Brewing how long in primary

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed. Skip to content. Check The Final Gravity Most finished beers will have a final specific gravity of 1. You might also like. November 5, December 15, March 30, April 1, June 15, June 15, Leave a Reply Cancel reply Your email address will not be published. It's also important to consider the role temperature can play in brewing. If you want a short fermentation period but it's cold, then you may have to simply allow more time because the yeast slows down the alcohol production process when chilled.

Many brewers have reported leaving batches for months and suffered no issues. I'd reason though that the beer was stored in a cool place - a beer wort left in a hot environment is sure to fail as the yeast would probably get cooked.

The lid was probably screwed on very tightly as well and the beer must be kept out of the light. Put a sheet over it! My mate Julian did a beer after 8 months once a chilli one, go figure - it tasted fine after bottling.

This is when the yeast cells die, giving off some potentially 'off flavors'. These could be hydrolytic enzymes , lipids, and metal cations that can contribute to off flavor. If you've made a healthy batch with a quality yeast, pitched at a good temperature and brewed in a stable environment, then the risks of autolysis are quite low.

If you are quite concerned about this, you could counter by racking your beer to a secondary, thus removing the yeast cake from the equation. Dean Brundage Dean Brundage 9, 3 3 gold badges 36 36 silver badges 69 69 bronze badges. The danger of off-flavors caused by leaving beer on the yeast cake for too long is something of a boogey-man. I left a brew on the yeast for six months without negative impact.

This is, of course, anecdotal. I've heard that autolysis is usually only a problem in commercial breweries, because the weight of hundreds of gallons of beer focused on a small yeast cake in a conical fermenter will actually kill the yeast.

TMN, could you give us some clues, where you can be heard this? I'm interested to research about this. Sean Nordquist Sean Nordquist 3 3 silver badges 9 9 bronze badges. I have had the same experience. As long as your yeast health was great when you started most of the issues with "long" primary ferments becomes a non-issue.

Angelos Angelos 2 2 silver badges 2 2 bronze badges. Which temperature you left your primary fermentation? Ale, Lager? Entrebrewer Entrebrewer 1 1 gold badge 4 4 silver badges 5 5 bronze badges. Boo-urns Boo-urns 31 1 1 bronze badge.

I know almost nothing about Cider. Is it fermentation cycle and yeast similar to regular beer? One year is great! Could also be because some yeast get mixed in the beer at bottling, enhancing the yeasty flavour?

I don't bottle. I Only keg and I use gelatin to clarify the beer. Also in both cases, the beer from the prolonged exposure did not clarify well in the keg. Come to think of it, I've noticed this on all my previous batches. It is clearly changing the taste of my beer and generally making it worse. I only used gelatin on the latest two batches. I no longer believe that leaving beer on top of your yeast has no effect.

ChipperDave ChipperDave 1 1 gold badge 1 1 silver badge 4 4 bronze badges. That's really an old brewers' tale at this point. Yeast quality improvement is likely the reason no one really worries about this anymore. The other reason is it's an inappropriate carry-over from commercial-scale brewing.

In large tanks, there's enough pressure from the column of beer on the sedimented yeast to start autolysis. In a 5g carboy, not so much. MerkGerves MerkGerves. Generally, the process takes between four and eight weeks one to two months. This will make waiting for the next batch to be finished a little easier to bear. Before you do anything else, you need to thoroughly wash and sanitize all of your brewing equipment.