Primary - Secondary

Hey guys, I keep reading a lot since I found this site and I find a lot of you say wait much longer times in each of these stages than my brew store is telling me. My Brew Store is telling me do 7 days in the primary, 7 days in the secondary. Prime and bottle, wait 2 weeks.

Should I be doing longer in the Primary/Secondary?

I stopped using a secondary all together. What kind of beers are you brewing?

Many of us don't do a secondary at all unless we are dry hopping or adding something extra like fruit.

You'll get many different answers about this, but a bunch of the top home brewers are now saying secondary fermentation is not needed for most beers. In fact, letting your beer sit in primary for 3-4 weeks allows the yeast to clean up any off flavors made during fermentation.

This is the most discussed topic on here, it has been readily covered. I suggest you read THIS thread, it's become the "uber discussion" on this topic thread.

To Secondary or Not? John Palmer and Jamil Zainasheff Weigh In .

runitis said:

I stopped using a secondary all together. What kind of beers are you brewing?

Click to expand...

All types, switch off most of the time. I plan to consistently do an Oatmeal Stout, which i've read definitely doesn't need a secondary.

I'm just curious about the long times in the primary mostly I guess, does it make that much of a difference? 7-14 days I can understand. But the extra 14 after that?

Mattyc88 said:

All types, switch off most of the time. I plan to consistently do an Oatmeal Stout, which i've read definitely doesn't need a secondary.

I'm just curious about the long times in the primary mostly I guess, does it make that much of a difference? 7-14 days I can understand. But the extra 14 after that?

Click to expand...

I average about 3 weeks for moderate strength beers. Ive gone as long as 6 weeks for barleywines, RIS, and BDS. I would never bottle a beer after just 2 weeks. That's just not enough time for the magic to happen. Be patient, and good things will come.

There are many epic threads that discuss what you're asking. To summarize them: YES NO MAYBE DEPENDS!

What your store is telling you will produce beer. The one thing I can say personally, is that being patient improves my beers. When I leave my beers in the primary for 2-4 weeks, bottle, wait 3 to carb, then lager them for a month, they always taste better than when I rush it.

Regarding secondaries - I don't use them. My reasoning is that I'm lazy, it increases chance of bad sanitation, and there is lots of anecdotal evidence from very successful brewers that it doesn't really help (outside of exceptional cases like long term bulk aging).

Try it both ways and see what you like!

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
edit - see, leave it to Revvy to not be lazy and actually post the link. Thanks Revvy.