vigorous activity in secondary

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PoofaceJoe

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just transferred my honey brown to secondary. after 9 days in primary there was no activity. about 2 hours after transfer beer began churning and a lot of foam on top. airlock bubbling away. monitored temperature and have kept brew below 70 since boil. is this normal, have I picked up an infection in the brew? only second batch still learning.
 
just transferred my honey brown to secondary. after 9 days in primary there was no activity. about 2 hours after transfer beer began churning and a lot of foam on top. airlock bubbling away. monitored temperature and have kept brew below 70 since boil. is this normal, have I picked up an infection in the brew? only second batch still learning.
You are good to go.... Just let it finish. You just roused the yeast is all.
 
You don't have an infection. It just wasn't finished in primary before you racked it. I usually let mine sit in primary for at least 2-3 weeks, then rack. By then, most, if not all, fermentation is done for a normal strength batch.
 
You will be fine as the folks above commented. I did notice you had not posted a gravity reading taken at the time you transferred to secondary.

Bubble activity is not a sign the beer is ready to be moved. Rather a hydrometer reading that is the same value two days in a row indicates your beer has finished. It is then you make the transfer.

Enjoy your beer in a couple of months.
 
Did you aerate your chilled wort well prior to pitching your yeast? If the yeasties were not fed properly it might be a part of the reason for such avtivity. When you transferred to the secondary, you introduced O2 into the beer and this helped to re-activate the little yeasty beasties.

I had a few of my initial brews do the same thing. It is actually pretty neat to watch the fermentation in a carboy isn't it? I use primarily plastic ale pales for my primary fermentations but my new brewing rig will be using a vacuum pump to pull the wort from the brew kettle up into a glass carboy in the future. No more heavy lifting or carrying accident worries this way.

Salute! :mug:
 
Four days in secondary and still bubbling away. Will I need to transfer to a third fermenter to clarify after fermentation is done?
 
Yeast is weird, and that's why you always use a hydrometer to determine if you can bottle. The other day my primary slowed to less than a bubble a minute after about a week, which is totally normal, I added dry hops and gave a gently swirl to coat them, and fermentation kicked back off and has been going vigorously for another 2 days now. That doesn't really help you, but you aren't alone in getting secondary fermentation. It's actually a blessing, without it, we'd have stuck fermentations.
 
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