To Secondary or Not to:

Ahh..The age old question and it has been beaten to death. But somehow I feel my circumstances are unique..(Not). OK so normally I would just leave my beer in the primary for about 2 weeks for yeast clean up etc. then go right to bottling. I brewed my first AG 8 days ago (BierMuncher's Centenial). I took gravity yesterday and tasted it. Wow what great taste and gravity was
.010. I'll check over the next two days to see if I'm ready for bottling. My reservation is this: THe beer seemed to have alot of floaters in it. I want this beer to be nice and clear and clean. Do I rack to secondary for a week or just stick with another week in primary before bottling? The krausen hasn't even dropped yet. Thoughts?

If the krausen hasn't dropped, leave it alone. I would give it another couple of weeks in primary and by then it should be nice and clear and ready for bottling.

I would just let it in the primary for another week. Crash cool it a couple days before bottling if you can. I usually let my ales in the primary for 3 weeks just to let it clear up, then right to bottle. I crash-cooled my last bitter (OK, crash-froze by accident, but that's another story), bottled after 3 weeks in the primary and it came out clear as day. I had a few hops floaters in there (I used plugs) and since the spigot on the bottling bucket is up off the bottom, none of them made it into the bottles. I've gotten to the point that I only use my "secondaries" for lagers.

I used to only use a primary. Then I read up on secondaries, and got me a bucket for primary, so I could use the carboy as secondary. Had better luck. Then I read up that it might not be as beneficial as I thought, and I tried my last batch (belgian wit) in bucket only. Turned out great! So I'm of mixed mind.

However, for your case, i'd let it set a bit, although it's possible you might end up bottling with krausen still on the beer.

Are you kegging or bottling?

As said earlier, give it a bit more time in the primary (5-7 days).

Those "floaties" won't hurt anything. You can filter them out using a 1-gallon paint strainer wrapped around your racking cane when you transfer the beer. That's what I do.

BierMuncher said:

Are you kegging or bottling?

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I'm Bottling. No $$$ for kegging yet. Maybe in the winter.
My next question was going to be about how to strain it. So where do you put the the paint strainer? Over the end that goes into the carboy? I rack from carboy to a bottling bucket with a spout.

cwhill said:

...So where do you put the the paint strainer? Over the end that goes into the carboy? I rack from carboy to a bottling bucket with a spout.

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It goes over the end of the racking cane. Use a small zip tie to fasten it.

This is a pic of one I used to filter out dry hops, but for filtering off the white stickies it works well too.