Secondary Fermentation?

Generally it's not necessary. The traditional purpose of doing a secondary was to allow the yeast to drop out of suspension. But that will happen with equivalent extra time in the primary.

IMO, a good reason to do a secondary would be for extended bulk aging (of a big beer) or to add fruit or some other special ingredient. But I don't do a secondary for most of my beers.

 

And save your self a lot of work and risk of contamination.

 

I only secondary when I am either adding some other ingredient or I'm lagering longer than a month, as others have said. The only other time I secondary is if I'm dry hopping and also planning on rinsing and repitching my yeast. According to the yeast book, dry hopping can potentially coat the yeast cells with hop resin and may not make for optimal yeast health... or something like that

 

Secondary begins the moment terminal gravity is reached. There are a few reasons for secondary:

- yeast clean up the beer of some undesirable primary fermentation and young beer characteristics

- yeast, given time, flocculate out of suspension & clarity improves

- additions, such as dry hops, fruit, wood, spices can be added at this time and conditioned for x amount of time

Some beers see very very short secondary phases whereas other beers require extended conditioning. Some beers, like a local Hefeweizen by me, go from grain to glass in 10-11 days, whereas a big Barleywine may require 3-4 months conditioning time for the alcohol heat to settle and the yeast to clean the beer up and bring the flavors together. Process all depends on the beer being made.

 

I may have misunderstood the OP's question. I thought they were referring to transferring to a secondary fermenter as opposed to secondary fermentation. All my brews spend time in secondary fermentation but almost none are transferred to a secondary fermenter. I should have been more clear

 

I don't look at it as being that clear cut. The cleanup pathways generally begin before attenuation is finished. Though I guess it's as good an arbitrary dividing line as any as far as it goes.

 

Re: secondary vessel, the only secondary vessels I use are kegs. If I'm going to be adding something to the beer that can't fit into a carboy opening, I'll just primary ferment in a food grade bucket. Primary fermenter -> cold crash 36 F for 3 days -> keg. Sometimes, like for my latest Farmhouse, I cold crashed then to keg, then let the beer bulk condition in keg at room temp for 2 months after adding some Brett.

 

This is definitely one of the biggest disappointments in my brewing is lacking the space to be able to keg. Someday... maybe

 

Q: Is racking the beer to a secondary necessary?
A: Not unless you're aging the beer or adding fruit.

Q: Is secondary fermentation necessary?
A: Not unless you want to drink carbonated beer.

 

So the question of whether or not to transfer to a secondary has been bouncing around in my head for a little while and I thought I'd revive this thread to see if folks could clear one or two things up for me. It seems like more and more people are opting to skip the secondary, with the exception of very "big" beers and ones that need special ingredients. I'm all for reducing the amount of time it takes to brew a batch, but I don't want to cut any corners in doing so. I guess my questions boil down to:

1. How big should a beer be before you consider transferring to a secondary? Or, to put it another way, how long would you be willing to leave the your beer in the primary before bottling? (For example, I brewed a tripel that's supposed to age for about 3 months prior to bottling, would that be too long to leave in the bucket?)

2. How important is it to remove trub from the wort if you aren't going to transfer to a secondary? Is there actually a risk of off-flavors from the trub and yeast, or is that an old brewer's tale?

 

I wouldn't leave any beer in primary for 3 months. But I have gone 6 weeks in primary with some saisons, with no issues. But that doesn't mean you necessarily have to secondary your Tripel. You could age it in the bottle, in which case the conditioning that would normally happen in a secondary would happen in the bottles instead.

You want some kettle trub, but not all of it, in your fermenter. (Some would say that all of it is okay, but I'm not one of them.) In that respect, it's fortunate that you can't really avoid having some. Compounds in the trub can be literally converted to soap under some conditions. But that's pretty rare in the fermentation timeframes we're talking about. Regarding yeast.... eventually the cells will fall apart, dumping their not very tasty guts into the beer. Fortunately, this also normally takes a long time to happen to a significant extent in homebrew.

 

This was posted on another thread here a few months back but I thought it might help here as well. I'm not claiming he conducted a controlled scientific experiment but it's a good read.

http://brulosophy.com/2014/06/02/the-great-trub-exbeeriment-results-are-in/

 

“Is there actually a risk of off-flavors from the trub and yeast, or is that an old brewer's tale?”

The risk of yeast autolysis on the homebrewing scale is negligible. The risk of yeast autolysis in the brewing world in general is a concern – to commercial breweries. The conical fermenters they use create a lot of pressure on the yeast at the bottom of their conical fermenters. Commercial brewers will ‘dump out’ their yeast once primary fermentation is complete. For us homebrewers who make small batches (typically 5 gallons) we don’t experience a lot of pressure on the yeast at the bottom of our smaller fermenters therefore minimal concern for yeast autolysis.

Cheers!

 

Thank you so much for that link. I greatly enjoyed reading it!!

Cheers!