Value of Secondary

Yeast tend to clean up after themselves after fermentation is done. You don't want to leave the beer on the trub for too long, but this seems to be less of a problem on a homebrew scale. Clarity will come with flocculation, a descendent of gravity and time. If you're really worried about clairty, you can use clarifying agents like isenglass.

If you haven't dry hopped yet, consider doing that 7-10 days BEFORE you are about to bottle. I usually let my beers sit on the trub for 4-6 weeks before I package in a keg. No signs of autolysis or anything funky yet.

Edit: Whirlfloc tablets are a must in every beer for me <-- bad wine joke in there, if you get it. The difference in a black cloudy beer and a black clear beer are as different as night and day. It will be even more noticeable in lighter styles of beer. Just remember to keep it away from the wit/wheat beers.

 

+1on what inchrisin said

Plus this http://www.howtobrew.com/section1/chapter8-4.html

 

With a Belgian style I would primary longer and let bottle condition longer, rather than rack it to clarify the beer more quickly. The yeast is an essential aspect of those styles, in my opinion, and letting it condition longer with the yeast and clarify on its own over a longer time is better for developing those flavors.

 

Leave this beer on the yeast 3-4 weeks before you bottle. You will appreciate this down the road.

 

JP actually admits that the free first edition (the link you pointed to) isn't his opinion anymore
http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f163/secondary-not-john-palmer-jamil-zainasheff-weigh-176837/

Over at HBT there's a pretty strong sentiment of not using a secondary unless you're adding fruit/oak/whatever or you're trying to free up your primary for another batch. At any rate, the thread I linked makes for some interesting reading.

 

No secondary seems to be the consensus over here too. Many will even just dry hop in the primary.

To the OP, I think split the difference on all the advice given and go with your original plan.

Primary for 5 weeks, then bottle.

 

one of the other big problems with secondary is that you'd be exposing your beer to more oxygen, which can add some off flavors. theres really no benefit to doing secondary compared to just leaving it in primary longer

 

+1 to what brewader stated!

There is a risk (albeit a small risk) of oxidation occurring during the transfer to a secondary. Why take that risk unless you absolutely need to? I primary in a plastic bucket and I personally only transfer to secondary (5 gallon carboy) when I require long term aging (lager beers and ciders).

I have heard that you should transfer to a secondary if you add stuff like fruit, oak, etc. Unless you are aging with this stuff, couldn’t you just add the fruit/oak/etc. to the primary?

Cheers!

 

I used to use a secondary - but have since given up on it for most beers. Agreed, lagers I keep in secondary for long term aging. But, I still use a secondary for fruit beers as well. Less yeast means that the sugars in the fruit are very lazily consumed, which means less scrubbing of the fruit flavors by CO2. Racking onto the fruit in the secondary is the best way to do a fruit beer, IMO. I've had a lot of success with it.

 

“Racking onto the fruit in the secondary is the best way to do a fruit beer, IMO.” I have never made a fruit beer so I appreciate your opinion on this matter.

If you don’t mind me asking a curiosity question, you state:

“But, I still use a secondary for fruit beers as well. Less yeast means that the sugars in the fruit are very lazily consumed, which means less scrubbing of the fruit flavors by CO2.”

Once primary fermentation is complete (i.e., the yeast has consumed all of the sugars of the wort) won’t there be the same amount of yeast whether you keep the beer in the primary vs. transferring it to a secondary? I guess I just don’t understand the “less yeast” part with using a secondary.

Cheers!

 

“When you move the beer to the secondary, you're leaving some yeast behind…” My understanding of the yeast that is left behind is that it is in a dormant stage. I am surmising that once the yeast enters this dormant stage (the yeast that flocculated) it will remain in that condition and the yeast still in suspension (the active yeast) will ferment to fruit. I suppose the yeast that flocculated could awaken and ‘re-suspend’ themselves but I have a hard time envisioning this.

So, the point I am advocating is that the primary and the secondary will have the same amount of yeast that is active; the secondary would not have “less yeast” from an active secondary fermentation perspective. Do you know otherwise?

Cheers!

 

I have always assumed that not all of the yeast at the bottom of the fermenter is "spent" - if it was, it couldn't be harvested for future batches, right? My belief is that there is living and active yeast at the bottom that is dormant due to lack of sugar source. Once you add that sugar source, they will perk up and begin working on sugar again. This is why I believed that fruit worked better in the secondary. Someone may come along and refute this...

 

“I have always assumed that not all of the yeast at the bottom of the fermenter is "spent" - if it was, it couldn't be harvested for future batches, right?” I agree that the yeast on the bottom of a primary fermenter is not “spent”. It is my understanding that the yeast that has flocculated is dormant.

“My belief is that there is living and active yeast at the bottom that is dormant due to lack of sugar source.” Well, I would argue with the “active” part of that sentence but I would 100% agree with the “dormant” part of that sentence.

“Once you add that sugar source, they will perk up and begin working on sugar again.” That is the part I wonder about. Does the dormant yeast “re-suspend” themselves or are the fruit sugars metabolized by the active yeast that has not flocculated yet?

“This is why I believed that fruit worked better in the secondary.” I understand your belier here.

The crux of the issue is whether yeast that has flocculated comes out of dormancy or do the active non-flocculated yeast do the ‘work’. I suppose it could be a combination of both?

Anyhow, thanks for considering my question.

Cheers!

 

okay, quick wikipedia search (referenced at least):

"Flocculation has been defined as the reversible, non-sexual aggregation of yeast cells that may be dispersed by specific sugars (Burns, 1937; Lindquist, 1953, Eddy, 1955; Masy et al., 1992) or EDTA (Burns, 1937; Lindquist, 1953). The addition of nutrients other than sugars has been demonstrated not to reverse flocculation (Soares et al., 2004)."

From what I can tell, it varies from strain to strain with regards to specific responses in the presence of certain kinds if sugars; eg, some strains only reverse floc in the presence of mannose but not glucose, while others may reverse in the presence of both of these, and others. Most brewing strains would be inhibited by glucose, maltose, etc., and therefore would be more likely to reverse.

I think this confirms my belief - but I'm more of a chemist than biologist - any biology folks, feel free to speak up.

 

I am not a microbiologist either. I would be interested if those kinds of folks would chime into this discussion.

The statement of “it varies from strain to strain” seems to indicate that there is likely no clear cut/universal ‘answer’ here.

Cheers!

 

I am writing these notes a bit quickly, so perhaps not being very clear - but the majority of usable brewing strains are reversible. From Soares, "Yeast flocculation: A review", Journal of Applied Microbiology, Vol. 110, issue 1:

"NewFlo phenotype contains the majority of brewery ale strains, which flocculation is reversible inhibited by mannose, maltose, glucose and sucrose but not by galactose."

Another way of saying this is that any strain capable of re-pitching (all of them to my knowledge) would have to experience reversible flocculation. Otherwise, upon re-pitch, they would simply fall to the bottom of the fermenter and never ferment the wort.

However, I thought about this a bit more, and came to the conclusion that if the yeast are not actively suspended, ie re-dissolved into the wort from the trub, there would likely be a lag between the time the sugars are added to a beer that has already flocced out and the time those flocced yeast "unfloc" and begin working on the sugars. In other words, if you think about the layer of yeast on the bottom of the tank, only those yeast at the top of that layer sense that there is sugar in the solution, and could "un-floc" to begin consumption. In a conical fermenter, it would be even tougher to get the yeast in the bottom of the cone to consume sugars in the beer up above. I expect the active yeast concentration in this scenario would be less than it would be upon a fresh pitch - but more than it would be after a rack to a secondary.

All of this is to say the following:
- brewers yeast, after flocculation, is capable of "unfloccing" to consume added sugars
- if not resuspended (ie agitated), consuming these sugars will be a slower process than if resuspended
- if the majority of dormant yeast are removed completely (ie by racking to secondary; or industrially, by draining the cone), there will be even less available yeast capable of "unfloccing" to consume added sugars

I think this all supports my experience; all predictions wrong or your money back.

Is anyone else still here?

 

I tend to agree with you about pretty much everything usually but I gotta argue with one thing. You WILL add oxygen to your beer every time you rack it from one vessel to another unless you have completely displaced the O2 in the vessel with a gas like nitrogen or CO2. You can limit the damage with proper technique but there will be some O2 absorption. For a beer that will be consumed in a couple of months it will never show up, but it is there.
I dry hop in primary, and the only fruit beers I brew involve brett or bugs. For them I will rack to a clean 6.5 gallon carboy with so that I can have the full volume of beer(10 pounds of crabapples takes a lot of space) and I do need room for the new krausen. I tend to leave the fruit in the beer for 6-9 months so leaving it on the trub that long would be too much

 

“Is anyone else still here?” Well, I am still here and I am still willing to play at being a microbiologist.

My understanding on how science ‘works’ is the first two steps is to formulate a question and then make a hypothesis.

So, question no. 1: Can yeast that has flocculated and gone dormant on the bottom of the fermenter re-suspend themselves and ferment sugars? The ‘answer’ to that questions seems to be yes via: "NewFlo phenotype contains the majority of brewery ale strains, which flocculation is reversible inhibited by mannose, maltose, glucose and sucrose but not by galactose."

Permit me to formulate a second question (which I did in a previous post). Question no. 2: Will the yeast in the primary which has not flocculated (not gone dormant) ferment the new fruit sugars that have been added? I think the answer to that question is pretty easy, the answer is yes.

I could formulate a third question but let me jump to the hypothesis part.

My hypothesis: When you add new fruit sugars to a primary fermenter (after the wort has completed fermentation), the new fruit sugars will be processed by the active, non-flocculated yeast that is present. The yeast which has flocculated (and is dormant) will not ‘re-suspend’ but all of the new fruit sugars will be fermented by the existing active yeast in the beer.

So, the next step would be to conduct an experiment to test my hypothesis. I am uncertain how you could do this. How would you really know whether the new fruit sugars were fermented by the active yeast that is in suspension or whether some of the dormant yeast ‘woke up’ and started fermenting.

Maybe I am not cut out for this science stuff!?!

Cheers!