Is one week in a secondary correct for certain beers?

I have only been brewing since Christmas. I just made HR Caribbean Stout from Austin Homebrew and noticed that it says 5-7 days in the primary and 5-7 days in the secondary. Everything I have seen has said 2 weeks in the secondary so I am wondering if the time in the secondary fermenter depends on the type of beer of if it's just a preference thing.

BTW, this beer smelt pretty good, can't wait to try it.

I wouldn't go by that. I tend to leave everything in the primary for at least two weeks(with few exceptions). Even leaving it for three weeks on the yeast is ok. My beers have improved so much just leaving the beer alone and letting the yeasties do their work. I wouldn't even worry about secondary.

I use a secondary, I think it clarifies my beer. My usual schedule is 2 weeks in primary followed by 2 weeks in secondary followed by at least 2 weeks in a keg. It's hard to hurt beer by aging it too long.

It's really about letting the beer finish doing it's thing. I would say Aging helps big beers over 1050 sg. Lagers require lot's of time at low temps to clean up the raw flavors. I would leave a dark ale like this for 4 weeks in the primary.

Wellshooter said:

My usual schedule is 2 weeks in primary followed by 2 weeks in secondary followed by at least 2 weeks in a keg.

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Is the 2 weeks in the keg for carbonation using priming sugar?

The only time I secondary(1 week at the most) is when I add gelatin to clarify the beer, like any of my pale beers. Any of my dark beers(when fermentation, checked with hydrometer for 3 days in a row, is done then add a few more days), right to the keg and carbonate.

Thanks for the advice. I am probably going to wait an extra week in that case (if nothing else it will pack the sediment better leave me with a cleaner beer). On that note, I noticed that my first bottled batch of homebrew has sediment on the bottom of the bottles. A quick search told me that this is normal and expected, but it also says that you should leave 1/4 of the beer in the bottle! Is that correct, that seems like a lot of wonderful beer going to waste (1.25 gallons each batch).

That link also taught me beer yeast is good for you, so I can now pretend beer is a health food!

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f35/sediment-bottles-59033/

A quick search told me that this is normal and expected, but it also says that you should leave 1/4 of the beer in the bottle! Is that correct, that seems like a lot of wonderful beer going to waste (1.25 gallons each batch).

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Not 1/4 of the beer, 1/4" of the beer.

MachineShopBrewing said:

Not 1/4 of the beer, 1/4" of the beer.

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It's amazing how much difference a quotation mark can make!

somecallmetex said:

It's amazing how much difference a quotation mark can make!

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The first time I saw ' 1/4" ' I thought the same thing! I'm like "wow that is a lot of beer down the drain..." Then, I did a double-take.

First off, you shouldn't rack to a secondary until the brew has fermented all the way out (usually about 75% of the OG).

Secondly, the purpose of a secondary is for clearing and aging.

Times given for any recipe are what the brewer did...not what you have to do. Time ranges like 4-5 days and 1-2 weeks work in conjunction with the fermenting temperature range also.