Secondary Fermention - Pros and Cons?

Hey everyone, i'm new to the forums and to home brewing and had some questions for you all.

My first brew has been bottled for 2 weeks now and i am happy with how it is tasting at this point. I used a Brewcraft Munich Lager kit and used dextrose as the brewing sugar. Nothing fancy, But i want to progress with my brewing techniques with every new brew. So i have bought a Muntons Nut Brown Ale kit and some blended brewing sugars (Brewcraft Brewblend 20) to start my next brew. I was originally going to use unhopped spray malt but i couldn't get a hold of any at the time.

So i am making the extremely small step up from dextrose to brewing sugars and was thinking about getting a secondary fermenter aswell. What is everyones thoughts on this? What are the advantages to using a secondary fermenter?

Also, i have noticed that most people of this forum use glass carboys as secondarys. What is the advantage of glass carboys over the food grade plastic type fermenters?

If anyone has any suggestions as how to improve my technique/ingredients on this or my next brew would also be greatly appreciated.

Also, could anyone tell me what type of yeast comes with the Muntons Nut Brown Ale kit? Should i buy a nicer yeast?

Cheers!

I don't know exactly what blended brewing sugar is but your beer will improve if you use malt extracts, whether it is liquid or dry. It might be a good idea to purchase some pre-made kits from Morebeer,Northern Brewer or Austin Homebrew,etc. because they have all you need to make a pretty good beer. They also have a lot of choices.
A secondary vessel will help your beer become more clear before bottling and the aging is an important step as well. I would recommend it if you have the space and money.

The brewing sugar i refered to is a prepackaged mixture of malt extract, corn syrup and glucose. My LHBS has a range of different mixtures designed to replace the sugar/dextrose usually used. The one i have is formulated to be malt heavy. Looking at the package now i can see that it is an Australian product so i doubt most of you would know exactly what it is. I hope i explained myself well enough though.

Sorry to double post, but i didn't think this question warranted a new thread.

I am thinking about buying a second plastic fermenter to use as my secondary. The reason for going with plastic over glass is the fact that the tap on the plastic fermenters will make racking/bottling much easier. I am a bit sceptical about trying to siphon at this point. Is there any reason why this wouldnt work? Or are there some major advantages to siphoning to a glass carboy as a secondary that im not seeing?

Thanks guys.

The reason most people don't use plastic buckets as their secondary, is because plastic buckets have too much head space and you risk oxygenating your brew, causing off flavors in your beer.

Are you refering to Dry Malt extract when you mention brewing sugars? Replacing most if not all domestic sugar in a recipe will dramaticaly improve your beer. (This includes, corn sugar, dextrose, glucose and brewers sugar which are basicaly all the same stuff).

Regarding secondary fermentation, you cant avoid it, it occurs anyway whether you choose to put your beer in a secondary fermenter or not. While there isn't much point using a secondary fermenter if you are planning on kegging your beer they are very usefull when bottling as a beer matures better when left in volume.

Personaly I prefer to use a plastic fermenter with a spigot attached, they spigot makes life alot easier than messing around with siphons. Plastic fermenters are easier to handle and make much less mess if you drop them.

btw, not much head space in this plastic fermenter, just enough room for a well aerated wort

Back to the first question, about brewing sugars. The best brewing sugars are those in malt (whether extract or whole grain). I would skip anything intended to substitute and jconsider getting some Cooper's unhopped malt extracts. Cooper's is made in Australia, they make in my opinion about the best liquid malt extracts, and should be available from your LHBS.

By the way, I recommend that you don't get prehopped extracts, this really limits your brewing options and managing hops is trivially easy.

Thanks for the info guys.

I didn't think about the headspace issue. I don't think i'll be buying another 30L plastic fermenter because there is huge headspace with a 23L brew. I still like the idea of plastic and tapped carboys, i will have a look around for some i can get my hands on easily.

For my next brew i will definately be moving up malt extracts. I am trying to keep progressing with each brew, even if it is with little things.

Cheers guys!

Disdaint, great to see another aussie on! I am from melbourne and are pretty much where you are at! (not trying to hijack the thread) I have 2 brews under my belt, one containing just a plain pilsner liquid malt and 300g dextrose (smells and tastes like egg) and a more 'sophisticated' brew, containing a draught liquid, a bag of hops you brew like a tea bag, and dextrose/malt mix. I am thinking of making an ale next, as the other two brews I am very dissapointed with. I am currently brewing out an edworts apfelwein, so when that clears and is bottled, (or next paycheck, whichever is first) I will be getting a carboy to use, so will also be adventuring into secondary fermentation. My next brew is going to go somthing like this..

Kads English Ale

6 lbs. of Pale Malt Extract (syrup)
1/2 lb. of Crystal 60L Malt

boiled at 152 F

1oz Bullion hops - used for bittering boiled for 60

1/2oz East Kent Goldings (EKG) - used for aroma boiled at 30 mins
1/2oz East Kent Goldings (EKG) - used for aroma and flavour, boiled 15 mins

and an english style or ale yeast

Let ferment or untill bubbling slows, rack off into glass carboy, also racking off onto 1.5kg of frozen raspberries (allowed to warm to room temp so as not to shock the yeast)

let condition for 2 weeks or so and then bottle...

so yeah, was wondering what your opinions are on this, and what you think FG will be like? will I need to add dextrose etc to get the ABV up, or will just the DME by itself be enough? with the LME?

disdaint said:

I am a bit sceptical about trying to siphon at this point.

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I hated to siphon as well until I purchased an auto siphon. Now it's on:rockin:

Head space in buckets: 7 years, no problems. Carboy users are closet voyeurs (except cheesefood )

"It is important to minimize the amount of headspace in the secondary fermentor to minimize the exposure to oxygen until the headspace can be purged by the still-fermenting beer. For this reason, plastic buckets do not make good secondary fermentors unless the beer is transferred just as the primary phase is starting to slow and is still bubbling steadily. Five gallon glass carboys make the best secondary fermentors. Plastic carboys do not work well because they are too oxygen permeable, causing staling."

Quoted from, How To Brew by John Palmer

david_42 said:

Head space in buckets: 7 years, no problems. Carboy users are closet voyeurs (except cheesefood )

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Same here. No problems.

This is one of the reasons why I recommend racking just before the 75% attenuation and about .002 points off FG because there's still some fermentation going on and the CO2 expels the oxygen from the air space.

homebrewer_99 said:

Same here. No problems.

This is one of the reasons why I recommend racking just before the 75% attenuation and about .002 points off FG because there's still some fermentation going on and the CO2 expels the oxygen from the air space.

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Great tip, thanks! :rockin:

Didaint, one other reason not mentioned to use a glass carboy and siphon instead of using the tap to transfer your beer to secondary / bottling is that the spigot on the bucket is near the bottom, so you will most likely transfer a lot of dormant yeast and sediment along with the beer. with a Siphonyou can siphon off the top and gradually move down as the beer level in the in the carboy drops, stopping just above the yeast cake in the bottom. also I agree with the previous comment about the autosiphon, that's the best $12 I've ever spent.

The importance of head space is over played, certain types of very popular barrel and fermenter in the UK have a large amount of head space when used to store a standard 22.5L batch. Brewers have found by practical experience that it isnt an issue but handling and transfering a beer with care is.
I've kept and will continue to keep beer in secondary vessels whether they be fermenters or barrels with lots of head space for many months and I don't like oxidised beer anymore than the next man.