secondary ferm

How come so many people are bashing secondary ferm. Me and my buddy use it all the time to add a lot of depths of flavor with hops and spices and helps clarify our beer. Was just wondering. Cheers! Drink up

Majority of the time, it's unnecessary. I dry hop in primary with great results. I've not used spices in any batch and don't know if I ever will. Longer in the primary will make the brew just as clear as racking will (just be careful when you rack to the bottle bucket/keg)...

I've racked to another vessel when I've oaked batches, in the past. I might do it moving forward, depending on how long from fermentation start to when I'll be adding the oak.

Also, you're not kicking off another fermentation, unless you actually add more sugars for the yeast to munch on. You're really racking to a brite tank, or secondary vessel.

If you're game, do a test. Brew a batch and do the long primary/no secondary with half. Do your normal racking with the other. Bottle/keg both on the same day and then chill and open as you would normally. At worst, you'll see zero difference. This is why many of us don't bother with racking to another vessel without a damned good/great reason.

Numerous replies forthcoming. All with good points. I'll boil it down to this - don't touch the beer unless you have to and you minimize the bad things that can happen. The more I follow this principle, the better beer I make.

makomachine said:

Numerous replies forthcoming. All with good points. I'll boil it down to this - don't touch the beer unless you have to and you minimize the bad things that can happen. The more I follow this principle, the better beer I make.

Click to expand...

Exactamundo... :rockin:

Also, less work and better beer = WIN!!

Lol damn this is one of the touchy subjects for brewing..... Well personally i always go to secondary for a couple reasons..it helps to clarify beer, personally if im going for a long ferm. I rather no have my beer in contact with the sedimant it can cause off flavoring. Also if im dry hopping i like to see whats going on in my beer. If you sanitize every thing correctly they should be no contamination

My 1 month single stage fermentaion after cold crash came out clearer than my experimential secondary cold crash fermentation. Tried secondary just to say i tried it, wont ever do it again. Secondary clarifies it more my a$$...i can get the same results, probably even better using single stage. And waste less sanitizer, and less work....no brainer for me.

Funny story, my LHBS swears by secondary (and hes a good buddy of mine) granted i only have a half dozen brews behind me but havent dumped one batch yet. He on the other hand has dumped more than a handful of batches cause he secondaries every time...To me your introducing your beer into an infection that should have just been left alone...

Cool. I personal have never had any sanitary issues or had to dump a batch. Me and a buddy just got silver in a brew off with our bananas foster it came out real well. Appreciate the info and ill have to try a long primary ferm love to do and try so many diffrent things when it comes to brewing.

I like to swap to secondary because it frees up my primary (I only have one of each at this point). And using the carboy cap trick to start racking means there's pretty much no worries about oxidation.

When not using a secondary, do you rack to another bottling bucket before bottling? Or does pretty much everyone keg? Because where people are saving steps by not going to secondary, I'm saving steps by putting the priming solution straight into the secondary and bottling from there. Plus I don't have to bottle off the sediment.