Wheat beer - best fresh or age?

[schia]

Hello all,

Tomorrow I'll be brewing my 2nd batch with Coopers Beer Kit and it will be a wheat beer with 2 packets of DME. Been doing some research in this forum and it seems that wheat beer are best drank fresh? What this means to me is that after i have a consistent hydrometer reading 3 straight days in a row I should bottle it and wait for another week to carb up. Comparing it to other brews like ALE or stout i should not leave it in the primary for any longer for fear of turning funny?

any advice is greatly appropriated and thanks in advance for the time.

 

[RCCOLA]

On a wheat beer that is done fermenting as you said by checking gravity, and by the FG being close to predicted for the yeast strain, I would not be afraid to bottle at 10-12 days.

Also--taste your gravity samples. Post-fermentation beer should taste pretty much like warm flat beer. If it tastes hot or off in some way, let it sit another week and try it again. Some off-flavors will age out in bulk faster than in the bottle.

As far as carb. is concerned: When it's carbed enough to suit you, and the beer tastes good to you--drink the hell out of it.

 

[lumpher]

in other words: 11-14 days ferment. bottle for 2 weeks, then drink

 

[jeffmeh]

I wouldn't sweat 3-4 weeks in the fermentor, but after that get it carbed and don't save any for posterity. Don't worry about a day here and there, but don't put it away and forget about it. RDWHAHB.

 

[schia]

Thanks guys and I'm pretty excited about seeing something in the next few weeks with this brew.

 

[JLem]

Fwiw-I just drank the last bottle of a wheat beer I made last spring - May I believe. It had been in the fridge so the aging process was slowed. It tasted great. Hard to remember how it compared to the others that were drunk earlier, but it certainly did not show any ill effects of age.

Sent from my iPod touch using HB Talk

 

[bullinachinashop]

Fwiw-I just drank the last bottle of a wheat beer I made last spring - May I believe. It had been in the fridge so the aging process was slowed. It tasted great. Hard to remember how it compared to the others that were drunk earlier, but it certainly did not show any ill effects of age.

Sent from my iPod touch using HB Talk

Starting kind of early, don't ya think! Ha!

I start drinking my wit @ 11 days after brewing, but I still think it gets better with age. It never makes it past 3 months!

Bull

 

[ScrewyBrewer]

2 weeks fermenting, 3 weeks carbonating, 3 weeks conditioning and 3 weeks drinking and you won't go wrong.

 

[dgremark]

"3 weeks drinking" I must be doing something wrong my 5 gals never last 3 weeks! LOL