Do you need a secondary? (the experiment)

This isn't requesting an answer to the question as its been discussed in a little bit of detail elsewhere! However, Basic Brewing radio in conjunction with BYO are doing an experiment to see the effect of racking to a secondary (good or bad) and I thought those who haven't heard of it may be interested in getting involved as it should give some factual information (rather than gut feeling and personal opinions). Details are in the March 15th 2012 podcast which can be found at http://www.basicbrewing.com/index.php?page=radio or through itunes.

For those of you that don't listen to the podcast, they do a lot of experiments to see the effect of different practices and are worth listening to (in my opinion as a very new brewer).

Hopefully they can do a proper job on the experiment. Many times the experiments are incomplete, or rife with inconsistencies.

Looking forward to seeing this.

I still stand by the do both decide which one you like more. Most of the time the secondary is just used as a bright tank anyways.

"bright tank"?

I'll also give a plug to the podcast. I listened to some archived episodes last week and really found it helpful for future brews and to quicken my learning curve a bit as a beginner brewer.

As for tue secondary, I've used it for all my batches so far, but I've also been using it as a means to infuse flavors - chocolate nibs for stouts, peppers for jalapeño ale. I also like the clarifying part of it.