Quick Tunraround Beers?

[rodwha]

Guess it's time to make more test batches and see what I see. I left off at pale ale. Guess I'll do an IPA at the same time.

 

[Atlmustang]

I just did an inperial red. 2 weeks in primary and packaged to keg Sunday. Force carbed at 20 psi until tonight (2 days) took a sample and it was carbed and delicious. I am excited to taste it next week but what it is after 17 days is pretty damn good beer. It is 100x better than coors light and thats my measuring stick. Will it age and get better? Most likely. But what I have today is great beer.

It all depends on your definition of what you consider good. Some folks only call the beer ready after aging 3 weeks after 10 days fermentation.

The only beer I havent called ready in 3 weeks total was my milk stout. Took that one about 5 weeks total to get ready. Everything else I have brewed is grain to glass in 17-18 days. Even a greener homebrew tastes way better than an american light beer, so I am happy with that. Only gets better with time after so its gravy for me.

 

[rodwha]

It's mostly just stouts and maybe something else rather dark that I felt needed a bit more time, though I did have an IPA that changed on me despite 3 weeks fermentation and conditioning.

After the pale and IPA I guess I'll move to an amber and brown followed by my ale version of schwarzbier and a stout all in the mid 5%.

 

[55x11]

I'd hardly call 31 days "quick turnaround". Fastest I've ever done is 9 days grain-to-glass, on a split batch (half APA, half IPA). The only difference between batches was the yeast strain (Cal Ale for the IPA and San Diego Super Yeast for the APA) and the hopping (I did a whirlpool for the IPA and a larger dry hop). The APA turned out pretty well (won a silver medal) and the IPA was a terrible diacetyl bomb that I ended up dumping.

All of that to say, yeast strain is important, but 31 days should be plenty for any ale yeast. If you had a shorter time frame, I would look at something other than US-05. I have had diacetyl issues with that yeast as well when I didn't give it time to clean up. But as it stands, I think you will be fine.

To answer your other questions, I assume that you mean "bulk fermentation" to include all time spent in the fermenter, which includes letting the yeast clean up. And I assume "conditioning" is after you have removed it from the (primary) fermenter. Is that accurate? If so, fermentation will have a much greater impact. Leave the beer on the yeast until it is ready for packaging.


EDIT: The IPA I mentioned above also had some cane sugar added to it that the APA didn't have.

I agree - the quickest I had was 8 days. IPA, which was done at day 3, I let it go for another few days, then cold-crashed, gelatined (1 day) and kegged (1 day of force carbing), it was ready to drink on a Saturday, while boil happened on Friday. It was delicious.