secondary fermenting / wort question.

Blaxd046 · 03-10-2010, 08:31 PM

I am primary fermenting in a 6 gal class carboy, can I siphon my beer into the bottling pale, then clean and sanitize the carboy then transfer the beer back into the cleaned carboy for secondary fermentation?

Also, I forgot to let the wort cool down after boiling and added it to 2.5 gallons of room temp water, then added about another gallon of room temp water to the wort to make the 5 gallons, i then pitched the year, is it possible the beer was to warm yet to pitch the yeast? i have read if it is too warm it can end up having a solvent like taste in the end. Vigourus fermentaion has begun and all appears to be working well so far

Thanks

TipsyDragon · 03-10-2010, 08:53 PM

ok clarification of terms here. primary fermentation is where the yeast convert the sugars into CO2 and alcohol. they also produce other compounds during this process. secondary fermentation occurs during and after primary fermentation no matter what you do. during secondary fermentation the yeast clean up allot of the extra compounds they make during primary fermentation.

now some people do transfer their beer from the primary fermenter to a secondary fermenter. this is not strictly necessary and should never be done while primary fermentation is still underway. your idea is not bad but increases the chance of infection with each transfer and will result in beer loss with each transfer. but if your ok with that then by all means do what you where thinking.

it is posable that your wort was to warm when you pitched. but it has long since cooled to a little above room temperature. fermentation produces heat so during the most vigorous portion of primary fermentation the wort will be warmer than the room its in.

**Walker** · 03-10-2010, 08:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Blaxd046

I am primary fermenting in a 6 gal class carboy, can I siphon my beer into the bottling pale, then clean and sanitize the carboy then transfer the beer back into the cleaned carboy for secondary fermentation?

Yes, you can do this. It's not ideal because you are racking it twice, but it'll work.

Next time, you could use your bottling bucket as the primary fermenter and save your carboy for use as a secondary.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Blaxd046

Also, I forgot to let the wort cool down after boiling and added it to 2.5 gallons of room temp water, then added about another gallon of room temp water to the wort to make the 5 gallons, i then pitched the year, is it possible the beer was to warm yet to pitch the yeast? i have read if it is too warm it can end up having a solvent like taste in the end. Vigourus fermentaion has begun and all appears to be working well so far

Thanks

Yeah, that was probably pretty darn warm. It might have one or more off flavors.

If your non-cooled wort was 1.5 gallons of 200*F stuff that you added 3.5 gallons of 70*F water to, it would have ended up close to 110*F.

That's 35* or 40* higher than you really want to pitch at.

IceFisherChris · 03-10-2010, 09:10 PM

Yeah you can do that, but a lot of people are going to tell you that you're probably be wasting your time. You're exposing your beer to more oxygen, and more infections by moving it around. There is absolutely nothing wrong with leaving it in the primary for a month. I don't do any of this so called "secondary fermentation" because I think it's pure BS (unless you want to age for more than a month or two.) People think that something magical happens when they say they just started to "secondary" it.

As for fermenting, there is nothing you can do now. Personally IDK since I have never had it happen to me first hand. Chances are it will cool down before anything bad happens.

**Walker** · 03-10-2010, 09:24 PM

The benefit I get from using secondary vessels is that I can have many batches going at once without having to have all of my carboys be the 6.5 size. I have just a couple of those large ones and lots of 5 gallon ones.