racking to secondary during active fermenation

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TheWeeb

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so here is my situation:

I have two glass carboys for secondaries.

One presently has an EdWort Apfelwien with fruit added; fermenting for five days.

Second one is empty but needs to take my lager from primary after D-rest this weekend; it will be sitting for 5 months in secondary.

I have been advised to rack the wine off of the fruit after ~7 days or risk problems with it sitting for a long time on the fruit.

So, my plan was to rack the wine from one carboy to the other to get it off the fruit; clean the carboy, then use it for the lager.

Problem is, the wine is still very active with lots of movement in the liquid (as well as constant airlock activity).

Can I rack this off while actively fermenting? What are the risks?

If not, can I safely leave it on the fruit and not secondary at all?

Many thanks!
 
don't rack an active fermentation. You can easily get it stuck, underattenuated, and/or stress the yeast.

You typically rack wines when they are under 1.010 but not quite terminal gravity, although letting them bottom out on gravity really isn't a problem either. Depends on what you subscribe to.

But taking it off the yeast cake when you need to drop another 20-30 points of gravity is a bad idea.
No reason you have to rack off fruit after only 1 week. I usually rack from primary to secondary, add the fruit then, and let it go 2-3 weeks, then rack off the fruit into tertiary for aging.
 
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