If using a secondary, I've always heard to use a 5 gallon carboy. If you keep it in the primary the whole time, you have a lot of space above the beer, so why couldn't you use a 6 gallon? Confused on the reasoning.
During fermentation the CO2 produced purges all of the oxygen out of the headspace. But when you transfer and there is headspace in the secondary it is largely air not CO2. This will cause the beer to get oxidized resulting in cardboard and sherry flavors.
EDIT: So the 5 gallon carboy should minimize headspace so the beer will be exposed to less oxygen when aging.
peterj said:During fermentation the CO2 produced purges all of the oxygen out of the headspace. But when you transfer and there is headspace in the secondary it is largely air not CO2. This will cause the beer to get oxidized resulting in cardboard and sherry flavors.
EDIT: So the 5 gallon carboy should minimize headspace so the beer will be exposed to less oxygen when aging.
Unless a person purges their 6 gallon carboy with CO2 before transferring.
So, I really don't need this carboy? Can it be used for primary? I guess not huh, since light can jack it up?
Trox said:The only 2 reasons to use a secondary is 1) You are going to be bulk aging your beer for more than 3 months, or 2) you have to free up your primary. The 2 biggest reasons on why not to use a secondary is 1) it is another step in which an infection could be introduced into your beer, and 2) you have a much greater chance of oxidizing your beer.
Your beer will clear up just as well in your primary as it will in your secondary (as long as your not in the habit of shaking it up in the fermentors to reintroduce the trub into it). You can also dry hop into the primary just as well as you could into a secondary without any issues. In the end for most styles of beer there is no good reason to use a secondary and a couple of great reasons not to.
The reason why it used to be recommended to use a secondary is because of autolysis (yeast rupturing) causing off flavors. It was thought that when yeast died they would rupture creating off flavors. In breweries this is a real fear due to the amount of beer they brew at one time, the pressure off all the beer on top of the settled yeast would cause the cells to rupture so they do need a secondary. Homebrewers don't work with the amounts off beer that could cause the cells to rupture so we don't need to worry about autolysis happening.
For priming you should consult priming calculator to figure out how much sugar (this will change depending on what you plan on using as a priming sugar also) you should use to get to the proper carb level for each style and the amount of beer you are bottling. Generally the amount the kits give you is usually more than you need (since using Beersmith to plan my recipes I almost never you more than 4.25 oz). You will then take the recommended amount of priming sugar and boil it into 2 cups of water. Cool that water down to about room temp, and then add it to the bottom of your bottling bucket. Then when you rack the beer into the bottling bucket place your hose at the bottom of the bucket so that it is curving around the all a little bit; this way when you rack over the beer will gently swirl around the bucket mixing the sugar throughout without any splashing (so as not to oxidize your beer).
Some people like to wait until they rack the beer over before measuring out their priming sugar; the reason being is this way they'll know exactly how much beer they have so they can get their carb level spot on for what they like. If you go that route then what you'll do is after boiling and cooling the priming sugar you'll gently pour it on top of the beer and using a sanitized spoon slowly stir it into the beer to met it mixed in. You want to be careful not to splash or anything otherwise you run the risk of oxidizing your beer.
http://www.northernbrewer.com/priming-sugar-calculator/ <---one online priming sugar calc. (I believe most of the recipe softwares also have a calc. I know Beersmith does not 100% sure of the rest)
(I believe most of the recipe softwares also have a calc. I know Beersmith does not 100% sure of the rest)
As long as your post is I'm surprised you couldn't come up with another reason. What I'd you want to use that yeast cake to eat up another batch? Especially a high OG batch. It's like a 5 gal starter.
I almost always do this when making big beers as it can be challenging to make a large enough starter. Pretty much the only reason I use a secondary
A 5 gallon starter would always be a massive overpitch for another 5 gallon batch. Overpitching can be detrimental to your beer. I would never recommend racking onto an entire yeast cake. But harvesting the correct amount of yeast from a yeast cake is a good idea. I use the Mr. Malty calculator to estimate things like this: http://www.mrmalty.com/calc/calc.html.
As long as your post is I'm surprised you couldn't come up with another reason. What I'd you want to use that yeast cake to eat up another batch? Especially a high OG batch. It's like a 5 gal starter.
I almost always do this when making big beers as it can be challenging to make a large enough starter. Pretty much the only reason I use a secondary
"Almost always" would be more accurate.
If you're going to do a really big beer (over 1.100) or a high gravity lager (pitch rate around 2.0), it's a pretty useful technique to first make a 5g session beer (1.035-1.045) using the same yeast, rack it off to bottle/keg and pitch the big wort onto that cake. It's a nice alternative to making the huge (and often multi-step) starter such a beer would need and then having to crash/decant/dump a large amount of fermented starter wort since you don't want that affecting your beer.
I've heard people giving this advice before, but I would personally never do this myself. Looking at the numbers in the Mr. Malty calculator (which I know are just an estimation) 5 gallons of a 1.100 gravity beer needs a 0.71 gallon starter. So using a 5 gallon starter is a little over 7 times the amount of yeast you actually need. I think it would be just as easy to scoop out the correct amount of slurry, discard the rest and pitch the right amount of yeast.
I guess it would be fine for a big lager though. That's a good point. It would still be more than twice the yeast you would actually need for a 1.100 gravity lager, but that's a reasonable over-pitch.
Were that it were that simple. If you use a calculator (like Braukaiser and Chris White's at Brewers Friend) that takes into account both inoculation rate and max growth rate in a "simple" starter (which is what the first beer is - no agitation), the numbers turn out much closer.
590 billion cells is what you really want for 5.25 gallons of a 1.100 ale wort (at 1.25 "big ale" pitch rate). 100 billion cells pitched into a 5.25 gallon batch of 1.040 gives an ending cell count of 700 billion cells. I'd not worry about that slight 110b cell (18.6%) over-pitch.
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