Extended Secondary Fermentation

I have a holiday ale that has spent 1 week in primary and now 3 weeks in a glass secondary. When I racked to secondary I added 1/2 gallon apple cider and there was a smaller fermentation that took place. Subsequently there is about a 1 inch yeast cake in the bottom of the secondary. I was thinking about possibly getting this beer off of the secondary cake and into another fresh fermenter. Do you think there will be any issues or off flavors if I leave this brew on the smaller secondary cake for another month or so before bottling or should I risk infection and get it to a fresh carboy to clear some more?

Clearly, there are pros/cons either way. I would not rack it again - more chance of oxidation and/or infection, and it's unlikely that a few weeks on the sediment is going to hurt.

Although I AM a supporter of secondaries. I think I would leave it at this point. Racking could introduce oxidation or increase infection as Locos said, but even if you manage to avoid that - three weeks in a secondary and there is probably little lefdt to ferment, meaning you may not produce enough CO2 in the third carboy to blanket and protect the beer from oxxidation there.

Not that this is the exact issue here, but I am leaning more towards no secondaries due to the fact that while I have never experienced issues associated with autolysis from extended yeast-cake-sitting, I have experienced some nasty diacetyl from early removal.

Grizzlybrew said:

Although I AM a supporter of secondaries. I think I would leave it at this point. Racking could introduce oxidation or increase infection as Locos said, but even if you manage to avoid that - three weeks in a secondary and there is probably little lefdt to ferment, meaning you may not produce enough CO2 in the third carboy to blanket and protect the beer from oxxidation there.

Not that this is the exact issue here, but I am leaning more towards no secondaries due to the fact that while I have never experienced issues associated with autolysis from extended yeast-cake-sitting, I have experienced some nasty diacetyl from early removal.

Click to expand...

So with an ale with many complex flavors that need to blend like this, would you just bottle condition it then instead of secondary fermentation? Maybe I yank this off of secondary after a month and bottle condition for a month before I serve it? I have fresh ginger, cinn stick, 5# chopped apples, cloves, 3 kinds of roasted malt, 2# honey and 64 oz apple cider into this thing...3 OZ hopps for 45ibu as well. Lots of flavors that need to settle. But I think you are right....about leaving it until bottling time.

Are you saying that you had some nasty diacetyl from early removal off of the primary yeast cake? Maybe leave on primary for two weeks and let the yeast do there thing and then transfer to secondary for mellowing?

Whatever you decide to do I would suggest letting it bottle condition for a month before drinking. With that much going on for flavors it'll need time to mellow plus you'll want at least 3 weeks in a bottle anyway for proper carbonation.

You can obviously follow everyone else's advice and leave it, and that is probably what I would do, but you COULD also stick it in a Corny with a bit of pressure as a tertiary fermenter to do some extra clearing if you want a very clear beer.