Why are we so concerned with autolysis in Primary but not when Bottle Condtioning?

It seems, especially with high gravity, we are very concerned with getting off the trub after two weeks (or after we are near target gravity). Isn't the same thing going on when we bottle condition? Couldn't autolysis happen to the yeasties at the bottom of the bottle as well?

1. You shouldn't be that worried about it in primary fermentation. It's not the boogey man it's made out to be.

2. The amount of yeast in the bottle should be much less relative to the amount of yeast in the primary. A little autolysis will happen in extended bottle aging, but unless you have a ton of yeast at the bottom of the bottle, you shouldn't notice much in off flavors. It may actually contribute desireable flavors in some stronger styles.

i dont worry about autolysis. When i first started i would follow the 1-2-3 method and also seemed to have a off taste to my beers. my last 5 beers i have done super long primaries, i left one for 3 months and it turned out to be my best beer.

as for bottle conditioning i sample my beers after a few weeks but i find that the yeast in the bottle dead or dormant is what helps that beer become a masterpiece.


i wouldnt worry about autolysis, let the yeast do there job.

It may be time to abort the secondary for a few batches and see what happens. If I go conical on the fermentator I may still blow the bottom out after the gravity gets close however.

The last one (porter using London yeast) I did just 14 days in primary then into bottle. Tried at 4 weeks tonight and it is tasting pretty good. First time no secondary and it worked well.

My Chimay Red clone (Abbey yeast) is sitting in a secondary now at about 64 deg F. I don't know how long to leave it in there. It went 2 in the Primary and now 3 in Secondary (glass carboy).

I messed up my "Kolsch style" (German Kolsch yeast) somehow when bottling, perhaps it is because I didn't boil the priming sugar and it got infected. It has a very "nice" green apple AND butterscotch flavor . Too bad because I forced carbonated two gallons at bottling time and that was GREAT.

No one's worried about autolysis any more. Worry about it has pretty much proven to be a boogeyamn to homebrewers and nothing more.

There's been a big shift in brewing consciousness in the last few years where many of us believe that yeast is a good thing, and besides just fermenting the beer, that they are fastidious creatures who go back and clean up any by products created by themselves during fermentation, which may lead to off flavors.

Rather than the yeast being the cause of off flavors, it is now looked at by many of us, that they will if left alone actually remove those off flavors, and make for clearer and cleaner tasting beers.

You'll fine that a great many folks, maybe even the majority on here these days, leave their beers in primart for 3-4 weeks, skipping secondary.

Even John Palmer talks about this in How To Bew;

How To Brew said:

Leaving an ale beer in the primary fermentor for a total of 2-3 weeks (instead of just the one week most canned kits recommend), will provide time for the conditioning reactions and improve the beer. This extra time will also let more sediment settle out before bottling, resulting in a clearer beer and easier pouring. And, three weeks in the primary fermentor is usually not enough time for off-flavors to occur.

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John Palmer

As a final note on this subject, I should mention that by brewing with healthy yeast in a well-prepared wort, many experienced brewers, myself included, have been able to leave a beer in the primary fermenter for several months without any evidence of autolysis.

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People have left it as much as six months. Autolysis is a myth for homebrewers.

Even when Palmer is talking about it, he's talking about it in terms of LAGERS not ales. Most people get so freaked out about in reading Palmer, that they don't notice it is in the Lager chapter, nor do they notice the caveat at the end of the section that I posted above.

I still believe that POSSIBLY autolysis WAS a concern to homebrewers 20-30 years ago, when the yeast came in dry cakes, of dubious heritage and came across from where homebrewing was legalized in the hot cargo holds of ships and may have sat for months in terrible conditioned...In other words was unhealthy to begin with.

And therefore may have crapped out and made for nastiness, (and also was prone to stick fermentation as well.) and tales of it just continued to perpetuate over time, even though yeasts are much more healthy and fresh, and more is understood about them nowaday....people gravitate to the negative and fear and still perpetuate those worries...over and over and over....

And I still maintain that as much as I like Palmer, he contributed to the hysteria.....I mean noone but me seems to notice that that section on the scary autolysis appears in the chapter on lagering. He is not talking about it with ales...or beers in general..just lagers..because flaws are more perceptable in lagers...since in essence most commercial lagers are tasteless...anything would stand out..

and I think most new brewers have crapped themselves at the mere thought long before the notice the closer to the section I mentioned earlier.

This is where the most up to date brewing wisdom and ideas can be found...In fact a lot of stuff has been started on here, and made it into byo or zymurgy or podcasts...in fact BYO DID a piece on no secondary/long primary, along with the BASIC BREWING PODCAST and even they said that there were no issues/harm with doing it and in some beers it did actually improve the flavor and clarity. And I believe that really WAS influenced by the discussion we have had for the last couple years on here.

And as to worrying about autolysis in bottles, that's even Less of a worry...you're talking about an insignificant amount of yeast in there.

There's a difference between yeast going dormant and dying. The only time I've managed to produce autolysis was when I forgot a yeast cake and left it on the back porch, in the summer, for a couple months.

Alcohol and CO2 are waste products and will inhibit yeast. In fermentation we allow the CO2 to escape. In bottling we don't so it helps put the little buggers into dormancy. I've seen people on this list say they found bottles a few years old that were still good if I remember correctly.