Beginners ?

I am just getting into home brewing, and everything is making sense except for the varying opinions in secondary fermentation. My first batches will mainly be wheats and other common ales, but I'm receiving different advise in single vs second fermentation stages. Some do not see the benefit of secondary due to extra risk of exposure. I do not plan on bottling my beers. I would like to go straight from fermentation to corny kegs for my kegerator. If i only do a primary fermentation what kind of conditioning should be done for the keg? Since I'm not bottle conditioning should I use a secondary or just go longer in primary?

You can go longer in the primary and let the keg condition while it is carbonating.

secondary is a waste from most of what i hear on this site. unless you want to free up your primary pretty bad.

blizzard said:

You can go longer in the primary and let the keg condition while it is carbonating.

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This works. I primary in cornies as well with a modified dip tube. Then a few days after the gravity has stabilized I rack to a secondary/serving keg. It sits there at fermentation temps for another week or two depending on style and "greenness". Next step is usually cold conditioning in the keezer until I get a free CO2 line and it gets carbed. I picked up some corny lids that have holes drilled in them for stoppers/air locks. Works great and sooooo easy. If you go cornies all the way you don't have to worry about oxygenating the beer because it is under a CO2 blanket the whole time. It uses a little more gas, but no more racking cane torture for me.

Everything I am reading here in the forums, and from what the guy at my LHBS said when we were buying our brew kits - secondary is not generally necessary.

Waste of time unless you really know what you are doing, or you are doing it for a specialized purpose. 95% of people wouldn't benefit from it at all. Beer doesn't all of a sudden start to change just because you moved it to a different container. There is no magic involved it.

I tend to agree. Most of my beers go two to three week in primary then straight to a keg for conditioning. There are a few beer i make that really required secondary fermentations.

My "Special Reserve" is actually my regular Imperial Pale that goes through primary fermentation, then it is moved to a secondary fermenter, topped with sugar and malt and re-fermented to increase maltiness and ABV. In this case a secondary is key.

I secondary everything.. I think I get less trub while getting more beer. It also allows me to cold crash everything since my 6.5 gallon carboys won't fit in my beer fridge. I secondary in 5 gallon carboys after 3-4 weeks in primary and they go straight into the fridge.

Thanks for all the quick replies guys, this helps a lot!