I've got a glass carboy that I never use because frankly I'm not a fan of glass carboys. Slippery, dangerous, hard to clean. So it just sits in the closet at the end of the bench watching all the other brewing equipment having fun.
But I'm thinking about brewing something that I could rack to the carboy and forget about for some extended period of time. 6 months, a year...whatever. Maybe I can get some use out of the carboy, one beer every year. There would be no racking off the yeast until its time to package. Set it and forget it.
Now I've read that its good practice to get the beer off the yeast cake at some point, though when exactly seems to be a bit of a mystery. Doesn't some yeast drop out in secondary conditioning? And how long does one store primed and packaged beer bottles?
So...Can a beer ferment, condition and age in a primary vessel? Suggestions? A good yeast for this? (I would rather not get involved with any yeast that could infect any of the equipment. I don't want to have to quarantine any hoses, siphons...)
Thanks in advance.