2ndary question

I was recently on a camping trip with my structural geology class and found a grad studemt who also homebrews. He has several years of experience on me, so I was excited to have him try one of my beers. I told hin to be brutally honest. He said he'd just tell me what I could do better.

After tasting it he pointed out some fruity flavors in my stout and said i should keep the fermentation temp down. He guessed that it was around 74 for this particular brew<upon checking at home, it was 74 the entire time.

Here's the real kicker. He said you definitely need to start using a secondary. He could tell just from taste that I only used a primary. I've been subscribing to the master's on here claim that a longer primary and a secondary have no difference in the final product in 5 gallon batches, but the fact thar he was able to pick this stuff out in a yaste while he had already had a few saison ipa's of his own has me questioning the validity of the claims here.

Just looking for input on whether this actually makes sense or if he was just messing with me, a noob.

If this belongs elsewhere, mods, please feel free to move it

did he give any reasons as to how he knew it was primary only?

I'm just guessing here but he could have just assumed you didn't use secondary and was correct. I find the more "old timers" I debate about secondary vs no secondary, the more I realize that people not using secondary pisses them off. They are all VERY adamant about using secondary and will not dare to try and not secondary no matter what they hear. The whole debate between using one and not is somewhat recent and so there is a pretty bold line in the sand between two schools of thought.

I have no idea what he could have tasted to tell that there was no secondary used, maybe the non-existent autolysis? Other than that, the main argument you hear for secondary is that it will make your beers clearer but there are many things you can do to affect that.

H-ost said:

I'm just guessing here but he could have just assumed you didn't use secondary and was correct. I find the more "old timers" I debate about secondary vs no secondary, the more I realize that people not using secondary pisses them off. They are all VERY adamant about using secondary and will not dare to try and not secondary no matter what they hear. The whole debate between using one and not is somewhat recent and so there is a pretty bold line in the sand between two schools of thought.

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Yup. Great answer. We see it on here.

Next time do a secondary on half of your batch and see if he can tell the difference.

Thanks for the answers. As I said, I'm definitely on board with the whole primary only idea. I just was completely confused as to how he basically broke down my entire fermentation process with only a taste.

Another thought I had was that, as it was a camping trip, the beer was submitted to significant jostling. He might have noticed more sediment or something.

I will definitely try the split batch. Based on my thread snooping, it seems like you'd make better beer without a secondary. There is more yeast to clean up after itself after all.

rstewy2 said:

Another thought I had was that, as it was a camping trip, the beer was submitted to significant jostling. He might have noticed more sediment or something.

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There could be something to that. He might have tasted more sediment because of the jostling and then thought "If you had transferred to secondary then there wouldn't have been as much sediment". If he had tasted some brew that had been sitting in the fridge then he might have thought differently.