Secondary Fermentation: Time and Equipment

Hi brewers,

To start, I apologize if this was covered in multiple posts before.

First, as I'm reading through Palmer's How To Brew, he mentions that if transferring to a secondary, it should be done so after 4-6 days of primary. I was going to go with 10 days originally, but Palmer does make a good point that you want to transfer before too many of the yeast cells die down or become dormant. Do I wait the full 10 days or transfer tomorrow (which will be the 6'th day)?

Secondly, Palmer mentions that plastic buckets do not make good secondary fermentors. I already bought another plastic bucket for this purpose, so should I use it as a primary for another batch and go buy a 5gal glass carboy / better bottle? Does it really make that much of a difference?

Cancel the question on the equipment, I found the answer in another post. Hah.

Don't go just by days for transferring into the secondary. Look to see if there's any visible activity, if there is, don't transfer. You can also take a hydrometer reading and see what the gravity is. If your beer has attenuated as much as it should have go ahead and transfer.

You can use a plastic bucket as a secondary, but you'll get higher levels oxygen if leaving the beer in a bucket for a long time. If you're just going with 2 weeks or so you should be ok, but if you want to secondary for a few months, then use glass.

Hope this helps.

Glad you got an answer.

Thanks Otto,

As you were typing your response, I found and was reading Orfy's post on when to transfer. It tended to go off track a bit, but I gathered that it's preferable for the primary fermented wort to reach FG before transferring. So, I'll do that.

I had intended on leaving my beer in the secondary for 2 weeks. It's there because it will be a cherry wheat beer, so it will be racked on top of cherry puree. 2 weeks should be sufficient for this, yes? Do you still recommend allowing the plastic bucket, or will the cherry puree absorb into the plastic and possibly cause a slight cherry flavor in other beers if the bucket is used as a primary in the future?

ThreeTaps

I've always used fruit in glass carboys, but I don't think your plastic will retain too much flavor from your fruit puree after only 2 weeks, but eventually you'll get some retention from anything if it sits long enough. I'd suggest searching around and seeing if anyone has more experience with fruit in plastic than I do.

As far as length for your specific beer, I suggest tasting it at one week intervals (1,2,3,etc.) and see if you get the flavors you're looking for.

Thanks again. I decided to stick with the plastic bucket, as my LHBS employee mentioned that with that much fermentable sugar in the secondary, I'm going to want the extra head space in the bucket. Usually a 5 gal carboy is best, but not in this case.

Yes, I think your LHBS steered you right. You'll want some extra space because you're going to get a whole new fermentation cycle by racking onto the puree. Also, with the new fermentation you'll get another blanket of CO2 over the beer, so the large head space wouldn't be filled with O2 anyway.

Keep it in the secondary bucket, again, until the gravity reaches FG (same gravity reading over a few days). Since you're not doing long term storage, this should be fine.