Any Benefit to Long Secondary??

I just came a cross this forum late last week. Just in time to read a lot of the threads about the benefits of long primary fermentation. I brewed a pumpkin ale this past Sunday night and it will be my first attempt at a long primary.

However, when I brewed my prievious beer (a Hefe)a couple of weeks ago, I was not aware of such benefits and followed the my normal procedure of 7 days in the primary and then racked to a carboy for secondary. It's been in secondary for 8 days.

I am just wondering if there are any benefits to leaving it in the secondary for an extended period of time. Will I get any of the same benfits of a long primary? Or should I just go ahead and bottle after another week or so?

Thanks.

I'm not sure of any benefits of long primary fermentation except that more time on more yeast may help "clean up" the by products of the primary fermentation a bit quicker.

Personally, I don't even use secondary fermentation unless I'm doing a big beer like a barleywine, russian impirial stout, ect... I usually leave it in the primary for 2 to 3 weeks and rack to a keg or bottle for conditioning.

The answer to your question though would most likely be that it depends on the style of beer. If your brewing a high gravity beer that would benefit from more conditioning with more yeast then yes, more time in the secondary may be good. If your brewing a pale ale or something then I would just bottle after 2 to 3 weeks in the primary and let it condition in the bottles or keg.

Thats just my opinion though. I tend to shy away from secondary unless I really need to due to the fact that there isn't much benefit as opposed to just bottle or keg conditioning and that it just introduces a new way to infect your beer if your sanitization is a bit lacking.

And if your kegging, why not just keg and let it condition there as opposed to a secondary fermentor? whats the difference ( aside from a bit of pressure build up ). I don't think enough pressure will build to inhibit the yeast from "cleaning up".

For darker big beers I absolutely think there are.

Baltic Porters, Barleywines, RIS all go into a 5 gallon carboy OR a keg for a LONG conditioning period. I am always taken back a bit by the amount of dark "dust" that gets left on the ridges of the carboy and at the bottom of the kegs.

Tom - Hefes are meant to be drunk young. You wouldn't want to leave it in the secondary for a prolonged period of conditioning.

Other than the hefes most beers will improve with a period of conditioning. Whether that is done in the primary vessel or not depends on how long the beer needs. I personally don't leave a beer longer than about a month in the primary, others I know have gone longer without ill effects.

GT

I've found that bulk conditioning seems to work faster than bottle conditioning. Meaning that I've had times when I've brewed a beer and bottled after 3 weeks in primary and it took a month after carbonation before the beer hit it's stride. The next time I brewed it I gave it 3 weeks in primary and another 10 days or so in secondary and the beer was at the same peak as soon as it carbonated. As if the 10 days in secondary did the work of a month in the bottles. I don't remember the actual numbers, but it was pretty clear and after seeing this a few times I just started giving all my beers more time in bulk when possible unless they were a hefe or something as Got Trub says.

Thanks everyone,

So then basically I should probabaly bottle as soon as possible and finish conditioning in the bottle. I had 7 days in the primary and I won't be able to bottle until Sunday night which means it will have been in the secondary for 14 days. I'll bottle Sunday night and wait a couple weeks before i try the first one.