Glossary
Conditioning
The maturation period after primary fermentation during which flavours settle, harsh compounds are cleared and carbonation develops.
The full record
Conditioning has its own catalogue entry with the detail this page summarises — causes, thresholds, related styles and evidence.
Conditioning — Mature beer after primary fermentation so flavours settle, harsh young compounds are cleared and carbonation reaches equilibrium.
Conditioning is where young beer stops tasting young. Yeast continues to scavenge oxygen and reduce acetaldehyde and diacetyl, proteins and polyphenols settle out, and dissolved CO₂ reaches equilibrium.
It happens under several different names depending on tradition and temperature — lagering, cellar conditioning, cask conditioning, bottle conditioning — but the underlying process is the same.
Related
- Lagering — The cold, extended version.
- Cask conditioning — The British version, completed in the pub cellar.
- Bottle conditioning — The version completed in the package.
More vocabulary
Arrested fermentation · Barrel ageing · Batch sparging · Biotransformation · Blending · Bottle conditioning · Bottom fermentation · Burtonisation · Cask conditioning · Centrifugation
See every term on the glossary index.
Last reviewed 2026-08-16.