Question about the effects conditioning time, temperature, and vessel have on taste

[garlicbread]

Hey!

I have questions about how long to leave the beer in what vessel. I would appreciate any tips on this.

1) What's the main difference between conditioning beer in primary, secondary, or bottles? (After initial fermentation is fully done)
Is anything lost or gained by keeping the beer longer or for a shorter time in each vessel?

2) What kind of beers benefit from longer conditioning in bottles? Like over a month and a half?
I noticed some of the beers I brewed for specific "imbalanced" flavors, like extra malty, extra hoppy, and yeasty lost a lot of interesting character when I left them to condition for more than a month and a half.

3) What is the purpose behind keeping beers in the fridge for a few days before drinking? Are there beer types that you'd recommend not to keep in cold for long before drinking?
(I noticed some of my beers were worse, flatter, and cleaner tasting when I left them in the fridge for over a week.)

4) Would you recommend any specific conditioning patterns for these types of beers?
A) Beers intended to have hoppy aromas
B) Beers intended to have more malty character
C) Stouts or other darker beers. (6%-8% abv range)
D) Moderately Spiced beers, with a noticeable but not overwhelming spice aroma

And a bit of an off-topic question.
I have found some of the malty/low hoppy beers I brewed taste really amazing after just 10-15 days. They don't taste like beer or even proper ale yet obviously and the taste changes dramatically after ~5 more days. But for some of those beers, I got the tastes that could be described as "Malt Lemonade", "Malt Wine", and "Malt/Apple Sparkling Wine".
So I was wondering is there any type of drink made from young beer, or a culture of drinking young beer with this kind of taste? Perhaps any way to preserve this taste like pasteurization or keeping it really cold?


Thanks!

 

[hotbeer]

Craft and home brew beers seem to change tastes with time. Usually for me better with more time. And that is whether in the fermenter or in the bottle. Cooling those bottles in the fridge seems to slow that change.

Though for really really hoppy NEIPA'a and others with lots of dry-hopping in the FV, perhaps sooner is better than more time. I don't know, I like hoppy beer, but not that hoppy.

Keeping the beers in the fridge a couple days first seems to allow chill haze to settle out. However I'm about to dump a batch that the chill haze didn't settle out. Might be from some mistakes I made measuring malts and possibly too many hops at 0 minutes.

However pretty much what you are asking about all depends on everything. Including your personal preferences. And I think that for all of us that don't do everything exactly the same way as everyone else, there will be a lot of circumstantial and subjective opinion.