Racking And Secondary Questions

I officially have my beer fermenting on its 4th day today ..
this saturday i wanted to move it into a secondary. i have both of my 6.5 gal buckets with spigots, can i just run a hose from one spigot into the new sanitazed secondary bucket wiothout worries of O2 oxidation? , and as well once this is moved into the secondary can it stay in there for another 5 days , or should the sugars be added and it bottled and let the remianding time go in the bottles?
thanks for your help .. and what about running it through the strainer as it comes out of the tube into the second bucjet? ( i dry hopped in the fermenting bucket and i wanted to try and get as much out as possible and some hopes that may clear the brew up some as well

Yes, you can just spigot-hose transfer bucket to bucket no problem, but to keep oxidation to a minimum, keep the transfer hose below the level of the beer in the 2ndary bucket when filling.
Secondary for 5 days is a little quick. For most ales of average gravity, 2 weeks is a good average.
Dry hopping is best done in 2ndary, siphon to bottling bucket w/priming sugar already dissolved awaiting the addition of the beer from 2ndary. Do not(1) - 2ndary with your priming sugar, or(2)- "bottle secondary".
First example, your yeasties will eat your priming sugar, and won't be there come bottling, SECOND EXAMPLE = BOTTLE BOMBS

So From Fermenter To Secondary, Wait Another 14 Days .. Then From Secondary To Bottling Bucket With Priming Sugars , And To Bottles Immedialty After Correct ? Thanks So Much For The Tips!!!!

make sure you take your gravity readings before moving it to a secondary to make sure your gravity is where you want it. If it's not, leave it in the primary. FYI I leave my brews in the primary for 3-4 weeks on average.

I would not run the wort through a strianer as your racking to a secondary because that would airate the crap out of it.

I find the autosiphon does a decent job at filtering when racking. It certainly doesn't catch everything, but it get the job done.

Good enough for government work. Then again, look at their "cheese"...

Brandon FL!!!!! I have friends that live in Seffner. I love Tampa/St. Pete!

I have only used my racking wand for transferring and I have had no problems but your method seems like a good plan.

Thanks sop much for the help guys .. i really appreciate it .. i have had a few doiffrent comments though , some say to bottle it after 10 days of fermenting , some say 10 days int he fermenter , 10 days in seondary ? im confused this is supposed to be a nice pale blonde ..
i dont want to over do it with the fermenting and aging process ..
al;so when it goes in the seondary , i have to use a airlock on it as well correct?
i was hoping to most of my aging in the bottle but now i dont know ..

No worries about over doing it..... You can leave that beer in the bucket for a looooong time without a problem.........

under-doing it is a problem however as you could very easily end up with exploding bottles....

Most folks will recommend the 1-2-3 method for us newbs.... 1 week in primary, 2 weeks in secondary, then 3 weeks in the bottle...then drink like crazy!

oh yeah.... use an airlock

Corkster said:

Most folks will recommend the 1-2-3 method for us newbs.... 1 week in primary, 2 weeks in secondary, then 3 weeks in the bottle...then drink like crazy!

oh yeah.... use an airlock

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Actually you will find that on here MOST people would NOT say use the 1-2-3 method.

Many of us leave our beers in primary for 3-4 weeks, skip secondary and bottle. Just search for the 10,000 threads under "long Primary" or "no secondary" and you will see all the resaons why we do it, and the explanations behind...There's at least one thread a day on the topic, so it's really not hard to find the discussion pretty much hashed to death.

but if you choose to secondary you should wait til your Hydrometer tells you fermentation is complete.

If I do secondary (which is only when I am adding fruit or oak) I wait 14 days then rack for another 2 weeks...then I bottle.

But that's only if I am dry hopping or adding oak or fruit, which I rarely do, so for me it's a month than bottle,

Honestly you will find your beer will be the best if you ignore the kit instructions, and don't rush it.

But Even Palmer says you should wait with kits...

How To Brew said:

Leaving an ale beer in the primary fermentor for a total of 2-3 weeks (instead of just the one week most canned kits recommend), will provide time for the conditioning reactions and improve the beer. This extra time will also let more sediment settle out before bottling, resulting in a clearer beer and easier pouring. And, three weeks in the primary fermentor is usually not enough time for off-flavors to occur.

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Your beer will thank you for waiting....

When I'm in a hurry I do 10 days primary, then 10 days secondary (be sure it's reached FG in primary first) then bottle. That's a bare minimum for me, usually it's 14 days primary then 14 days secondary. Once you have a pipeline full of beer coming ready, it's much easier to wait

I'll say that I did have one beer that worked out surprisingly well, my Minute Wheat recipe, that was 15 days from brew to an empty keg. That's totally unrealistic for most any type of beer. But wheats are meant to be consumed young, and this one tasted FABULOUS.

khiddy said:

That's totally unrealistic for most any type of beer. But wheats are meant to be consumed young, and this one tasted FABULOUS.

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+1 one of the other reasons (besides what you mentioned about wheats in general) is that it's a relatively low grav (under 1.050/1.060) beer...

Ales like that, and british milds can have short grain to glass times.

It's funny, I just went to the can at work and took the latest copy of byo with me, and the featured Techniques section is on brewing high gravity beers, they define a high gravity beer as being greater than 1.061....

In all the batches I have brewed, I can count on half a hand the number of beers that were UNDER 1.060....I think my average is 1.070....

I think I'll use Lazy Llama's chart as a guide....

khiddy said:

I'll say that I did have one beer that worked out surprisingly well, my Minute Wheat recipe, that was 15 days from brew to an empty keg. That's totally unrealistic for most any type of beer. But wheats are meant to be consumed young, and this one tasted FABULOUS.

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Just be diligent about other fermentables in said wheat beer. Despite what the directions with the kit say....let that honey weizen ride a little longer. It had one last show for me the day before I was supposed to bottle. If I had gone on like the directions said, it stands a very good chance that there would be glass shards in the wall and the remnants of beer on the ceiling.

*whew*

Safely in the bottles now and at a much higher ABV than anticipated. These puppies need to mellow out a little.

Wow , What Alot Of Great Info!!
So As Newb As This May Sound , What Kind Of Hydrometer Reading Am I Hoping For Before I Know Its Done , We Have Been Bubbling From The Airlock , Good For About 4 Days Now .. And Mainiting A Room Temp Of About 74 ..
I Thpought You Were Not Supposed To Open Your Fermenter .. Until The Fermenting Process Was Completely Done? How Do I Know When That Is Mand What Hydrometer Reading Before I Move To Secondary , Also When I Move To Secondary , If I Ket The Secondary Go For 10-20 Days , Will The Yeast Still Be Active For My Priming Sugar .?

Most recipes list an anticipated original gravity (OG) and final gravity (FG) somewhere. If you're at or very near the FG number than it should be done. I typically wait until I'm ready to rack my beer (day 10-14) before I open it and check, and if I'm at the number I want then I just rack it right then. If not, it would stay in primary for another week. The airlock really doesn't tell you much, it will probably stop bubbling (or slow way down) and be finished by the end of the first week but it's very beneficial to leave it on the yeast for that extra week to clean up off flavors that can be produced during fermentation.

If you don't know what the estimated FG is supposed to be, you can estimate it using brewing software (I use the free one at beercalculus.com).

There will still be plenty of yeast left for carbonation, you don't have to worry about that unless you leave it sit for months before bottling.

Revvy said:

Actually you will find that on here MOST people would NOT say use the 1-2-3 method.

Many of us leave our beers in primary for 3-4 weeks, skip secondary and bottle.

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I just wanted to give another expert's opinion on the matter. Dave Logsdon of Wyeast talked on the "Basic Brewing" podcast back on October 27, 2005. He like MOST people on HBT recommends only doing a primary fermentation. However, he says that 12-14 days is the maximum time you want to spend in that single fermentation. To paraphrase him:

{
You want to get the beer off of the primary in a timely manner. Assuming you aerate the wort properly and pitch the right amount of yeast, your fermentation should complete in 5 or 6 days (for a beer of average gravity). After that, you want to let the beer sit for 3 days for dialectal rest, conditioning, and yeast settling. That puts you at about day 10. After that, you want to cool down the beer and let it sit for 3 to 4 days to get a little brighter. By day 12 to 14, you want to have beer pulled off primary fermentation, maybe even quicker (due to yeast autolysis).
}

Like many things in this hobby, there are a bunch of different ways to do things, all of which probably make good beer. I just wanted to provide an expert's opinion on one of these matters.

The 1-2-3 method is a crock. Tried it. You have to be hard core to enjoy green beer.

I am up to 3 weeks in the primary, 2 weeks in the secondary, and then even 6 weeks after bottling it seems to be a tad green. I had 1 batch ready after 3 weeks in the bottle, the rest are in the range of 5-8 weeks after bottling.

Maybe I need to start thinking of kegging for my next system upgrade.

I mostly do 3-3 method.

3 in primary and 3 in bottles. My OG range from 1.055-1.065.

I do have a quicker beer but that will even taste better if I do 3-3.

jescholler said:

I just wanted to give another expert's opinion on the matter. Dave Logsdon of Wyeast talked on the "Basic Brewing" podcast back on October 27, 2005. He like MOST people on HBT recommends only doing a primary fermentation. However, he says that 12-14 days is the maximum time you want to spend in that single fermentation. To paraphrase him:

{
You want to get the beer off of the primary in a timely manner. Assuming you aerate the wort properly and pitch the right amount of yeast, your fermentation should complete in 5 or 6 days (for a beer of average gravity). After that, you want to let the beer sit for 3 days for dialectal rest, conditioning, and yeast settling. That puts you at about day 10. After that, you want to cool down the beer and let it sit for 3 to 4 days to get a little brighter. By day 12 to 14, you want to have beer pulled off primary fermentation, maybe even quicker (due to yeast autolysis).
}

Like many things in this hobby, there are a bunch of different ways to do things, all of which probably make good beer. I just wanted to provide an expert's opinion on one of these matters.

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Yeah, we've discussed it ad- nauseum...literally daily there's a thread with this discussions....most of us as hashed, cited and counter cited all those things, all the arguments, for and against

It all comes down to a matte of experience those of us who did it, did it by accident, and found how much better are beer tasted and looked, and many of us have judging sheets which backed it up....all one needs to do is search for the topic long primary and no secondary, to see how trodden and worn this particular path is....

Revvy said:

Actually you will find that on here MOST people would NOT say use the 1-2-3 method.

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Allow me to re-phrase that to "MANY" people then....

Ant body have any tips on racking technique.. sorry to ask so many questions but the last thing i need is a bottle grenade.. and some green beer ..to my understanding .. the auto syphon should be 3-4 inches from the bottom of primary.. and let her run till it done.. but i dry hopped in my primary and i am wooried about suckin up scum.. i have many many many postndno one gives and exact and tried true technique to racking..
thanks again to all of you.. i have taken many notes from this forum and thread

If you are holding your auto syphon I would say it is more important to hold the end a couple inches below the top of your beer. Just enough so you don't suck air into the syphon (which I have done before so it's not the end of the world). Then I just lower the syphon as the beer draws out. Then when I start to get to the end I start to tip the fermenter so it all goes to one corner.

I don't remember what kind of beer you are making but unless the beer is black as night you should be able to see in your tubes if you are starting to suck up trub and you will be able to see when you will start to get lots of cloudy beer towards the end. I typcailly get a little when I don't cold crash so that's fine.

Good luck and have fun!

Hell, I let my autosiphon sit almost on the trub and I only get a minimal amount of it into my bottling bucket (don't use a secondary). That thing is money well spent. I can start the siphon, go feed the kid and come back without worrying too much.

Corkster said:

Allow me to re-phrase that to "MANY" people then....

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No, I don't agree, I think the consciousness on here has shifted, and if you look at the daily threads on this topic you will see that the number of people opting for the longer primary are huuuge. I think if you did some poking you would be surprised..I think it is now larger than the people on here who are sticking to the 1-2-3 rule or using secondaries.....There's been a huge shift in that over they year and a half where this has been a daily discussion......



I'm not gonna debate this again with you or anyone...like I said if you really care you can go back through ALL the discussions we've had...but I will quote one part of the discussion, to show how thoroughly this HAS been hashed about.

davesrose said:

One of the main reasons the older mantra was to get out of primary ASAP was that autolysis might happen. But with the beer community, folks started finding that even weeks on end....they weren't getting autolysis.

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My Response;

I actually think the yeast autolysis might have had merit at one time...several decades ago. Remember back even before 78 the amount of yeast available to hobbyists were very limited, and were usually dry cakes, coming over from places where there wasn't prohibition on homebrewing.

If you've heard some of the interview with the oldtimers on basic brewing, they talk about the yeasts being very old and cakey, and not very good to begin with...

Like Palmer says as long as the yeast is HEALTHY several months on the yeastcake is OK...but back then the yeast may have not been very healthy to begin with. It could have been several months or years old with a very low viability.

And they did notice autloysis in their beers.

And Papazian was writing his book from right around that time period, when yeasts cake in dry cakes and may not have even been stored properly, and many people just placed towels and cookie sheets on their ceramic crock pot fermenters.

So he and his contemporaries influence the knowledgbase back then just like we affect and alter the brewing culture today with these ideas.

This is an ever evolving hobby...Places like this is where you find the most state of the art information/wisdom about brewing, because of the sheer number of us trying new things, hearing new things, and even breaking new ground and contributing to the body of info on the hobby...Look at some of that inventions that came out of here, and then ended up later in BYO articles by our members...

It's just a shift in the culture, it doesn't mean that beer won't be made either way...someday some enterprising brewer from here or using forums as a reference is going to write the NEXT brewing bible, and talk about long primary. and it' gonna be "beery canon" for a number of years, or it will end up as an article in Zymurgy or BYO, and people on places like this will be quoting from that for awhile...then the culture will shift from that idea...

Heck even the last update of Papazian was 7 years ago. Just think of all the technological changes in the last 7 years, and you'll realize that knowledge doesn't exist in a vacuum....Just look at this place....the "culture" and ideas shifts over time...like I said, places like this, we, you and me and everyone else here, are the cutting edge of brewing....

Those of us who opt for the long primary usually do it because of what we have read, but mostly because we have noticed an improvement in our beers from other methods.

I joined the long primary camp, precisely because of my contest scores last summer....I kept getting feedback and higher scores for the beers that long primaried....They were described as "jewell like" and "crisp and clean tasting."

As opposed to the beers that I entered using the more traditional means. I mean I had some of the same recipes I brewed that overlapped, like my amber ale, and Dead guy clones, and I could tell that the version 2's of my batches, the longer primary tasted and looked much better....

I couldnt disagree more with the "you have to get that beer of the yeast in weeks" school of thought. I accidentally left an Irish Red on a yeast cake for months..5 I believe to be exact. I literally forgot I had this 5 gallon better bottle stuck in a closet I had so much beer fermenting at one time. I didnt have an open keg so I kinda forgot about it.

I kegged it, carbed it, tasted it. Yeah, it was a tad stale I'll admit. But it was very drinkable. It is on tap as I type this. I sent this into NHBC 09 and while the beer didnt score as well as my other beers the judging sheets mentioned this..and I quote.. "I get a very slight hint of autolysis off flavors. Try getting the beer off the yeast just a little bit sooner." I highly doubt by "little bit" the judge meant 3-4 MONTHS!! This beer had other faults that cause the low score but it still scored over 30 after sitting in primary for 5 months. I am not advocating a 5 month rest in the primary on the yeast, I am just giving a big "PSHAW" to the panic associated with getting beer off the yeast as quick as possible and even more to the use of 'secondaries'. I hate that term. I'd love to ban the term secondary from any beginners brewing kit.