I cold condition until I need the beer. That could be several days or several weeks.
For my five gallon batches I have two beers on tap with a third beer conditioning/lagering/maturing/clearing/carbonating in the cold. When one of those two tapped kegs kicks, I move it out, move the cold conditioned beer in and brew a new batch. As soon as fermentation is complete on the new batch (usually ~6 days or so), I keg it and put it into cold condition under CO2 pressure to wait it’s turn at the tap.
If the kegged beer isn’t clear after a cpl pints due to a short conditioning (rarely), I make a call to add gelatin or let it ride depending on my experience with that particular yeast strain and whether I am using one of the two kegs I have with a floating dip tube or not.
For my small pilot batches I bottle when the fermentation is complete, directly from the fermenter, and place them back into the fermenter fridge inside a bucket (to catch any stray shrapnel and beer from a bottle bomb — which I’ve never had
). When I want to drink one I place it in the fridge for a cpl hrs/days/whatever.
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