decrease carbonation if you use secondary fermintation?

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thenatibrewer

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i was wondering if you used secondary ferm. will that cause a decrease in carbonation? or will it take longer to carbonate in the bottle? i figured if i rack to secondary i am leaving behind or filtering out more yeast, and the yeast causes the carbonation. so any advance would be great!!!
 
There are enough yeast in suspension to provide for adequate carbonaton. It generally takes between 2-3 weeks at around 70° or so.
 
so in other words be patient? i tried another one saturday (12 days in bottles at around 70f, possible a little less) it seem to have a little more carbonation than the one i tried a wk early. hopefully it will work out. i just read another thread that the guy was saying he adds some rehydrated dry "generic yeast" to his bottling primer. he says it works out great for him. any thoughts?
 
12 days is pretty early to expect your beer to be fully conditioned/carbonated. As you're finding, it's usually drinkable at two weeks, but much better after 3 or 4.

[EAC]
FYI, what many homebrewers describe as "secondary fermentation" is a rather incorrect term and can cause confusion sometimes. You are not inducing a second fermentation by racking your beer to another fermenter, you are just moving it away from the trub. More correct terms for the "secondary" are "clearing tank" or "bright tank," and what happens there is "conditioning" or "clearing" rather than "secondary fermentation."

Also, there is still a ton of suspended yeast, even in perfectly clear homebrew (unless it's been filtered), so carbonation shouldn't be a problem.
[/EAC]
 
You should have no problems having enough yeast for carbonization when you use a secondary fermenter.
There are exceptions to this however. If you used a highly flocculant yeast, keep the secondary at fairly cold temperatures ( Less than 60 F for an ale yeast), or left the beer in the secondary for an extended amount of time, you may find that carbonation takes longer.
 
I also thought that there would not be enough yeast when I was doing my first secondary. But there is plenty yeast in suspension. Like was stated, unless you filter the beer through somthing like a charcoal filter etc, or leave the beer in the secondary for an extremeley long time ~4 months, then you might need to add more yeast.

:mug:

RDWHAHB
 
I don't know if this is your case or not, but higher ABV% brews will naturally take longer to carbonate. I had a red ale that I used honey in the boil, and made it more alcoholic than my other brews. After 3 1/2 weeks it still hadn't carbonated really at all, and I just figured I screwed something up.

I opened one up after 5 weeks and it was perfect. The beer was one of the best I've ever drank, if I can say so.
 
I have found that shaking the bottles up a bit or raising the tempature seems to help with carbonation.
12 days is nothing i would wait it out im sure if you give it a full 3 weeks it will be to your satisfaction.

Best of luck! :tank:
 
I like to give mine a little shake/swirl a few days after bottling, when the yeast first starts to settle out. I don't know if it actually does anything, but it puts the yeast back in suspension for a couple days, and it makes me think that more is getting done.
 
the secondary was a little cold (global warming is really killing my basement temps right now) around 58f. so i moved the bottles where it is a little warmer 68f - 70f. i will wait and see what happens.
 
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