Detrimental Effects of early racking to 2nd?

On Tuesday I had a nuclear stress test and a "potential" blockage was discovered. I was scheduled for a cardiac catheterization for Thursday.

At the time I had a nut brown that would have been in primary for 1 week on Wednesday. I wanted to try my hand at washing yeast, and with the uncertainty of my heart situation I decided the best thing to do would be to rack to secondary on Wednesday (fermentation was not 100% done, but had slowed significantly), since I didn't know when I would be allowed to lift etc again.

Well, fast forward two days. Yesterday I was given a clean bill of healthy and the stress test was ruled a false-positive (good news considering I'm only 32). So, now that the excitement (torture) of the last 76 hours is over, I'm looking at this secondary full of beer (it tasted delicious, if a little sweet still on Wednesday) and wondering if it will suffer to much due to the short time in primary? If there is enough sugar still in the beer the yeast would just take back off (all beit more slowly) right?

I'll take a hydrometer reading when I'm feeling more like walking in and out of the house (the leg is still a little sore)


Edit: I stated "i'm looking at this primary full of beer" where I meant "I'm looking at this secondary full of beer". My question is, will my beer suffer from to short of time in primary? and Do I need to pitch one of the jars of washed yeast back into the secondary and just let it finish out?

Man, if anyone needed to relax and have a homebrew, it is YOU!!!

I'll let the more knowlegable people answer your beer question, I'd just like to say that I'm glad the health thing panned out for you.

wow...your timing is impeccable! Check out this thread right above yours:

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f13/just-leave-primary-3-weeks-month-92629/

Long story short...there is no rush to put your beer into secondary after 1 week of primary. If anything, your beer would benefit from extra time in primary letting the yeast do their thing. If anything, you probably don't even have to move the beer into secondary.

If it were me, I wouldn't dare move it out of primary after just one week (way to soon)and I wouldn't bother moving it into secondary at all. I would let it sit for 3 weeks minimum and then bottle. I started doing it and my beer has improved by just being patient and letting it sit in primary.
Good luck and congrats on the good health news!

broadbill said:

wow...your timing is impeccable! Check out this thread right above yours:

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f13/just-leave-primary-3-weeks-month-92629/

Long story short...there is no rush to put your beer into secondary after 1 week of primary. If anything, your beer would benefit from extra time in primary letting the yeast do their thing. If anything, you probably don't even have to move the beer into secondary.

If it were me, I wouldn't dare move it out of primary after just one week (way to soon)and I wouldn't bother moving it into secondary at all. I would let it sit for 3 weeks minimum and then bottle. I started doing it and my beer has improved by just being patient and letting it sit in primary.
Good luck and congrats on the good health news!

Click to expand...

Actually I misspoke in my original thread....I hastily moved my beer to a secondary becuase I was given short notice that I might have to have a stint or worse (open heart surgery) With less than 24 hours to sort everything out (paying bills, scheduling time off, making sure insurance was paid up) I wanted to get the moved in case I was restricted from lifting for several weeks. In hindsight it would have been far better to have just left it in primary until this all passed however I didn't.

Now that I've been given a clean bill of health and the worst of the scare is over, I have my beer istting in secondary that I don't believe was 100% fermented when I transfered. My question is will the fermentation take off again, do I need to pitch one of the mason jars of yeast that I harvested? do I need to RDWHAHB?

Did you take a gravity reading? If it was only a few points away, It will probably finish - it may take a bit longer and it may not finish as low but I probably wouldn't worry about repitching unless it's still significantly high after a couple of weeks.

I think you will be in great shape! Secondary fermentation is often very misunderstood....

The proper way to use a secondary fermenter is to rack out of the primary while fermentation is still active or when about 3/4 of your fermentables are gone. This is usually around 5 days in my experience. The idea is to get the beer of the trub early while still having enough active yeast in solution to dry out he beer and condition it.

What most people believe a secondary means is to let your beer ferment to final gravity in the primary, then rack to a "secondary" for a couple weeks. This is not a good option because you loose the benefit of the bulk of yeast conditioning the beer.

Many people have gone to the "just leave it in primary" way of doing things which is just fine. When I do this, I still use a secondary fermenter after 3+weeks in the primary. The secondary would then be a bright tank. I just use this to clear and bulk age the beer.

End of the line, your beer is fine. In fact you have committed a good practice.

Thanks BK.

I'm going to take a hydrometer reading today to see how close it is to final (it tasted just a little sweet on Wednesday). If it's still a little high I'll check it through the week and repitch if it appears high and stuck, otherwise it's going to sit in the secondary for at minimum of two weeks while I decide if I want to hurry up and buy my kegging equipment or go ahead and bottle one last batch.

Thanks for the peace of mind everyone.

Boerderij_Kabouter said:

I think you will be in great shape! Secondary fermentation is often very misunderstood....

The proper way to use a secondary fermenter is to rack out of the primary while fermentation is still active or when about 3/4 of your fermentables are gone. This is usually around 5 days in my experience. The idea is to get the beer of the trub early while still having enough active yeast in solution to dry out he beer and condition it.

Click to expand...

This is most useful piece of information. I had problems with standard primary, secondary scheme, and now I finally know why.
So far I am doing long primaries, but I will definitely try your method, although it seems tricky. When do you rack - when the krausen start falling, or do you monitor gravity constantly?

Dloucks said:

So, now that the excitement (torture) of the last 76 hours is over, I'm looking at this secondary full of beer (it tasted delicious, if a little sweet still on Wednesday) and wondering if it will suffer to much due to the short time in primary? If there is enough sugar still in the beer the yeast would just take back off (all beit more slowly) right?...Do I need to pitch one of the jars of washed yeast back into the secondary and just let it finish out?

Click to expand...

Actually, the first question is not correct. For sure there's enough sugar...it's yeast you need to convert the sugar to alcohol.

Ading more yeast to finish the fermentation can't hurt, but before you do what were your gravity readings?

I had my heart attack at 42. I'm 54 now. I couldn't rack a hefe weizen from the primary for 34 days. When I finally bottled it it won Best of Style and Best of Show...

The short answer is leave it in your secondary for 2 weeks and you should be fine.

The long answer is that leaving your beer in the primary for extended periods of time is usually fine. Many people report that their beer tastes better after a month on the primary with no secondary fermentation. Every beer is its own animal and every brewer hunts differently (lovely metaphor, I know).

Leave it be, it will be fine.

If I ever manage to get adequate time (did not happen over Thanksgiving) I'm going to be be running 2-3 batches in quick succession, and will basically rack from the primary to secondary (more like "second primary" in this application) as soon as the kreusen falls - plenty of yeast will go with, most of the non-yeast trub will stay behind. I don't have room to add more fermenters, and I have 3 secondaries to one primary, so this maximizes my ability to crank out beer and get it aging (good) as opposed to having ingredients staling (bad).