Beating a dead horse..secondary or not?

I read on here al the time and enjoy a debate anyway so here goes. I KNOW conventional wisdom is that a secondary is a waste of time and unnecessary. I read that the beers are actually more clear with a long primary and no secondary. I am having more and more difficulty buying into that due to a couple of things.

#1 the picture revvy has shown of his bottling bucket in comparison to mine after bottling ( We both employ the same bottling technique but I secondary and he doesn't.) His pic shows quite a bit of trub in the bottom of the bucket post bottling...mine is clean as a whistle.In his defense he intentionally picks up some trub when racking.

#2 are a couple of pics I took tonight of the bottom of my secondary after racking to the bottling bucket. This is after one solid month in Primary under temp controlled conditions then racking to secondary and 4 days of cold crashing. Look at the gunk in the bottom that would have been in my beer had I bottled straight from the primary.

Why couldn't you cold crash in primary instead of adding the racking step?

smagee said:

Why couldn't you cold crash in primary instead of adding the racking step?

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I am sure you could but I THINK the argument is that simply a long primary works the same.

OHIOSTEVE said:

I KNOW conventional wisdom is that a secondary is a waste of time and unnecessary.

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It is only a waste of time for those who like the flavors you get from leaving the beer on a lot of yeast for a long time. Somewhere along the line, that finding that leaving your beers in primary for a longer time WILL NOT HARM YOUR BEER, got twisted into you MUST leave your beer in primary. This is totally inaccurate.

For most of the styles of beers I brew, I do not want these flavors in my beer. Most of my beers are in a keg within 2 weeks where they age (secondary) for a couple more weeks before carbonating.

OHIOSTEVE said:

I am sure you could but I THINK the argument is that simply a long primary works the same.

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Cold crashing works better than transferring to a secondary. When you cold crash, a bulk of your suspended yeast drops out, where as in secondary, it stays in suspension. Plus, when cold crashing, you get more good yeast when you harvest off the yeast cake. I haven't used a secondary in a long time, I'm to the point now where I even dry hop, add adjuncts, etc to the primary fermenter.

pjj2ba said:

For most of the styles of beers I brew, I do not want these flavors in my beer. Most of my beers are in a keg within 2 weeks where they age (secondary) for a couple more weeks before carbonating.

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Blasphemy! You must primary for at least 6 weeks to quell the off flavors produced from poor brewing habits. Silly rabbit, relax and have some coconut milk.

pjj2ba said:

It is only a waste of time for those who like the flavors you get from leaving the beer on a lot of yeast for a long time. Somewhere along the line, that finding that leaving your beers in primary for a longer time WILL NOT HARM YOUR BEER, got twisted into you MUST leave your beer in primary. This is totally inaccurate.

For most of the styles of beers I brew, I do not want these flavors in my beer. Most of my beers are in a keg within 2 weeks where they age (secondary) for a couple more weeks before carbonating.

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+1

I do worry about the way people on this forum talk about secondaries, many people are unbaised and state their opinion, but some posts, especially in the beginner forum, really are opinions but presented as a fact. I think it leads to many new brewers not quite understanding the pros, cons, or even that they have the choice.

Most "risks" I hear about secondaries are universal and apply to primaries but stated like they only apply to secondaries, such as infection or oxidation, or that time will lead to a clearer beer. Yes...it can clear up in a primary or a secondary though, just as how any carboy can get infected, and any siphoning can lead to oxidation

I secondary my beers for a few reasons:

1.) It's provides that I rack off the sediment twice, leaving me with really clear beers
2.) I only have 4 fermenters and I brew ALOT. I have 10 carboys so plenty of space there.
3.) I like to cold crash in the carboy so I can see when my beer is clear enough to bottle/keg

I know people say you run the risk of oxidizing when you rack, but if you're careful to run the hose to the bottom of the carboy, you won't oxidize your beer. Also, you must practice good sanitation technique to prevent infection, but this goes without saying at any point in the beer making process.

Everyone has their own methods that work best for them, so just do what you feel produces the best beer for you, and don't worry about the next guy. That's what makes this hobby great...lot's of paths to the same destination.

I don't care for the following reasons:

1) I'm too lazy to rack to secondary for 99% of my beers.
2) You ultimately can do whatever you want to your beer and if it works for you, great.
3) This is seriously the 1,000th thread on the subject.

For the argument of long primaries, no fining agents, no cold crashing, and careful racking, here's a batch of BM's Centennial Blonde that had a 4 week primary:

(not the greatest picture quality, but my dad asked me where I got the Budweiser when he saw my glass)

That's all there really is to it. I start with good water, maintain mash temps, hold a nice strong boil, and cool my wort down quickly. I don't even filter out any of the hops or trub going into my fermenter. If you need to secondary your beer to have it clear up, then great, buy some more carboys. I've found what consistently works for me, and I'm not exactly going to try and change it.

OHIOSTEVE said:

I am sure you could but I THINK the argument is that simply a long primary works the same.

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I think you misunderstand. People aren't skipping a cold crash just because they skip the secondary. At least I wouldn't.

Cold crashing is probably a great idea no matter if you secondary or not, keg or bottle (although I tend to cold crash IN THE KEG as the beer is carbing up.

Long primary is simply to save the effort of an additional racking step.

There used to be a huge concern over leaving your beer on the yeast for more than a couple of weeks. People have since discovered that the dead yeast and meat flavor associated with leaving your beer on the yeast simply didn't happen.

Whether or not doing a long primary actually helps a beers flavor is well up in the air. I don't suppose it does, but from my experience it hasn't hurt yet either.

After reading numerous threads on secondaries, listening to the Brew Strong, etc, I decided that secondaries were unnecessary. But then.. after brewing multiple batches, I realized that shouldn't be a hard and fast rule, and it really depends on your own brewing practices and preferences. So I'll use a secondary in at least 4 situations:

1) Speed up the settling of yeast -> clearer beer in less time. based solely on my own experience, racking to a secondary speeds the process of yeast settling out of suspension, especially when compared to simply leaving in primary.
2) Reducing amount of trub I transfer to bottles. Similar to #1, but even if all the yeast settled out, my racking procedure to the bottling bucket is fairly lazy.. I start the autosiphon, lower it gently to the bottom, and go do other brewing tasks. I could/should suspend the siphon above the trub layer either manually or with a clamp of some type, but I don't, so a secondary greatly reduces the trub I transfer to the bucket. Plus I generally dump all the wort into the fermenter, so that means I have extra trub sitting in there (vs. whirlpooling/siphoning into the fermenter to leave behind the trub)
3) Free up a fermenter! and/or reuse yeast: Fairly self explanatory I brew 2-3gal batches, so if I have a smaller batch in a 6gal bucket and need to use that for a bigger volume, it gets transferred to my 3gal better bottle. That frees up a fermenter and gives me access to those yeasties to wash/create a starter with.
4) Actual secondary fermentation and/or dry hopping. If I'm adding additional fermentables or hops, I sometimes move to secondary.

Learn as much as you can, understand some basic facts, take opinions with a grain of salt, and most importantly, do what makes sense for you.

In addition to no secondary ('cause I'm lazy and I have a lot of fermenters), I also BIAB and no-chill. My beer comes out pretty clear too, despite all of the aforementioned things that I do "wrong". Ed Wort's kolsch (dumped the entire brew kettle into a no-chill cube, let it sit for over 3 weeks before pitching yeast, primary for 3 weeks, no secondary, no filtering):




Just do what works for you and don't bash the other guy for doing things differently.

WOW. That is a CLEAR beer. I hate posting on this threads, but that beers deserves it!

Airborneguy said:

WOW. That is a CLEAR beer. I hate posting on this threads, but that beers deserves it!

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How do you know it's not a bud light?

wildwest450 said:

How do you know it's not a bud light?

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Sshhhh!

I'd hope no one on here would lie like that, but obviously its possible.

I have no reason to fabricate evidence, don't think anyone else here does either.

I think I make good beer; it looks good and tastes good therefore i am happy with my methodology. I'm the only one I have to please! I'd be happy to share any details necessary if someone wants to duplicate my procedure and see the results for themselves.

well my work here is done lol.... seriously I posted this because I get really sick of every time someone asks a question about how to secondary they get drilled with ' WE DON'T SECONDARY"...or " SECONDARY IS A WASTE OF TIME" if someone asks if they should secondary that is a fine response but when someone asks HOW to then it comes off as being pretty rude IMO. I assume that SOME of the gunk in the bottom of the secondary is due to my racking method. I just stick the cane all the way down in and then siphon, so i DO transfer some trub to secondary. BUT I leave a thimble full of beer at most.

This is a secondary clearing vessel, 24 hours after racking it out of a 10-day primary.



These are two beers that were 10 days from grain to glass (Mild OG=1030 and Light Cream Ale OG=1040)

• I'm not lazy and I like my brew hobby, therefore racking beers adds to my enjoyment.
• I don't know too many micros that keep their fermentation tanks off line for a MONTH. Those I've frequented all have "Bright Tanks" and it is in these "secondary" fermenters where the beers continue to clean up and condition...off the trub.
• If asked, I can brew 10 gallons of a light ale tonight and have it ready for the SuperBowl.
• I brew too much to let my fermenters sit around for a month.

Yes, I secondary.

So... Can we assume that besides the secondary, or lack thereof, we all use the same equipment and methods in our brewing?

Because we can show off our beers all day long, but it wouldn't be a good comparison if many other things were different.

Well I ferment in better bottles and ss keg's and usually never do a secondary anymore. In my personal experience I can not detect any off favors imparted by the yeast cake as I have done side by side "split batch" comparison's with one being racked off and the other not and I figure like many others that "for me" I find it to be an un necessary step that can possibly lead to infection/oxidation. On the other hand I do use a secondary of a corny keg if I want to "fruit" my beer or if I am dry hopping and also want to wash my yeast. Or to lager in. So I think that it can be a valuable step in your arsenal but not always necessary.

Homercidal said:

So... Can we assume that besides the secondary, or lack thereof, we all use the same equipment and methods in our brewing?

Because we can show off our beers all day long, but it wouldn't be a good comparison if many other things were different.

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my beer is clear because I use 5.2

I secondary because that's the way I learned.

If it's not broken I don't fix it.

GoldMiner said:

I secondary because that's the way I learned.

If it's not broken I don't fix it.

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+1

Same here. It's part of my process. It works for me.

AZ_IPA said:

my beer is clear because I use 5.2

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Damn you!!


I've personally had very clear beers using both methods, and sometimes pretty cloudy beers using both methods.

But I have made quite a lot of wit and dry hopped IPAs, so clarity would be hard to judge. The question for me is if there is flavor difference. I can affect clarity in other ways.

I can make clear beer with no secondary and a short primary (under 2 weeks). And if you look at the picture, you will see that God loves my process.



<end sarcasm>

I haven't been using secondaries generally unless I dry hop, but I just started using plastic buckets. Call me over-cautious, but I'm not going to leave my beer in a possibly permeable container for a couple of months. That said, I did leave the first batch I did in a bucket for ~ a month. It's a fairly big beer (a 1.070 OG strong bitter), so I wanted to give it plenty of time. I'll probably leave faster beers in the bucket straight through. My gravity sample tasted very promising, so hopefully it isn't badly oxidized.

thughes said:

In addition to no secondary ('cause I'm lazy and I have a lot of fermenters), I also BIAB and no-chill. My beer comes out pretty clear too, despite all of the aforementioned things that I do "wrong". Ed Wort's kolsch (dumped the entire brew kettle into a no-chill cube, let it sit for over 3 weeks before pitching yeast, primary for 3 weeks, no secondary, no filtering):

Just do what works for you and don't bash the other guy for doing things differently.

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Call me skeptical, but that doesn't look like beer. You sure you're not brewing Zima?

The only off flavors I got when doing a long primary were from leaving my beer in a fermentor in an +80* basement for more than a month

Temperature control is definitely important.

wildwest450 said:

How do you know it's not a bud light?

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Haha, not to be a jerk, but that was the first thing I thought too! That, or it was filtered.




I've experimented with quite a few brews both secondary and extended primary. At times, the secondary beer has tasted cleaner but it was few and far between. The clarity between the two is virtually identical. Ultimately, I chose longer primaries because I really don't taste enough of a consistent difference to make me want to put the extra effort into racking to secondary.

OP: With regards to your comparison to Revvy's pictures, perhaps you missed the part where he intentionally stirs up the yeast so that there is plenty of it in the bottles for conditioning. So in other words, that comparison is useless.

Why do people think a secondary makes a beer clearer? You think the yeast are like "it's crowded down there bro, I'm going to wait till secondary to flocculate" no.

Look at your primary on day 10. The top is much clearer than the bottom half. When you rack to a secondary you impede the progress of it clearing by mixing it all up again.

I'm not even going to address the off the myth about off flavors, just like I'm not going to argue with anyone about gravity. Fools at a distance thing.

If you secondary, there is no harm, just honestly say it is because of how you were taught, or because you are superstitious, or because you had a bad anecdotal experience from not using a secondary that is contrary to what is a generally accepted rule among expert home brewers. What is bs is people thinking racking to a secondary vessel does anything positive to it, because it doesn't.

DannPM said:

Why do people think a secondary makes a beer clearer? You think the yeast are like "it's crowded down there bro, I'm going to wait till secondary to flocculate" no.

Look at your primary on day 10. The top is much clearer than the bottom half. When you rack to a secondary you impede the progress of it clearing by mixing it all up again.

I'm not even going to address the off the myth about off flavors, just like I'm not going to argue with anyone about gravity. Fools at a distance thing.

If you secondary, there is no harm, just honestly say it is because of how you were taught, or because you are superstitious, or because you had a bad anecdotal experience from not using a secondary that is contrary to what is a generally accepted rule among expert home brewers. What is bs is people thinking racking to a secondary vessel does anything positive to it, because it doesn't.

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Well there it is. I guess we can all go home now that THAT is settled.

pjj2ba said:

It is only a waste of time for those who like the flavors you get from leaving the beer on a lot of yeast for a long time. Somewhere along the line, that finding that leaving your beers in primary for a longer time WILL NOT HARM YOUR BEER, got twisted into you MUST leave your beer in primary. This is totally inaccurate.

For most of the styles of beers I brew, I do not want these flavors in my beer. Most of my beers are in a keg within 2 weeks where they age (secondary) for a couple more weeks before carbonating.

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I guess that is my big gripe with the long primary bandwagon. The truth is that long primaries may not harm the beer at all, and in fact several blind tests have shown that about 1/3 of testers preferred the taste of the longer primary beer than a short primary. (Of course that means that 2/3 didn't).

Leaving the beer in primary for a month preached by a vocal majority around here may not harm the beer in the least, and it should be much clearer by that time. But in a well made beer, it is most certainly not necessary.

I keep my beer in the fermenter for about 10-14 days, depending on my schedule. After that, I may package or dryhop at that point. I may dryhop in the primary, or in the keg, or in the secondary. It depends on my plans for that beer and that fermenter.

I don't think a secondary will magically give you a clearer beer, as there is nothing really going to happen in that bright tank that doesn't happen in the fermenter. But I think that it's fine to do if you want to use your fermenter. Nothing really bad is going to happen if you use a bright tank ("secondary"). But nothing really bad is going to happen if you don't.

Of all of the best brewers I know, and the beers I've sampled from them, none have been in the primary more than about 2-3 weeks.

DannPM said:

Look at your primary on day 10. The top is much clearer than the bottom half. When you rack to a secondary you impede the progress of it clearing by mixing it all up again.

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I was just going to ignore this and walk away. But as an old winemaker, I feel strongly that ignorance should be addressed.

I would hope that anyone racking their beer would do so by proper methods and not be as incompetent as to "mixing it all up again". My wines are brilliantly clear and are usually racked 5-6 times.

Proper racking will NEVER hurt a beer or wine. Is it always necessary, though? No, it's not always necessary. A beer can clear without being racked, of course. But to imply that racking to a clearing vessel actually impedes clarifying is ridiculous.

Yeah....Dann you were on fire up until you said the mixing part. However, I think he is pointing out that beginners don't know how to rack properly?

Granted I don't use secondaries, but I don't protest them.

Who gives a crap... If you like your beer with a longer primary, awesome... I'f you prefer to secondary great... It's a personel choice, do what works for you.

Who knows? I'll taste test some of you guys' brews to see which one worked best! For an argument that is pretty perpetual, this seems to have everyone pretty fired up.

This argument is like the special olympics, even if you win you're still........

sudsmcgee said:

This argument is like the special olympics, even if you win you're still........

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Nice post, you are a riot!