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But.... just to play devil's advocate, wouldn't you put the same amount of sediment back into suspension when transferring to the bottling bucket straight from the primary? Currently, I have been leaving my batches in the primary for about 3-4 weeks and then transferring to the secondary (apparently misinformed) for about a week or sometimes two before bottling. Every time I get a another layer of sediment that would have ended up in my bottles had I bottled then.
I guess I just need to try it out for comparison...
The point of a long primary is to AVOID the need for racking to secondary.
If you long primary you will compress the trub and get most of the beer back.
I get little if any sediment in my bottles, simply by opting for a long primary. This is my yeastcake for my Sri Lankin Stout that sat in primary for 5 weeks. Notice how tight the yeast cake is? None of that got racked over to my bottling bucket. And the beer is extremely clear.
That little bit of beer to the right is all of the 5 gallons that DIDN'T get vaccumed off the surface of the tight trub. Note how clear it is, there's little if any floaties in there.
When I put 5 gallons in my fermenter, I tend to get 5 gallons into bottles. The cake itself is like cement, it's about an inch thick and very, very dense, you can't just tilt your bucket and have it fall out. I had to use water pressure to get it to come out.
This is the last little bit of the same beer in the bottling bucket, this is the only sediment that made it though and that was done on purpose, when I rack I always make sure to rub the autosiphon across the bottom of the primary to make sure there's plenty of yeast in suspension to carb the beer, but my bottles are all crystal clear and have little sediment in them.
Half the time I forget to use moss, and you can't tell the difference in clarity.
I get the barest hint of sediment in my bottles....just enough for the yeast to have done the job of carbonating the beer.
And the only filtering my beer gets is through my kidneys.
