spazasm

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my belgian tripel has been in primary for a little over a week now, I haven't decided if I want to put it in a secondary yet, any suggestions or advice on what I should do with it? How long can I leave it in the primary and still be ok?

McGarnigle

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Forget the secondary. You can leave it in primary for a long time...one month, maybe more.

veritas524

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Let that thing ride in the primary for four weeks and then bottle.

BluWtrBrew

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I hate to be the junior guy who disagrees with two senior members but I don't think you can answer that question without knowing what kind of primary you are using. Most important, does it have a fermentation lock and does the lid fit tight enough that the lock actually bubbles as the fermentation goes along? If not then racking to secondary might be a good idea.

Watching the lock contiune to bubble slowly along until , well, until it doesn't is a confidance builder for those of us having less than a hundred batches under out belts. On a more practical level if the lid is tight and the lock is working, then your beer has a strong layer of carbon dioxide on top blocking oxidation. With this layer in place, it is not necessary to reduce the surface area of the wort, which is part of what racking to secondary is about. Not sitting on top the spent yeast is the other part of what racking to secondary is about. This is not a problem, if you follow the wisdom on this site, as long as you don't let it sit too long after the yeast is done. How do you tell? In the absense of a lot of experiance with different brews, watching the fermentation lock is a lot less risky with respect to contamination than taking off the lid to do gravity checks.

If your primary is the sort of joke that came with my first beer kit, consider racking to secondary. JMHO

tmurph6

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I hope revvy doesn't see that post...

jigidyjim

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Actually, I think BluWtrBrew's post is somewhat interesting. I've never heard the argument of "if your fermenter leaks a lot, you shouldn't keep it in there long". Usually it's stuff about dead yeast, beer clarity, etc. etc. that isn't necessarily true and has been debunked time and time again (by revy and others).

But a primary with a crappy seal? Haven't heard that discussed much. The bad seal thing could, theoretically, lead to oxidation. My guess is that it's probably (a) not a huge deal unless it's REALLY bad, and (b), if your kit came with a primary with a crappy seal, it probably came with a bunch of other crappy stuff too, and it's not going to matter if you move to secondary. And even then, plenty of breweries used open top-fermentation throughout history... Those are just guesses, I'd be interested to hear more.

zachary80

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Depending on your OG I would leave it in primary for one month or more

__________________
Primary: Peat Smoked Porter, Black IPA 2 (double dry hop)
Secondary: Modified Apfelwein (+2 cans concentrate, -1/2lb sugar), Skeeter Pee
Bottled: Surly Cynic Pro Series PM, Berry Blend (1:4) Apfelwein, Yeti clone, Houblonmonstre 2

Next Batches: Urca Vanilla Porter clone, Tongue Splitter (double dry hop), APFELWEIN

spazasm

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I have never heard the argument about crappy seals either. That being said, my fermenter is a 6 gal Carboy with a blow off tube that is in a jar of sanitizer. The krausen pushed through the blowoff tube into a catch bucket so I know a bad seal is not an issue. I don't plan on testing gravity for another few weeks, is it possible that I will need to repitch before bottling??

McGarnigle

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I'm not sure if a crappy seal would hurt. The CO2 doesn't want to escape unless pressure is pushing it out, right? Unless you are screwing around with it, I would think be CO2 would just rest there.

That being said, I don't necessarily subscribe to 'longer is better' because I don't think the yeast is doing much after 2-3 weeks but falling out. So you shouldn't worry about leaving in primary for a month, but I usually go only three weeks.

McGarnigle

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Not after a month. I think re-pitching for priming becomes an issue after 2-3 months or something like that.