To secondary, or not to secondary

I have heard a lot of back and forth between going to a secondary or not. My main concern is if I go to a secondary and my yeast is no longer active aren't I putting my beer into danger of infection with the amount of oxygen that will fill the rest of the carboy? The airlock will be on but there will still be oxygen stuck in there.

I currently have had my batch in primary for 2 weeks. I want to check the gravity and also begin a dry hop with pellets. I am debating putting the pellets directly into the primary and then auto-siphoning into the keg once it hits FG. Otherwise I would siphon to another carboy for secondary, dry hop in there, and then siphon into the keg.

Please let me know your thoughts! Currently my dip tube goes all the way to the bottom of my corny, but I do have a screen on it:
http://www.kegworks.com/homebrew-hops-screen-719-p174496?_s_icmp=nextopia

-Mike

I do, but that's my preference. As long as it has hit FG, you're fine. Oxygen won't be a problem in your carboy, unless you have like 3 gallons of head space. You could test both methods and see which one you like/works out better for you.

mikewildt said:

...................... My main concern is if I go to a secondary and my yeast is no longer active aren't I putting my beer into danger of infection with the amount of oxygen that will fill the rest of the carboy? The airlock will be on but there will still be oxygen stuck in there.


-Mike

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In short, yes. That's why many people now rarely do a "secondary" (actually more properly a clearing vessel) and keep the beer in the fermenter until packaging.

I generally dryhop right in the fermenter, and then rack to the keg after that.

One of the things to consider is that when people post questions on "Is this infected?", and it is, it is almost always in a secondary or in a fermenter with lots of headspace for long term. Not only that, but each time you move the beer, even using perfect techniques, it does risk oxidation. I've noticed in beer judging that most beers that have flaws tend to exhibit oxidation even if it's slight. I'd like to minimize the infection risk, as well as oxidation, and few beers need weeks and weeks in the fermenter anyway. So I tend to ferment them until finished and clearing, and dryhop about 5 days before packaging, and then package the beer.

+1 on the preference. Many don't and many do. I secondary everything (preference) unless I am in a rush to keg or bottle. To avoid your concerns you can transfer to the secondary after a week of primary and you will have plenty of happy active yeast in your secondary.

There is no reason to use a secondary unless you are making a beer like a barley wine that will spend months in the fermenter. You only risk infection by doing the transfer. You also slow the yeast cleaning up by products to finish the beer by reducing the yeast population.

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Yooper said:

In short, yes. That's why many people now rarely do a "secondary" (actually more properly a clearing vessel) and keep the beer in the fermenter until packaging.

I generally dryhop right in the fermenter, and then rack to the keg after that.

So I tend to ferment them until finished and clearing, and dryhop about 5 days before packaging, and then package the beer.

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I think I may try this approach this time since in all of my past brews I have done it with the secondary. I am using pellets for the dryhop so will they do their job by dropping them in onto the top of the beer?

In the past when moving to secondary I would put the hops in first to try to get them introduced to as much of the batch as possible.

So your advice is to wait until I am happy with the clarity, (maybe another week or two I would guess) pellet dry hop for 5 days and then rack to keg?

Thanks

mikewildt said:

So your advice is to wait until I am happy with the clarity, (maybe another week or two I would guess) pellet dry hop for 5 days and then rack to keg?

Thanks

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Yes. The theory is that yeast cells will "pull" out hop oils when they flocculate and fall out, so that dryhopping while the yeast are still active or numerous in suspension will lower the aroma of the dryhopping. I'm not sure that is so, but I generally wait until the beer is 5 days before packaging, and then dryhop.

When I rack to the keg, I start my siphon below the floating hops debris, and above the trub and just lower the siphon as the level of the beer lowers. It works out very well, and I end up with clear hoppy beer in the keg.

I have dryhopped in the keg as well, and I sometimes do that for beers that I want more dryhops in at packaging. I use a hops bag or tea ball for dryhopping in the keg, as loose hops debris WILL clog your diptube!

I prefer using a large bucket as a primary, usually a week as I only get an opportunity to brew on weekends then transfer it to a secondary and leave it as long as it needs in the glass. A good thing about this is the 29L bucket has so far had tons of headspace for krausen with batch sizes of 20-23L going in; size dependent on what carboy I've got available as a secondary. I also usually need the same bucket to do my bottling with, just part of the system I've got going.

Yooper said:

When I rack to the keg, I start my siphon below the floating hops debris, and above the trub and just lower the siphon as the level of the beer lowers. It works out very well, and I end up with clear hoppy beer in the keg.

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Thanks I will definitely try this. Do you cold crash before racking to the keg? I have heard of some people cold crashing after dry hopping but some say you lose some desired hop resins. Any thoughts?

I have also never used gelatin before but have read about people using it for clarity as well.

I personally don't use a secondary unless I'm making a fruit beer.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with racking to a secondary, I just feel that the risk of infection from transferring is larger than any positive you'd get from doing so. Just my opinion, and again, I don't think there's a right or wrong way.

Sometimes I dry hop in a secondary vessel so I can later reuse those hops as mash hops or first wort hops. It's rare that I'm not reusing my yeast cake.

On occasion I want to free up a carboy so I'll keg sooner than I planned, so the keg acts as a bright tank, but secondary would serve the same purpose if you don't have enough primary vessels.

There isn't anything inherently wrong with a secondary, and if done properly shouldn't pose a measurable risk of infection or oxidation. I only use it for long term aging of beers, which is rare. When you rack, there is going to be some gassing off of CO2, which will reduce the amount of oxidation. How much risk of oxidation depends on how careful you are with the transfer, how much headspace you have in the secondary, and how much Oxygen is in the headspace.

I keg, so if I use a secondary, I try and shoot some CO2 into the secondary before and after filling, and use a carboy-shaped vessel, which is a far better guarantee against leakage than a bucket.

Most of the time I skip secondary, and even add hops directly to the primary after the fermentation is over. It's worked very well so far, and the beer has been as clear doign that as it has been dry hopping in the secondary.

I am going to jump in on this as I was about to post a similar question anyway. I will be making NB Black IPA this weekend and have been debating in my head whether or not to use a secondary. I actually have not transfered to a secondary for quite some time, but this will be the first IPA that I have made in a while, and it has 6 oz of hops including the dry hop. The only reason I am considering the secondary is the amount of sediment that will be created from all the hops, and how to avoid the sediment come bottling time. Then again, I guess some hop sediment in the bottle never hurt anyone!

Thanks for all the advice guys. I think I will try dry hopping in the primary this time, and then rack to keg.

My next question is, what is your opinion on cold crashing? I want this to be a hoppy IPA and I have heard that sometimes cold crashing can suck to the hop resins to the bottom where they attached to yeast and you lose some of the aroma. I have also heard of people really liking the cold crash because of the clarity you get from it. So maybe I cold crash but not as long as some people do? If you are a fan of cold crashing, how many days do you usually do it for and have you done it while a pellet dry hop is present?

Also does anyone like/dislike the gelatin process?

I have yet to hear any cold crash complaints. I have used gelatin and plan to for all my future brews, logical exceptions aside. Put together these make a mean beer clearing machine! I unfortunately don't have the resources to cold crash, so rely on time and gelatin alone for clearing.

When do you usually add the gelatin in? I am unfamiliar with this process..

Also FYI I used a Whirfloc tab 10 minutes out during the brew.

mikewildt said:

Thanks I will definitely try this. Do you cold crash before racking to the keg? I have heard of some people cold crashing after dry hopping but some say you lose some desired hop resins. Any thoughts?

I have also never used gelatin before but have read about people using it for clarity as well.

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I don't use gelatin as I want a vegetarian friendly beer with no unexpected stuff, and I don't normally cold crash before kegging but lots of other brewers do both with good results.

I put my keg in my kegerator, so the beer goes from 64 to 40, and it's really clear when I pour a pint, so that short of works as a cold crash I guess.

mikewildt said:

When do you usually add the gelatin in? I am unfamiliar with this process..

Also FYI I used a Whirfloc tab 10 minutes out during the brew.

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I put in 1/2 tsp and left it at room temperature for 72 hours before bottling. I'm happy with the results. Other folks recommend up to a week.