Guess Who just became a fan of the Secondary!

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BigKahuna

BigKahuna

Senior Member
HBT Supporter
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I've said it a hundred times....secondaries are for pussies. Whatever comes through in your beer comes through in your beer.
I am retracting that statement, and will be using whirl flock or Irish moss...AND will be using gelatin in the secondary....I WILL ALWAYS use a secondary.
I have never been worried about cloudy beer, and I always figured what comes out in the first few pints is of no concern...but this is ridiculous. This is what was in the bottom of my Irish Red Keg... which eventually poured extremely clear.
IMG_08791.jpg

I know...plenty of you are itching to give me the silly n00b flame, but put your lighter away! Different techniques work in different areas for a reason. I am a firm believer that the climate, altitude, and water makes my brews hard to clear (Evidenced by my mead clearing issues) and I will be using a secondary for most of my brews from now on.
 
What the hell is that in your keg? I've never seen anything like that in my kegs or even primarys. It looks like burnt krausen or something :eek: Guess I can't blame you.
 
Its great to know that people with so much experience and advice for others are still learning! I started using secondaries after my first few brews, and immediately noticed less sediment in the bottom of my bottles. Now that I keg I still get a cloudy pint or two at first, but I believe that it is significantly less than I would otherwise!

Thanks for being so humble BK! It really conveys a good message (at least to me) about the people on this forum
 
khuygie88 said:
Its great to know that people with so much experience and advice for others are still learning!
Click to expand...

Make NO MISTAKE! I'm certainly no master brewer! One of the reasons I continue to push to a new style or type of beer is to learn about it.
I could brew 2 or 3 really good recipes 20 times a year and be happy with that, but I'd rather brew 30 recipes over 40 brew sessions, have 5 that suck, 8 that are fair, 25 ok - good, and 2 that make a mess in your pants they are so good. I'm always looking to brew something new, and learn something new, and I'm not the only one! That's part of what makes HBT so damn cool!

BTW....It's a bad pick, but it's hops, trub, from a red ale...REALLY Red Ale.

Cheers....to every screw up and / or lesson learned.
 
Welcome to the fold, my friend. I secondary everything and just ignore the threads that sneer at them. I do it to clear my beer and to get it out of the pail and into glass. All of my beers come out clear with minor sediment in the keg.

Two weeks in the pail, a month or two in glass, and then into the keg just before it's time to quaff.
 
I just moved away from secondaries. I was barely kegging 4 gallons, between loss in the primary and secondary.

Some beers don't need a secondary, some do. Wheat beers don't, but I'm about to do another cherry wheat that does.

It seems to me that lagers tend to do better with a secondary than ales.
 
BigKahuna said:
Avatars mean things you know! :cross:
Click to expand...

It's just a pic I found on the interwebs that seemed somewhat appropriate. I'm a dorky Canuck that always seems to have a beer in his hand. Why? Did I inadvertently label myself as something other than that?
 
I secondary as well, but when my beer hits the secondary it also get crash cooled.

With no clearing agents of any sort, after 1 pull I always have clear beer.
 
I keep meaning to go to my secondary(that is why I bought it) but I keep chickening out.

BigKahuna said:
That's part of what makes HBT so damn cool!
Click to expand...

And I love HBT because I'm fairly sure I would have made terrible beer(First American Ale was mess in my pants good but I'm sure all virgin brewers feel this their first time) without the help of everyone here.
 
All of my darker beers have done great with no secondary- that said, I am learning from my lager, even with cold conditioning etc, that from now on I will be conditioning my lighter beers andlagers in secondary from now on.

It's only a little cloudy, and clearing up, but 2-3 weeks more in secondary would have made it much better I think.
 
Using a bright tank and fining agents have their time and place- another tool or process in the brewer's bag of tricks to make the best tasting, visually appealing beer possible. There's no silver bullet, save time and patience.

I always use Whirlfloc as a kettle fining, transfer as little trub and break material as possible and move the beer to the package after an extended primary and cold-crashing. If I'm not satisfied with my clarity at that point, I'll do a transfer to a bright tank with a suitable fining agent.
 
BigKahuna said:
I've said it a hundred times....secondaries are for pussies. Whatever comes through in your beer comes through in your beer.
I am retracting that statement, and will be using whirl flock or Irish moss...AND will be using gelatin in the secondary....I WILL ALWAYS use a secondary.
I have never been worried about cloudy beer, and I always figured what comes out in the first few pints is of no concern...but this is ridiculous. This is what was in the bottom of my Irish Red Keg... which eventually poured extremely clear.
IMG_08791.jpg

I know...plenty of you are itching to give me the silly n00b flame, but put your lighter away! Different techniques work in different areas for a reason. I am a firm believer that the climate, altitude, and water makes my brews hard to clear (Evidenced by my mead clearing issues) and I will be using a secondary for most of my brews from now on.
Click to expand...

Dude, real men eat that **** for breakfast. You ***** ass secondary user!
(Errr, you asked for it right?)

*Pay no attention to the fact that I am a noob and have yet to get my virgin brew out of the primary - I am merely here for moral support and to kick you when you are down as per your request* :tank:
Good advise for my future brews!
I think my next batch (Cheeses CCA) will definitely be a secondary beer. :)
-Me
 
I'm constantly changing my mind about secondary and just like any noob, I rush my beers every so often. I tend to give advice that I'm sure is ideal even if I can't heed my own advice half the time. The one thing that is constant is that I crash cool any vessel for 3-4 days before racking to keg. That might be a primary that has set for 3 weeks. It might be a big beer in secondary for 3 months.
 
Bobby_M said:
I tend to give advice that I'm sure is ideal even if I can't heed my own advice half the time.
Click to expand...

If we all followed the "Good Advice" here, none of us would have time to chat....we'd all be pro brewers. Sometimes it's what you don't do that counts.

Fingers said:
? Did I inadvertently label myself as something other than that?
Click to expand...

Meh....Seems like you might have nailed it!

EH?
 
These beers were in the primary for 2 weeks.

The sediment in the bottom of these secondaries appeared just 12 hours after racking with gelatin.

In my mind, the lighter the beer, the more important a clean falvor come through.

ClearBoy_3.jpg
 
I moved away from secondary but with the last 2 brews I will have too. I just tapped my Biermunchers octoberfast ale and its very cloudy after 3 weeks in the keg. Even after 6 pints I kept thinking its going to clear but then I realized, I am a ******* ... Forgot any type of fining agents in the boil...


So there ya go, 5 of the 10 gallons of Octoberfast and my own Porter going to secondary with gelatin and a crash cool.
 
I use secondaries on everything but wheats. When you beer is uncarbed, warm, and a pain to get at, I find you don't drink it and it will have the proper time to age and condition. Then when it is actually ready to drink, I keg it up and carb. This gives me much clearer beer with a better profile.
 
F that noise man, I do primary for a month, then bottle. I'm way too lazy to be racking all the time. Then again, some of that could be my paranoia from this plague of an apartment I've been living in and want my beers exposed to air as little as possible.
 
Oh, that's rich---BK complaining about the clarity of his non-secondaried beers when he readily admits he doesn't utilize crash-cooling. Look...regardless of whether or not the bottom of your fermenter is covered in yeast and trub, you will still get the same amount of sedimentation and floculation. The reason your secondaried beers are clearer is probably because of the increased settling time, not because of anything inherent to the secondary. The only benefit of a secondary is that it's easier to rack without picking up any of the cake from the bottom...but as long as you're careful and you've had a sufficient settling period, your cake should be adequately compacted so that your redirection tip on your siphon should be just as effective.

Before you dive headfirst into the "secondaries are the end-all" mindset, give cold-crashing a chance.
 
BigKahuna said:
I know I know I know.

But I'm just saying....Time is of the essence.....Not to rush your beer, and that sometimes there is a place and time for a little gelatin.
Click to expand...

I find that gelatin is a band-aid for when a beer just refuses to clear, and the style is supposed to be. I've used it on, for instance, pumpkin beers that just refuse to clarify because of the pumpkin solids/starches, etc.
 
Whaaa? 1/2 of the noob education corps pulling a switcheroo on technique?;)

Whirlifloc in the boil, then just stick the primary out in the garage for a few days after fermentation abates and you'll be fine. That's what I do in the winter and it works great. You might actually need to wrap a blanket around the bucket, so it doesn't freeze. Eastern Colorado is a bit frostier than PDX, I'm sure.
 
Since you keg, you should have the ability to purge your secondary carboy with CO2 before racking to it.

That stuff is on the bottom of all of my kegs (though not as much), but I will crash cool for a few days before kegging from the primary.
 
Welcome to the fold! :rockin:

I secondary everything, even my weizens. I rack a little sediment/yeast back in at bottling/kegging just to make them slightly cloudy again.

I did not secondary a few (experiment), but did not like the results.

With 5-6 beers in the pipeline and a dozen or so aging it's easy to be patient. Being away fro home on business trips really help with the patience thing since I'm not there. ;)
 
BigKahuna said:
But I'm just saying....Time is of the essence.....Not to rush your beer, and that sometimes there is a place and time for a little gelatin.
Click to expand...

And you'll probably change your mind a few more times as well in terms of techniques as you keep brewing. Time clears all beers; there are just ways of "tweaking" it a little. ;)

Cheers! :mug:
 
Two weeks in the primary and straight to keg for me. I did once try the secondary and if anything it was less successful than just leaving it be in the primary. Clear beer is not a problem with just one phase in my experience. And all of this was achieved at room temperature, no pre-chilling on a blonde ale where it would be easy to see any 'haze'.

It can be done.
 

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