Headspace in secondary?

Bought a milk stout kit. Gonna let it rest in a secondary for two weeks. I know head space in cider is a huge no no, the kit is 19 liters I think but my secondary is 23 liters. Is headspace okay for a stout?

Is there a good reason for transferring to secondary? If not, don't.

Headspace in the secondary vessel for beer is not ideal, but it won't necessarily ruin anything. It just increases your risk of oxidation.

However I used to routinely secondary 5 gallon batches in 7 gallon vessels, and I was careful, and never had oxidation or infection issues. Your results may vary. Of course, these days I skip secondary entirely in favor of an extended primary.

Wanted to add vanilla bean and cocoa nibs to secondary... How long is it okay in a primary bucket (that will also obviously have headspace) then?

Guess I could just add cocoa nibs and beans at flameout?

I have a Russian Imperial stout in a secondary now, had a sg of 1.097 and i do not plan on touching it until late winter/early spring, next to zero headroom.
Two weeks, (is too short) leave it on the yeast.

When I do secondary (generally just to free-up my larger primary), I usually do the transfer before active fermentation finishes, so that more CO2 will be produced.

So will it be okay in the primary with headspace if I just leave it for three weeks?

And can I add vanilla and cocoa nibs at flameout?

rocketsan said:

So will it be okay in the primary with headspace if I just leave it for three weeks?

And can I add vanilla and cocoa nibs at flameout?

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The headspace in your primary is filled to overflowing (airlock bubbling much?) with CO2 which protects your beer. You can leave the beer in the primary for 3 months if you choose, it just matures in the fermenter instead of in the bottles. That same headspace is dangerous in secondary because you really shouldn't transfer until you reach final gravity and then there is no more CO2 being produced. When you rack to secondary you leave the CO2 behind and then you beer is less protected. Acetobacter, the vinegar bacteria requires oxygen and now it has it. If your cleanliness isn't up to standards, your beer could become malt vinegar.

Why wait until final gravity is reached before transferring to secondary? It just seems like if you do it when there is still a little fermentation going on then you get it off most of the spent yeast but could still benefit from the little bit of CO2 being produced.

mclaughlindw4 said:

Why wait until final gravity is reached before transferring to secondary? It just seems like if you do it when there is still a little fermentation going on then you get it off most of the spent yeast but could still benefit from the little bit of CO2 being produced.

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You wait because sometimes moving too soon leads to a stuck ferment. Sometimes those are hard to get started again and you can't bottle until they do or you risk bottle bombs.

RM-MN said:

You wait because sometimes moving too soon leads to a stuck ferment. Sometimes those are hard to get started again and you can't bottle until they do or you risk bottle bombs.

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Why would this be true? Please explain, because that makes no sense to me. I've transferred fermenting beer on several occasions and never had a stuck fermentation.

If anything, I've heard of people racking a stuck fermentation to get it going again.

It's because racking to secondary too soon leaves litle yeast in suspension late in the ferment to finish fermenting the batch. That's why you genrally don't rack anywhere till FG is reached.

That still doesn't make sense. Whatever yeast is in suspension when you rack remains in suspension. Whatever yeast has settled into the yeast cake wouldn't be resuspended in the primary to finish fermenting the batch unless you stir or shake it, which most of us never do. The cake is all you lose by racking and it wouldn't be involved in finishing the batch anyway.

As anyone who bottle conditions knows, it takes very little yeast in suspension to accomplish a low level fermentation.

The problem comes in when it's racked so early that it's still fermenting & a lot of yeast is settled out to the point of not having enough yeast in suspension to finish fermenting.

unionrdr said:

The problem comes in when it's racked so early that it's still fermenting & a lot of yeast is settled out to the point of not having enough yeast in suspension to finish fermenting.

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Nope. That still doesn't make sense. I'm not trying to be obtuse here. I'm just not sure that you're thinking this through all the way.

If fermentation is still active (as it would be if you rack early), then, by definition, you still have enough yeast in suspension to finish fermentation. That's how yeast works. Even if "a lot of yeast has settled out", there can still be (and always are, in my experience) plenty of yeast left in suspension to finish fermentation.

I could be completely wrong on this. I've only brewed about 50 batches and never had a stuck fermentation, so what the hell do I know? Maybe one day, the bottle bombs will explode and I'll say, "Dammit, uniondr was right!". Till then, I'll keep racking to secondary early if I need to to free up space in my larger primary vessel.

Well,I've never had a serious infection in all my batches so far,but I got one in my Maori IPA. some off the wall things I did to try & save it seemed to have worked. so far,I'm lucky that God worked his magic & it looks/smells/tastes fine. Never say never...I've learned that now...

Thanks for all that discussion. I've been thinking about this lately because I think I want to try using secondary. I have no CO2 to purge so I was thinking about racking once fermentation had slowed substantially.

I did this with some elderberry wine, I waited until there was very little bubbling (really it was about a month but it my target ABV is also 15.5). And transferred it, since the wine has to condition for many months, I thought by doing it when there was still a very small amount of fermentation (or maybe it was just off-gassing?) that it would fill the headspace for me.

I plan on taking the same approach with beer until I get CO2. I guess hopefully it will work out for me.