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Leaving beer in primary fermentation for almost a month

lecavalheirus

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Greetings! I'm brewing a Belgian Pale Ale and primary fermentation should end by 19 December or so. I'll be travelling from 21 Dec to 11 Jan and won't be able to work on my beer these days. Can I leave the beer in the primary fermentation bucket untill 11 Jan without any major damages to taste and stuff? Should I leave it at the same temperature or should I reduce it while I'm away? I'll be doing a single step fermentation. After that, I'm planning on a 10-day maturation in the same bucket at 10 ?C, a 4-5-day cold crash about 0 ?C, bottling and aging for 30 days. Is anything wrong with that? Thanks in advance.
 
Greetings lecavalheirus - without really knowing how long your primary fermentation is been in process by the 19th, it's difficult to determine the effects of the beer on the 12th or so of January when you return to tend to it.

That said, my opinion is to avoid leaving your beer on the yeast bed longer than 30 days after fermentation is complete and even then, you may be pushing it depending on the yeast strain, temperature, etc.

The remainder of your process seems okay to me although you will most likely have to re-pitch some additional yeast if you intend on bottle conditioning especially after a 4-5 day cold crash.

Hope this helps.

Good luck!
 
I agree with kellerbraur, you don't want to go past 30 days on the yeast bed or off flavours can result. I can go 21 days to 30 max. with lagers fermenting at 40 to 45f temperature.  Perhaps lowering the ferment  temperature will allow you to leave the beer on the original yeast bed longer. Then I would definitely transfer the beer off the yeast bed ASAP before any maturation.  Otherwise I would worry about yeast autolyzing i.e.- yeast breaking down and consuming themselves resulting in bad flavours.
 
Late to the party... In these cases (I travel quite a bit and get into the same situations) I usually rack over to a secondary the day before I leave, if the gravities are stabilized...otherwise I will rack over and pull some of the yeast with it to give it a bit of munchers to continue to work.
Works for me on a wide range of brews.
 
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