Secondary.

It's not that you are wrong, per se, it's that you know things that aren't so. It's not necessary when dry hopping. And it is not necessary when attempting a clearer beer.

 

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  All of the above depends on what you are trying to accomplish. I would recommend The Brewing Network - The Jamil Show - Fruit beer and spice beer podcasts on iTunes.

 

I'd say the main reason for secondary is to remove the beer from the yeast cake. DUH Now what does this accomplish? It lets you get to your yeast and preserve it for next generations before you alter your beer with additional flavors like oak. The beer that you racked over to secondary is ready for long term bulk storage. This allows you to oak, fruit, or flavor your beer as you'd like and for as long as you'd like.

That said I think oak would be about the only reason I'd use a secondary. You can be very successful adding hops, fruit, or even oak to a primary fermenter. I'd be very careful in reusing this yeast if it had fruit pulp or oak in it though.

 

I agree and oak would probably be the only reason to secondary for me.

 

What about lagering?

 

Oaking, adding fruit, relieving fermenter space for the next batch to start would all be legitimate reasons to secondary. The only time I personally would lager in secondary is if I'm lagering/aging for more than a few months, like for a Doppelbock or barley wine, and I'm using plastic for primary. Glass or stainless is not O2 permeable so they make excellent secondary. But for a month or 2 lagering, I still stay in plastic primary. The extra yeast really help out to clean up the beer.

I would also add the wit bier podcast for zest and spice additions.

 

I lager in a purged keg, under very low pressure (just enough to seal the corney).

 

Neither case is true. You can, if you choose to, dry hop in primary. And time and gravity (for clearing) work the same way in primary as secondary. (Though you do need some skill to eventually rack the cleared beer from the primary without stirring up trub.) IMO, the question is really how long you want to leave the beer on the trub. If it's going to be beyond 4 weeks (say, for bulk aging, or for a very slow flocculating yeast strain, or whatever), that's about where I would start thinking about a secondary. But others leave beer on the trub for longer than that without problems.

 

And here I thought I was starting to get the hang of this brewing stuff. I thought I am supposed to get the beer off the yeast cake after 4 weeks. I racked to a glass secondary after my lager was done fermenting after about 3 weeks. Now I am scared it's going to be oxidized when I go to taste it next.

So next time are you saying that if I ferment for 3-4 weeks and lager for 3-4 weeks I can just keep it on the yeast cake in the primary? If so this is news to me and I will be doing it this way in the future. I have two lagers I am brewing next and I want to make sure I do them right.

Thanks.

 

The ‘standard’ way to brew lager beers is to complete primary fermentation and rack to a secondary for lagering. I brew lots of lagers and I always follow this ‘standard’ process. I primary in a plastic bucket and I secondary in a glass carboy. You can also secondary in a keg.

Let’s discuss the whole get the beer off the yeast (and trub) topic. If you ever read an old homebrew book there is likely to be mention that you should quickly get your beer off the yeast cake. The concern was yeast autolysis. Yeast autolysis is a genuine concern for commercial breweries since they use big steel fermenters and there is a lot of pressure from the beer on the yeast at the bottom of the steel fermenter. The dimensions of homebrewing fermenters (e.g., 5 gallon batches in buckets/carboys) do not lend themselves to yeast autolysis. I have read that t takes many months for yeast autolysis to be noticed for homebrewing. There has also been discussion that being on trub too long can be a problem. How long is too long for trub to cause a problem? Boy, I really don’t know.

If you primary your lagers in buckets and leave the beer in the bucket for a long time (e.g., 2 months for primary and lagering) there is a risk (maybe just a small risk?) of oxidation since plastic buckets are oxygen permeable.

So, what does all of the above mean?

If you primary your lagers in buckets (like I do) I recommend that you transfer to a carboy (or keg) after primary is complete for the lagering phase. The chance oxidation due to bucket oxygen permeability may be small but I wouldn’t recommend taking that risk.

If you primary your lagers in a glass carboy then you have the ‘option’ to just keep the beer in there for both phases (primary and lagering). For an example timeframe of 2 months total I am confident you will not experience yeast autolysis and the ‘effects’ of being on the trub is likely to be negligible. Of course you could transfer to a second carboy if you don’t want to take that chance.

Cheers!

 

^^^^^
+1 to all of this. Another risk of leaving beer on the trub too long is that dormant yeast can excrete some nasty things without necessarily rupturing (autolysis). But like autolysis, that's something that would generally take a fairly long time with healthy yeast and typical homebrew equipment/processes.

 

Shifting the topic away from lagering and back to fermenting ales... I'm slowing coming around to the perspective that it's okay to leave the beer on the trub for 3-4 weeks. Thus far (all three batches into my hobby as a homebrewer), I've fermented in the primary for two weeks and transferred to the secondary for one week to dry hop. This process was due to unspecified fear of off-flavors imparted by the spent yeast and hops.

I read a (very long) thread on a different forum that debated this issue, and I was left with the impression that those who still do so mostly use the secondary out of habit (with a small portion of people who either want to harvest the yeast from the primary or need the primary for another batch).

I currently have a batch (#4!) in the primary, and--dammit--I'm going to leave it there.

 

Here is what I "typically" do.

• Spices - Maybe a little at the end of boil but usually after fermentation, possibly secondary depending on aging time needed
• Orange/Lemon peel (I'm pretty sure this is with 10-15 min left in the boil) - Same as spices
• Fruit puree - After primary fermentation has peeked starts to fall (3-5 days) or for sours when i estimate about 2-5 months left
• Extra sugars? - At peak fermentation time or shortly after (2-4 days), for some sours I have added at later periods when using honey
• Other??? - Depends? For oak I put in about 3-7 days before bottling, and taste frequently. Typically beer is in secondary due to ABV and aging time. Spirits I add at bottling time (except for what the oak/wood might have been sitting in to help sanitize). Coffee beans and cacao nibs should never be boiled. There are many different methods on adding coffee (ground in secondary, whole in secondary, cold brewed added at bottling, etc)

 

Honestly, you need to do what you're comfortable with. I let all this anti-secondary propaganda scare me into doing everything in the primary too. What a waste. With all the trub and shit that got into my bottling bucket I will NEVER ferment solely in my primary again. NEVER. EVER. Because it doesn't work for me.

 

Heres what John Palmer says about Racking to Secondary:
from: http://www.homebrewersassociation.org/forum/index.php?topic=15108.0

Palmer answers:
These are good questions – When and why would you need to use a secondary fermenter? First some background – I used to recommend racking a beer to a secondary fermenter. My recommendation was based on the premise that (20 years ago) larger (higher gravity) beers took longer to ferment completely, and that getting the beer off the yeast reduced the risk of yeast autolysis (ie., meaty or rubbery off-flavors) and it allowed more time for flocculation and clarification, reducing the amount of yeast and trub carryover to the bottle. Twenty years ago, a homebrewed beer typically had better flavor, or perhaps less risk of off-flavors, if it was racked off the trub and clarified before bottling. Today that is not the case.

The risk inherent to any beer transfer, whether it is fermenter-to-fermenter or fermenter-to-bottles, is oxidation and staling. Any oxygen exposure after fermentation will lead to staling, and the more exposure, and the warmer the storage temperature, the faster the beer will go stale.

Racking to a secondary fermenter used to be recommended because staling was simply a fact of life – like death and taxes. But the risk of autolysis was real and worth avoiding – like cholera. In other words, you know you are going to die eventually, but death by cholera is worth avoiding.

But then modern medicine appeared, or in our case, better yeast and better yeast-handling information. Suddenly, death by autolysis is rare for a beer because of two factors: the freshness and health of the yeast being pitched has drastically improved, and proper pitching rates are better understood. The yeast no longer drop dead and burst like Mr. Creosote from Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life when fermentation is complete – they are able to hibernate and wait for the next fermentation to come around. The beer has time to clarify in the primary fermenter without generating off-flavors. With autolysis no longer a concern, staling becomes the main problem. The shelf life of a beer can be greatly enhanced by avoiding oxygen exposure and storing the beer cold (after it has had time to carbonate).

Therefore I, and Jamil and White Labs and Wyeast Labs, do not recommend racking to a secondary fermenter for ANY ale, except when conducting an actual second fermentation, such as adding fruit or souring. Racking to prevent autolysis is not necessary, and therefore the risk of oxidation is completely avoidable. Even lagers do not require racking to a second fermenter before lagering. With the right pitching rate, using fresh healthy yeast, and proper aeration of the wort prior to pitching, the fermentation of the beer will be complete within 3-8 days (bigger = longer). This time period includes the secondary or conditioning phase of fermentation when the yeast clean up acetaldehyde and diacetyl. The real purpose of lagering a beer is to use the colder temperatures to encourage the yeast to flocculate and promote the precipitation and sedimentation of microparticles and haze.

So, the new rule of thumb: don’t rack a beer to a secondary, ever, unless you are going to conduct a secondary fermentation.

 

Since he did not mention risk of infection, is he out of the loop with what is always said about secondary's?

 

I didn't notice the OP referenced ales specifically. I thought he was asking when a secondary was necessary. Did I miss something?

 

Not buying it

 

Buy whatever works for your beer.

Figured I'd just post Palmer's current thoughts on secondary fermentation as lots of people quote "How to Brew" as a reason for doing them.