leave it?

Is it personal preference?



I am about to be done with an Irish Red and really enjoy the idea of brewing something and letting it sit a good while in a fermenter then tossing into bottles and letting them sit for a few months. Maybe something like brewing a Christmas Ale sometime in June/July and letting the flavor improve till Christmas.

Just wondering.

Do a vertical tasting - brew one now, a year from, and another year after that. Then taste all three and compare. Goose Island here does that with their limited release special stouts - its a huge difference, having bottle aged one to five years.

 

[adamhimself]

Thanks guys.

Not barley wine. A christmas ale of sorts. This vertical tasting sounds interesting...

 

[Torchiest]

The flavor of brews definitely changes over time. Depending on the style, the peak of flavor occurs at different times. A lot of beers are much better after say, six months in a bottle than they are after three weeks, for example. For something like an IPA, however, you want to drink sooner rather than later, as the hop flavors disappears relatively quickly. And of course, for big beers, the longer the sit in bottles, generally, the better. I have a Belgian ale I brewed about three years ago, and I only crack bottles for the holidays. It gets better every year!