Why Take so Long to Ferment your Beer?

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quite possibly. instant benefits. the issue is that on a 15 or 30bbl batch the losses are negligible. on 5 gallons probably alot more painful.

and folks would really need to up their game about oxygen avoiding or you risk dulling the beer you just attempted to brighten.

have a few items ive come across in the filtration world that are food grade and could be adapted to homebrew i think. just havent had time to really research.
Oxygen is my concern. Still workin out the kinks. No loss in beer. The little bit that get lost in the filter housing is around a pint and far less then the pints I've lost pulling crud out of the keg to get to the good stuff
 
I too go grain to glass in 14 days or less, mainly because what with work and family I can't keep a pipeline going. Also I still have some failures (two in the last month) that were supposed to up my inventory and now I'm almost out of beer. I've got one fermenting now that wound up WAY over my intended OG (1.89 when I was aiming for 1.065) so it's going to have to sit longer, but I've got a cream ale that just dropped its krausen today and should be ready to keg this weekend (brewed last Sunday). It will force carb for 2 days or so then get tapped, and by all indications should be fantastic. Also my LHBS doesn't stock that much needed beer ingredient, PATIENCE, so I tend to "rush" my beers if I know they're going to be good.

The really beautiful thing about this hobby is that there are so many different brews, setups, and processes that it will keep us all going for years.
 
I've always wondered how big breweries spit out lagers so fast. My lagering takes at least 4 weeks after primary ferm and d rest are done.

Maybe I don't need to go that long. Dunno

I think Coors Banquet is lagered 6 weeks. So they don't necessarily rush it out. My lagering needs about the same. Usually I'm tasting at 3-4 weeks though. Ha!


Back to the OP... I tend to ferment ales in 10-14 days. Right now I'm drinking a bitter that I tapped at 12 days. The best change is from clearing and carbonation. An extra week in the keg helps. My preference is to have a beer kegged for a couple weeks before tapping. Although a few days works. Some styles may need more.


I think it is a worthwhile discussion to shorten fermentation. It should mean you have good pitch rates and temp control.
 
I think I'm yet to do a brew which was at its peak at 2 weeks. I pressure ferment so 2 week ales and 3 week lagers are totally doable, but they always improve with another week or 2 so I'll go for quality over speed every time. Plus, meh, I have a solid pipeline, rushing is for other people.
 
I don't brew light bodied hoppy beers, which I feel would be the styles to benefit from fast brewing. I brew big, malty, delicious brews that you can drink and get full. I love em, my family loves em. I make this preamble, to answer your question.

In 20+ years of brewing, my equipment has changed, but the basic flow of my brewing hasn't really changed. I still practice what I learned to varying degrees when I read Charlie P's book. I also subscribe to the theory, that if it's not broken, don't fix it. I brew for fun and to have something to drink around the house. My wife and I do not empty kegs fast enough to worry about the timing of the brews. I always have three or four kegs of different styles available.

If I were doing this as a business, I would definitely filter and speed the process up. But even micro breweries who make big malty beers, take time with them and age them, etc. So in the end, I think that once again, it comes back to the fact that if you're making beers that you like quickly, and that's how you like making them, then /cheers.

But if you stop in for a beer at my place, you'll probably find a Dubbel that spent 2 weeks in the primary and at least two months in the secondary ... or perhaps a Breakfast Stout that spent 2 weeks in the primary and 3 months in the secondary ... or even an Oktoberfest that spent a week in primary, 2 weeks in secondary and then a month or two being lagered.

I never got into this, to make beer like the big breweries do. In fact, just the opposite.
 
I have a recipe, which I go from grain to glass in about 2 weeks. It's a 3.5% light bodied, moderately hopped summer ale. There's another recipe that takes me 6+ weeks before I even think about kegging it. Everything depends on what you like. I don't have to rush my yeast and I want my flavors to mellow appropriately.
 
Yup, it is different for different beers and what you want out of it. There aren't really any rules this stuff. I have enough fermentation vessels and don't really stress it.

I do think you can run into trouble if you are banking on a beer finishing quickly.
 
I was definitely seeing the OP as a diatribe against some unstated but generally understood need to condition (not ferment, as most of that work completes when it completes, relatively out of our control) beer for a while. For what it is worth, the effort to reduce conditioning times has been going on for a while, culminating in the near disappearence of the secondary. I don't really know how much of the "green" beer is a quantifiable thing, but I bottle, and under no certain terms do my beers taste the same four months after bottling. Bottle conditioning is a thing, and it happens to any beer that doesn't have its yeast removed. So if you fine, filter and keg, by all means, don't wait for your beer to condition!
 
For me:

10-12 days in the fermenter
3-4 days cold crash
drinkable after 7 days in the keg but better at 10

So that's 20-23 days. Now that I have a keezer, I find that I'm not rushing the whole grain to glass thing anymore.
 
I have seen many threads on here discussing appropriate time that it takes to ferment. Many say that they primary ferment for 2 weeks, then secondary ferment for another 2 to 3 weeks. For those who bottle, they’ll wait another week for if to bottle condition. 6 weeks to brew a beer?? I can go grain to glass in 2 weeks without off flavors. With all the science and experimentation on brewing (look at brulosophy.com) there is proof that some of you are taking way too long and can brew 3 times during your duration that you take to have 1 beer hanging out at the public bus terminal without money. If you make a starter and pitch the right amount of yeast, if you control the temperature appropriately, if you have a fermenter that allows a small surface contact of yeast cake to beer, if you keg and force carb, and if you don’t transfer to a secondary (a fastferment is like 70 bucks) there should be no reason to not be able to drink that beer within 2 weeks (unless you are brewing a very high gravity beer like 1.080+ or are soaking your beer in a whiskey barrel). I have a 1.060 milkshake ipa that I double dry hopped and added 4 pounds strawberries to that will be finished in 2 weeks. Look at the science behind beer and stop relying on methods that are outdated to brew. Rant over. Cheers :)

You've obviously have gotten the memo. Why waste time when you could be drinking your home brew. Unfortunately, like many things in this country brewing dogma prevents many from enjoying life.
 
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