length of time in secondary

[docmoran]

please dont beat me up for this one but have not been able to keg a bass clone yet and just wondering. left on yeast cake for 2 weeks then went to secondary cold crash and been sitting for about 3 weeks. question is this -- is there a difference between that time period being carbonated vs not in maturation etc?? if not then should i just go straight to keg after real brief cold crash settling etc?? thanks

 

[Bensiff]

Whether the beer is carbonated or not has little to no impact, that I know of, on the maturation of the beer. What is going to impact maturation is allowing the yeast to clean up the byproducts of fermentation which sounds like you did by allowing it to sit on the cake for a few extra weeks. The next part of maturation is getting the suspended particles out of the beer. This can be done by filtering, cold crashing, or simply waiting a long time. For me, once the beer is cleared up well enough from cold crashing I keg and put under pressure to get it carbed while finishing lagering. Sorry if this was too much info, I was a little fuzzy on your question so I went for the shotgun approach on answering.

 

[android]

nothing wrong with secondarying for maturation, but if you can keg, i'd just do 2-3 weeks in primary, cold crash for 24-48 hours and keg. then, while it carbonates over the course of the next 7-10 days, it will mature as well.