tbone

Recipes 

What is the difference between allowing your beer to stay in the Primary for 2-3 weeks before bottling and changing over to a Secondary after 1 week and then waiting 2 weeks to bottle? Isn't the beer clearing and settling in both cases? As a first time home brewer I am considering getting a 6.5 Carboy but don't understand the logic.

Dude

Recipes 

Mainly just to get the beer of the trub (hops, break, old dead yeast cells) to prevent any off flavors that may cause.

Funny, I recently heard a TBN broadcast denouncing secondary ferments.

While I don't disagree with the logic, I do believe in some kind of secondary ferment. I happen to do mine 9 times out of 10 in a corny keg. I find it easier to dry hop and I do think my beer is clearer and more visually appealing after a short secondary.

Is it essential to good beer, probably not.

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david_42

Recipes 

The main point is by removing the brew from the trub, you are less likely to stir it up when you rack to the bottling bucket.

And it frees up the big carboy for another batch.

I keg from the fermenting bucket after 2-3 weeks. All of my buckets have anti-trub fixtures on them.

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the_bird

Recipes 

I think it's Jamil that I've heard say he hardly ever does a secondary fermentation, FWIW. I almost always do for the commonly-cited reasons. Once I get my fridge setup as well, the plan for me is to do a cold conditioning of all beers to improve clarity, which I would much rather do with the beer off the trub.

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