Why do I use a primary and secondary fermenter?

Hey all,

Pretty new to brewing (on my 3rd kit now), having fun learning by trial and error. One thing that I'm not totally sure that I understand is why i need to use a primary fermenter and then transfer into a secondary fermenter? Can someone help explain this step?

Thanks in advance

Secondary for anything that is going to age for months. Supposedly sitting on yeast makes funny flavors.

Might be the single most-discussed topic on this board. Do a quick search and see what you find. Long story short, most people here will say that with almost all beers, the secondary is unnecessary. Transferring to secondary on all beers is a somewhat outdated philosophy.

There were 2 reasons for people thinking that you "needed" to use a secondary. One is Autosylis for the yeast in the yeast cake will die, cell will rupture, causing a burnt rubber smell/flavor. The second is clearing, in that more solids will fall out of the beer if you give it room to, by removing the yeast cake. As JWest just stated, it's pretty much an outdated philosophy, so now, the only time most people here use a secondary is for a) dry hopping, or adding some other kind of flavor (orange peel) fruit, etc and b) for aging it for months on end, like a barley wine that takes a good year to finish aging.

That all makes sense, thanks for the info everyone.

JWest, thanks for the heads up on searching, totally blanked on that...

I only have two brews under my belt. One American Pale Ale and a Chinook IPA from Northern Brewers (highly recommended). I didn't use a secondary for either and I dry hopped both. Both were excellent and the yeast did not transfer much at all into the bottling bucket thanks to a racking cane with a 1/2" tip. I will be brewing a Tripel soon and I bought a secondary for that. I plan on letting it sit for months just as another forum guy posted.....

I pretty much don't secondary anymore. I've even dry-hopped in the primary and it turned out great.

That's not to say you shouldn't do it. If you are sanitary, and are careful about oxygen introduction, then there is no real risk of damaging your beer. I just feel it's mostly unnecessary.

If all your buckets are full and you have a couple of dusty carboys laying around and you want to brew.

There. There's a good reason.