American Wheat: To transfer or not to transfer?

As the title states, I've heard of some people transferring to a secondary on their wheat beers, but most say to stick with the primary to retain that classic unfiltered cloudiness. Thus begs the question, to transfer or not to transfer?

As the Germans would say, "Nein!"

Just say NO to transferring your wheats to secondary.....

Nope..........

UnaBonger said:

Just say NO to transferring your wheats to secondary.....

Click to expand...

Just say NO to transferring ALL your beers to secondary..... (OK, not all, most)

It really depends what you are going for. I do a very light American wheat that I ferment as clean as possible and transfer to secondary and age it for a month in secondary. I also just brewed an Am wheat that I dry hopped in primary and had it in kegs 3 weeks after brewday.

It really depends what you are going for. Do you want a cloudy beer?

Always, Never, and almost either are not good statements IMO.

I use secondaries a lot, and a lot of times I don't. Take a read through my blog post about secondaries, I think it explains a lot of misconceptions about secondary fermentation.

Berserker_Brew said:

As the Germans would say, "Nein!"

Click to expand...

Yeah, but it's an American Wheat. Clarity can go either way. Still, I'd primary for a few weeks, cold crash and keg.

I rarely use a secondary at all anymore. However, I've used a secondary even with german hefeweizens in the past. They still maintain their cloudiness. It takes a lot of time and cold temperatures for all of the yeast to drop out of suspension, not to mention the protein content from the wheat. As others stated, it just depends what you want. It will be "more clear" if you go to secondary, but I'm sure it will maintain the wheat cloudiness unless you cold crash.