Secondary or straight to bottle?

My first brew is a Blond Ale. It has reached its final gravity of 1.012 after 7 days. Tomorrow I will be either doing a secondary fermentation for 7 days or going straight to bottles. I know everyone has strong opinions about both but I just wanted to get a general consensus.

I would keep it in the primary for another week, then bottle. You could rack to a secondary, but there is no good reason to do so unless you are going to dry hop it, or leave it for a long time in secondary. By racking you are exposing the beer to the possibility of infection and oxidation due to the extra handling. Generally, keeping it exposed to the yeast pack from the primary is a good thing, and most folks who do this don't experience any of the problems that have been described in older brewing literature.

Asking those with strong opinions to reach a consensus ain't so easy by the way...

Option #3 is to leave it sit for another 7 - 14 days.

I'd leave it in primary for at least another week AND do a secondary after that. I'm not the best at running the siphon and not stirring up the yeast cake a little bit so the secondary helps to settle out whatever I suck up.

Either way, after 7 days you're not ready to bottle. Especially with such a light colored beer as a blonde. You want to give that baby time to clear. Right now there's still a bunch of sediment and flocculating yeast in suspension. More time, in either primary or secondary (or both) will clear it up further. Bottle now, and all that settles out in your bottles.

Yeah, leave it sit for awhile. Give it at least two more weeks in the primary if you can, then bottle. If you need your primary in the meantime; go ahead and rack to a secondary and leave it at least a few weeks.

Thanks. That seems like a pretty good consensus. Ill just leave it in primary for 2 more weeks. Good advice

leave it as long as you can rack to a bucket with your priming sugar and bottle. The longer period of time sitting on the yeast cake will help improve the beer .. Yeast do amazing things like clean up after their little party.

I'd just leave it in the bucket for another week... I don't think there is any real good reason to switch it to a carboy. Seems to me as if people think that a magical "secondary process" happens the minute you move to a carboy. It's still going to happen if you leave it in the bucket, the yeast don't care.
Use the carboys if you want to do long term conditioning. It frees up your primary so you can do another batch. Glass and PET plastic are also less oxygen permeable than the fermenting buckets, but I'm unsure of how much this really matters.

Unlike a lot of people on here I still use a secondary. I usually rack my lagers (which is what I'm doing exclusively at the moment) to secondary after two weeks in the primary. Then I leave them at least two weeks in the secondary. It takes that much and more time to condition and clarify the beer. I am very careful to leave the trub behind in the primary, but always find a considerable amount in the bottom of the secondary after the two weeks. I don't want that in my bottles or kegs mainly because it makes them more difficult to clean. That's the way I was taught, and if anyone can give me a really good reason why it is wrong I will change.

While I like a secondary, I've been using one less and less these days. However, the main ingredient is time. Primary or secondary, its "weeks" not "week" - plural. more than one....

so, yeah - affirmed. 2 more weeks sounds like a good plan, Loki

Wellshooter said:

That's the way I was taught, and if anyone can give me a really good reason why it is wrong I will change.

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I don't think anyone here would say that is wrong.

It's really simple, the longer you let it sit, whether or not it's in a secondary, the less yeast you have going into the bottling bucket, bottles or keg.