Using bottling bucket as secondary?

i want to use a secondary fermentor, question is can i just transfer my beer into the bottleing bucket and use that as my secondary? and when it comes time to bottle i wont have to syphon into the bottling bucket becasue its allready in there. I can go buy a secondary if needed.

hendrixsrv630 said:

i want to use a secondary fermentor, question is can i just transfer my beer into the bottleing bucket and use that as my secondary? and when it comes time to bottle i wont have to syphon into the bottling bucket becasue its allready in there. I can go buy a secondary if needed.

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Let me start out by saying I am 100% against transferring to a secondary on 90% of beer's....having said that, the only draw back to using your bottling bucket as a secondary, is that it had as much head space and that's not good for secondary fermentation.

why do you not like secondary's? and what do you mean by to much head room? to much open space between the beer and the top of the bucket?

hendrixsrv630 said:

why do you not like secondary's? and what do you mean by to much head room? to much open space between the beer and the top of the bucket?

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You will find a lot of us who believe it's an unwanted second step because any exposure to oxygen will only contribute to staling reactions in the beer, or worse, expose it to contamination. Additionally after the primary fermentation stops, the yeast continue to work for about 3 to 4 days removing off flavors....I have done it both ways, but prefer less exposure to the wort and have had better flavored beer by not transferring...now this isn't true for all beers (like fruit beers), but for most it is...also you will now get a 100 people who agree with me and 100 who dont!

In regards to head space in fermenters...the primary usually has about a gallon to a gallon and a half of head space, this is needed for the krausen and room for the gas exchange...the secondary is used to condition a beer and very little to no head space is wanted in order to prevent oxidation of the beer.

I hope this helps...I would recommend reading and keeping this online (free) book: http://www.howtobrew.com/intro.html You will find great tips on a lot of issues you may run in to!

Can you use finings in the primary? My next batch will be primary only but would like to use some finings as it'll have quite lot of hops in it.

I've also just racked an RIS to secondary, added a little dextrose to try and get some co2 into the head space as it's 8 litres in a 10 litre bucket and it'll be in there for quite a while.

The biggest drawback to using a bottling bucket as a secondary may not be the amount of headspace, although that is a huge concern. I would never do it. If I was using a clearing vessel ("secondary" isn't the correct term- it's either a clearing vessel or a "bright tank"), I'd use a carboy. A bucket is very wide- that's the headspace I'd worry about, not the depth. A carboy is about an inch and a half wide at the top.

If I was going to simply rack to another bucket, I'd keep it right where it was. But the reason I say using a bottling bucket as a bright tank is a bad idea isn't because of the headspace. Think about it. When you prime the batch, you have to stir in the dissolved priming sugar. If you do that, you will stir up and resuspend all the crud that settled out- defeating the whole purpose of racking the beer to begin with.

I'd keep it in the primary for three weeks, fine there if I was fining (I never have, so I'll defer to those who using finings), and then rack to the bottling bucket onto the dissolved priming solution when it was bottling time.