Primary for 60 days?

alfista · Aug 27, 2006

Hi all,

life at work got real busy (still is) and I never moved an all-grain IPA into secondary. Is it still good? Can I go direct to bottle?

Thanks,

Jason

homebrewer_99 · Aug 27, 2006

How does it taste? That will determine if you should rack to the bottling bucket or the drain.

G. Cretin · Aug 27, 2006

homebrewer_99 said:
rack to the drain.

HAHAHA. I've read on here that if it smells and taste like rubber the yeast are busted and it's prolly not going to age out. hope thats not the case.

david_42 · Aug 27, 2006

Rack it to your priming bucket and see how it tastes. Yeast autoysis has been compared to "the morning after a night of cheap beer and rotten eggs".

Mykel Obvious · Aug 28, 2006

Funny you should mention that... a few hours ago, I bottled a Belgian Dubbel that had been in primary for 55 days... tastes fine and I expect no trouble with it... I'm beginning to believe that autolysis might just be a myth created by those lager guys LOL... Truthfully, I have yet to experience the "rubber" taste that has been described, but this is the longest I've ever had a beer in primary so YMMV, etc...

You might want to pitch fresh yeast in your bottling bucket to make sure you have enough happy critters to provide proper carbonation... 1 vial or pack should do the trick

I do know that unless the beer tastes like total @$$, then you should bottle it anyway (and sometimes even then)... my two personal examples were a porter that had more banana flavor than any Hefe I've ever had (way under oxygenated and way under pitched... not a good combo IMO) and a brown ale that had a sulphery, funky flavor (I only bottled 1 case of that)... the porter took 4 months to lose the banana and turned out ok, the brown turned out great after 2 months and I kicked myself for not bottling all of it... IMO you should never pour out a beer until you KNOW it is trash, and then only when you absolutely need the bottles/space

HTH,
:mug: