Moody_Copperpot
Well-Known Member
I have been brewing for a few years now, with the past year and 3 monts as an AG brewer. When I ferment my beer (I'm using US-05 99.9% of the time) I generally let it sit in the primary for 2-3 weeks, and then transfer to the secondary for dry-hopping/clarity purposes. I have classically just let the yeast do it's thing, and often times my attenuation is greater than projected. What I mean is that I'm not regularly taking gravity readings because I'm afraid of opening the lid too much to do so, ever since I had a beer get infected a few months back. Granted, I was really not as careful with that batch as I should've been. Lesson learned. So a lot of times my beer ends up with a higher OG than expected due to the attenuation. For example my last IPA finshed out at 1.008 instead of the projected 1.015. I mashed low, and I'm sure that's why. This long post DOES have a point. I have an assignment to make a beer now that is 7.5%-8%. The recipe is for a wildly successful Cleveland restaurant that is going to contract a big name craft brewery to do an anniversary IPA for them. The owner and bar manager are good friends and asked for my help with coming up with a recipe that potentially could be produced for them! I am all set to brew a test batch this Sunday, but here goes my newbie question, though I'm not a newbie: when I hit the projected FG, should I take it out of the primary at that point and put it into the secondary?