How long to ferment before kegging?

[bkmorse]

I just got into partial-mash recipes, in part thanks to a thread on here.

I brewed this partial-mash on March 23rd https://www.brewersfriend.com/homebrew/recipe/view/471090/pale-ale, I am only fermenting in one carboy and no plans of putting into a secondary.

I have never bottled my beer before and I have some friends who do, I know some of them will bottle their beer after 2 weeks of being in the carboy, and let sit for another 2 weeks. I know during that time the beer carbonates and I believe the beer also still is being conditioned.

I've always kegged my beer after 4 to 6 weeks in the carboy (whether I rack to a secondary or not), I've never taken gravity readings, as I don't really care about what the ABV is.

My question is, the time the beer is in the keg and is carbonating when I hook my co2 tank up to it, say 20 psi for 10-12 days, is it conditioning like it would in a bottle or does the conditioning cease as soon as I introduce the co2 in it?

 

[Yooper]

I usually keg most of my beers by day 14, so it would seem really wild for me to wait 6 weeks for a regular beer before packaging it.

You can age your beer as long as you want, of course but many styles are better fresher (that's why they have 'best by' dates on many beers).

Conditioning/aging will occur in the presence of c02 or without it. It doesn't matter.

Temperature is a huge part of aging beer. The warmer the temperature, the faster the beer will age (stale). In some cases where you want to age a beer long-term, that beer can be cellared to allow it to age in a temperature controlled environment.

If you're keeping your beer in a cellar environment, that will slow down the aging process.