Stupid Question

I don't have a secondary bucket, but could I put it over in to the bottling bucket and clean my primary out and put it back in or leave it in my bottle bucket, or just leave it as is?

I would just leave it. Secondaries are not really necessary for most ales unless you are adding fruit or dry hopping. And even dry hopping can be done in the primary.

You could, but you just increase the risk of infection. Better yet, just skip the secondary fermentation. Most beers don't need them, and I'd go so far as to say that most people on this forum don't utilize the secondary unless they're brewing something really big (e.g., barleywine).

Just let it finish fermenting in the primary and then bottle it.

Thanks for the help!

You will find if you look around that these days many many of us leave our beer in primary for a month, skip secondary and bottle, and find our beer is vastly improved because of it.

As a newbie I hear a lot about secondaries being used for clearing out beers.

I agree that you can go right from primary into bottles if you are not doing anything in the secondary, but I have been reading and seeing others put brew into a secondary just for the clarification process.

What is anyone's take on that?

mikebiewer said:

As a newbie I hear a lot about secondaries being used for clearing out beers.

I agree that you can go right from primary into bottles if you are not doing anything in the secondary, but I have been reading and seeing others put brew into a secondary just for the clarification process.

What is anyone's take on that?

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Most of us who leave our beers in primary for a month actually believe our beers are CLEARER and better tasting than when we used secondaries.

There are 10,000 threads discussing this on here, with aall the info/arguments for and against. In fact there are at least 5-6 in the beginners section, right this moment. Threads like "when to secondary" "Skipping seconadry" "How long can I leave my beer in primary?" "Long primary"

It's been discussed up the whazoo, you won't have to far to look to see our "takes" on this. It has been the most discussed topic on here the last three years. To the point where it's starting to be looked at in the larger brewing community, both Basic Brewing Radio, and BYO magazine have dicussed it, and done some experiments.