Just leave it in the primary for 3 weeks to a month

So, I'm sure denizens of this forum have read a number of members extolling the benefits of leaving your beer (ales, at least) in the primary for three weeks to a month, on the yeast. Let me add my name to that list. I just racked a Chimay Red clone (from an AHS partial-mash kit) to my secondary (going to bottle next week) after a month on the yeast and, if I had a keg, it would be ready to carbonate and drink now. It's gorgeous, clear, and tastes just like Chimay. I've had the same experience with the belgian tripel, DeKonnick clone, and Bell's Two-Hearted clone I've made using this method.

Give it a try if you haven't already. And to beginners, this is especially good advice. Just leave it on the yeast for three weeks to a month. You'll be glad you did.

i agree.

I just transferred a belgian strong (Dutch Castle Magic kit from AHS) to the secondary after about 6 weeks in the primary. The gravity sample tasted delicous, and it dropped from 1.105 to 1.017 (84% attenuation!). I'm planning on letting it age for another month or 2 in secondary, but its going to be hard after how great it tasted.

In my beginning homebrew guide it said something like "Leave it in the primary for 7-10 days...If you leave it in too long autolysis may occur" That got me paranoid that if I left it in for 11 days then my whole batch would be ruined and that's how I thought for the first couple batches.:cross:

Good thing I read other sources and with my last IPA it sat in the primary for 4-5 weeks and is my best batch.

3+ weeks can definitely make the beer smoother. I also recommend fermenting on the lower end of the temperature scale for the yeast unless it's a beer which requires the funky esters (Belgium etc...).

You guys might want to realize that if you leave you beer in primary for 3-4 weeks, THERE'S REALLY NO NEED to secondary at all....That's the point of leaving it on the yeast cake for so long, the critters clean up after themselves, and clear your beer, even more so than letting gravity do it in the bright tank (secondary).

Then you keg or bottle...

Raking to secondary afterwords is really a waste of time, unless you are bulk aging something like a barleywine for several months, otherwise it really serves no purpose whatsoever, except delaying the time till drinking the beer further than it needs to be.

Revvy said:

You guys might want to realize that if you leave you beer in primary for 3-4 weeks, THERE'S REALLY NO NEED to secondary at all....That's the point of leaving it on the yeast cake for so long, the critters clean up after themselves, and clear your beer, even more so than letting gravity do it in the bright tank (secondary).

Then you keg or bottle...

Raking to secondary afterwords is really a waste of time, unless you are bulk aging something like a barleywine for several months, otherwise it really serves no purpose whatsoever, except delaying the time till drinking the beer further than it needs to be.

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+1 - what he said

I never used a secondary.

Ya I usually leave mine in the primary for 10 days then transfer to secondary for a week and a half to 2 weeks.

Great, another convert! I've always pushed patience.

I even secondary my hefe weizens...then add "some" yeast back into the brew.

Ahoy hoy,
Just my 2 cents worth, but in my opinion, secondarys are for dry hopping.
A good to you all!

climateboy said:

Just leave it in the primary for 3 weeks to a month

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yeah! and then secondary it for 2 more weeks!

I dry hop in the primary after 2 weeks and wait another 2 before kegging. It's been a few years since I bothered with a secondary.

Linc

I dry hop in the primary after 2 weeks and wait another 2 before kegging. It's been a few years since I bothered with a secondary.

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How?

My understanding is in order to dry hop you need to get all those delicious hops submerged to impart flavors which may require some carboy acrobatics. It seems that in a primary that would get a little.... dirty.

tokolosh said:

How?

My understanding is in order to dry hop you need to get all those delicious hops submerged to impart flavors which may require some carboy acrobatics. It seems that in a primary that would get a little.... dirty.

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Drop a balled up kleenex into water, does it stay dry or absorb water? My experience dry hopping says hops do the later too. You can drop the hops cones right on top and they'll absorb liquid just fine.

neko said:

In my beginning homebrew guide it said something like "Leave it in the primary for 7-10 days...If you leave it in too long autolysis may occur" That got me paranoid that if I left it in for 11 days then my whole batch would be ruined and that's how I thought for the first couple batches.:cross:

Good thing I read other sources and with my last IPA it sat in the primary for 4-5 weeks and is my best batch.

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That being said...has anyone ever actually had "autolysis" happen to them? If so, under what conditions did it occur?

I am, like many of you I'm sure, indebted to Charlie P for his book and getting me into this hobby...but it also seems that the book also propagates a couple of myths that get us worked up for no good reason. HSA is another example ...

I'm not saying that HSA or autolysis couldn't happen nor am I saying that Charlie's book doesn't have alot of good info in it...but the incidence autolysis or HSA appears to be rare in actual practice and it seems like there are more important things to worry about when brewing. In the case of autolysis, pulling the beer off of primary actually hurts beer quality as many of us have found out empirically.

Just sayin'....

broadbill said:

That being said...has anyone ever actually had "autolysis" happen to them? If so, under what conditions did it occur?

I am, like many of you I'm sure, indebted to Charlie P for his book and getting me into this hobby...but it also seems that the book also propagates a couple of myths that get us worked up for no good reason. HSA is another example ...

I'm not saying that HSA or autolysis couldn't happen nor am I saying that Charlie's book doesn't have alot of good info in it...but the incidence autolysis or HSA appears to be rare in actual practice and it seems like there are more important things to worry about when brewing. In the case of autolysis, pulling the beer off of primary actually hurts beer quality as many of us have found out empirically.

Just sayin'....

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Yeah, around here we bust those myths....

In the case of the dreaded autolysis bogeyman, this is one of the bogeymen that was put down a loooong time ago, but seems to resurface...

Autolosis is a bogeyman to the home brewer, fpr one thing, noone who cites it notices for example that Palmer includes the discussion of it in the LAGER section, where of course people brewing them )especially commercial BMC brewers) strive to eliminate ANY flavors let alone off ones...

Most of us tend to go with what Palmer has to say, and what ALSO seems to be not noticed in the book.

Here's what Palmer has to say in How To Brew.

As a final note on this subject, I should mention that by brewing with healthy yeast in a well-prepared wort, many experienced brewers, myself included, have been able to leave a beer in the primary fermenter for several months without any evidence of autolysis.

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Quite a few of us leave our beers in primary for up to a month. Which improves the beers.

The yeast have eaten most all of the easily fermentable sugars and now start to turn their attention elsewhere. The yeast start to work on the heavier sugars like maltotriose. Also, the yeast clean up some of the byproducts they produced during the fast-paced primary phase.

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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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I wouldn't suggest dry hopping in the primary though. To get a good dry hop you need to get as much yeast away from the beer as possible. If the yeast is settled to the bottom of the carboy and can take away some of the flavor that a dry hop would impart.

it would seem to me that one of the advantages of going to a secondary for a couple of weeks, even after a long primary, would be that it's essentially just forcing you to give your beer some more age before you hammer all of it down.

how many times have i read "i wish i had waited a little longer to start drinking it. it tastes SO GOOD now and i only have 10 bottles left..." ?

thedude123 said:

I wouldn't suggest dry hopping in the primary though. To get a good dry hop you need to get as much yeast away from the beer as possible. If the yeast is settled to the bottom of the carboy and can take away some of the flavor that a dry hop would impart.

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i don't see why yeast would be a problem...i think co2 is the problem. as long as fermentation is finished, dry-hopping in the primary should be alright. if fermentation is active, all the co2 will drive off the aroma and you'll just have a waste of hops.

I'm thinking of triple dry hopping a Maharaja clone; once after 2 weeks, once after 3 weeks in the primary, and then a big bag full of hops in the keg.

I brew typically one 5 gallon batch of beer every two weeks, and a batch of wine once per month, yet I have 8 fermenters, so that says something about how long I leave stuff in the fermenter.

I just kegged some apfelwein the other day after 4 1/2 months in the primary. No autolysis, though the yeast was looking pretty tired at that point, another month and I might have been in trouble...

I'm sure this question has been answered already but...can you add gelatin to the primary or is it best suited for a secondary?

Revvy said:

You guys might want to realize that if you leave you beer in primary for 3-4 weeks, THERE'S REALLY NO NEED to secondary at all....That's the point of leaving it on the yeast cake for so long, the critters clean up after themselves, and clear your beer, even more so than letting gravity do it in the bright tank (secondary).

Then you keg or bottle...

Raking to secondary afterwords is really a waste of time, unless you are bulk aging something like a barleywine for several months, otherwise it really serves no purpose whatsoever, except delaying the time till drinking the beer further than it needs to be.

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True, but my siphoning technique isn't perfect, so I like to put it in the secondary for a short while before moving it to the bottling bucket, and give any trub I might have sucked up a chance to settle.

DeathBrewer said:

i don't see why yeast would be a problem...i think co2 is the problem. as long as fermentation is finished, dry-hopping in the primary should be alright. if fermentation is active, all the co2 will drive off the aroma and you'll just have a waste of hops.

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The more yeast you remove, the more beer surface area you'll have exposed to the dry hops.

thedude123 said:

The more yeast you remove, the more beer surface area you'll have exposed to the dry hops.

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after a few weeks in the primary, all the yeast fall out, so it wouldn't matter. if you're yeast are still hanging out at the top, they haven't finished flocculating yet and i'd say wait to do anything, including racking to secondary or dry-hopping.

count me in as another positive word for leaving it in the primary for 3wk to a month (or more).
I used to stress over leaving it in the primary for more than a few days after fermentation ceased -then one fateful time I ended up as a patient in the hospital after putting off racking the beer (unrelated, of course -I have heart issues and as luck would have it, ended up being admitted) I worried about it while in the hospital, then when I got discharged, I just didn't feel up to doing the job right (sanitation, then racking, clean-up etc etc) so when I finally DID get the job done, the beer had been on the yeast for about a month and a half. I just knew it was going to be a poor batch.
Best porter I ever brewed, and from then on, I haven't feared the yeast. Those little critters know what they're doing -if you only give them the time to do the job.
Got 10 gal of another porter sitting in a chest freezer at 65F and they will have two months on 'em before I keg one and bottle the other.

I have one 6.5 gallon carboy and two 5 gallon carboys.

If I want to brew more than once every 3-4 weeks (I do), then I need to move them out of the primary.

Is there any advantage/disadvantage in siphoning all or some of the yeast from the primary to the secondary? Given that I don't need the headspace anymore, it seems like racking all the beer and most of the sludge to a secondary would have the same effect and free up my big carboy for another batch.

I've been racking carefully, but if it'll take some of the rough edges off my beer, I've got no problem stirring up and burying the siphon in the yeast cake towards the end.

goose_on_fire, or you can just get more primaries.....You can never have enough primaries...I think I have 7.

Buckets are cheap....

I initially bought some 5 gallon better bottles to use as secondaries but since I am now only doing a primary, I am wishing I had gotten bigger bottles!!

Linc

yeah, I guess in fact there would be nothing wrong with using my carboys as primaries -I mean, if I'm gonna leave the beer on the yeast anyway, right? Though I guess for the smaller ones (5gal) I'd need a decent blow-off tube...

or just make 4 gallon batches. you could even make them stronger and water them down at keg time.

Don't get rid of the secondaries, you may want to bulk age stuff, add fruit to something, or dry hop (I still am not sure about dryhopping in primary yet, I've done some reading, the jury's still out where I'm concerned) or if you do a pumpkin ale, you really ned to get it off a huge trub to clear then.

They do have their purpose.

soo why the hell am I wasting my time/beer (even more important) racking to a secondary if Im not bulk aging? I force carbonate in my keg now Im thinking I should just leave in the primary and await its time.

The ONLY time I secondary is when I need that yeast cake!

Awww man I can go for some cake (11:18pm on friday.. guaranteed to be drunk)..