To secondary ferment or not. That is the question.

[mikeyt]

I've just done my fourth brew, which is all nicely bottled now. It's a BREWFERM ABDIJ - which comes as a kit - just add water and sugar. I've done exactly what the instructions say, which is set the kit up, ferment for approx 10 days, before adding more sugar and bottling. This way you get bottle conditioned beer.

But after reading a few threads on here, a lot of advice is to primary ferment, then secondary ferment, and then bottle or keg after that. So could my beerkits be done this way, or am I getting mixed up with the different types of brewing, ie between doing your own mash, etc and brewing from a kit. I was just wondering if I did this 1, 2, 3 fermentation with my beerkits if it would taste any better, and if it may increase the alcohol sligthly - as I would be adding just a little extra sugar to charge the bottles.

Thanks for any advice.

 

[Fatabbot]

It would probably improve your beer. A few more weeks of aging improves most styles. Not to mention that you end up with a beer with better clarity if you let it sit in a secondary for a week or two. It would probably have little to no effect on the ABV of the beer as the fermentation should be complete, or almost so, in the primary.

 

[Catfish]

You could do that. But why. Beer is like a child, you can't start treating it nicely after it goes off to college. If I am reading your post correctly you did a hot water, just add sugar recipe, and you are concerned about the effect of clearing it and possibly kegging it. It is eating instant ramen from your finest china.

In the process of making better beer clearing it and kegging it are way down on the list. Using fresh ingredients and cooking your own wort are far more important.

 

[Mr Bigins]

I'm a bit confused. Did you use regular sugar in your brewing kit? That's not right if you did.


Fermentation for 1 week
Secondary for 2 weeks
After bottling or kegging wait atleast 2 weeks

 

[God Emporer BillyBrew]

Catfish is right. Spend your money on a big pot to boil in and start making your own wort. Brewers Best makes a good kit that's not much harder than what you're doing. Plus it will give you insight into how the process works when you decide to start using recipes or making your own recipes. Prehopped kits that tell you to add sugar are definitely not your best option. You deserve and are ready for better.


Next step would be to start buying liquid yeast.

 

[Catfish]

I think that even liquid yeast can wait. Here's my off the top of my head list of what is important to make good beer. Things like boiling the wort, reading a recipe, sanitation need to come first. Then temperatures; steeping (or mashing) and fermentation and Full wort boil (if you're not already). Sanitation again. And then things like liquid yeast and learning to make starters (if you're doing styles that demand it).

I'm sure I'm forgeting some stuff too.

 

[gonzoflick]

In terms of secondary, it depends on several things. One of which is, do you want clearer beer? For my last brew (a Belgian White I didn't want it to be clear so I fermented for 15 days in primary.

 

[max-the-knife]

I'm doing a Scottish ale. The supplier said to put it in the primary for a week, and the secondary for one week, bottle it and drink it in an additional two weeks. That adds up to a total of four weeks. After reading all the advise in this forum I've decided to use the 1 2 3 rule. The waiting is killing me but I used the beer theif the other night to test gravity and it tasted great. I'm willing to wait the additional two weeks to get the better conditioned beer.

 

[mikeyt]

Cheers for the advice.

Just to make it clearer - I do tend to ramble a bit - I have followed the kits instructions down to the letter, and yes, I have used proper brewing sugar and not household sugar.

So far I have brewed a Black Rock Stout, an Edme IPA and an Edme Lager - all of which have been bottled once they have been in primary for a week, and when the SG is at the correct level. They have all been left the required time in the bottles, and I am now (well, not right now) in the process of drinking them. And they all taste pretty good to me!!

My question was whether they may be further improved by a week in a secondary before bottling. To be honest with you, I may just as well try it out. Do a 25 litre kit, bottle half after the first fermentation, but put the other half in a secondary for another week, and then bottle that. After a few impatient weeks of waiting, I'll compare the two, and let you all know whether it was actually worth it or not!

I'd love to do a brew from scratch, and do my own wort etc, but my wife says I must spend more time with my 2 year old son, and save the proper brewing for when he's older, and I have a house with a garage!

 

[God Emporer BillyBrew]

It probably would improve it, but it would be a pretty slim improvement for your money. I understand your wanting to make it better and wanting more gear. But I think the difference would be pretty insignificant for the money you spend.

Even brewers sugar is inferior to using Malt Extract. You'll make a lot better beer by leaving any kind of sugar out.

You could do a boil in about 4 hours. I've got two small kids. I get everything ready ready before they go to bed on Friday or Saturday night, then start heating my water and let my grains steep while I help get the kids to bed. I'm usually done by midnight. You can even do most of your sterilization while you're boiling, so that saves time also.

It will add 3-4 hours at most to the total 5 week process and the quality of your beer will be so much better.

I know that we keep pushing you in a direction that you don't feel like you want to go, but trust me. You will be glad you did it. I've heard a lot of things that I didn't want to hear about how to make better beer. Usually, when I've followed that advice, I've been very happy with the results.

 

[jkenvere]

Mikyt, what we need here ( or somewhere) is a forum for us lowly kit makers, Your right about confusing info. I just started using canned kits myself and the first 2 batches are already gone. It was very good beer even though I made some mistakes. I used regular sugar with the first batch and it was 90% perfect. I am very fussy about which beer I drink and found my home brew to be equal to any store bought specialty brands.
So my answer to your question is do not follow the supplied instructions. They have you rushing along. You can make better beer buy just giving it a little more time ( which costs nothing) After reading a bit and asking questions I have followed this time line.. 3-5 days in primary ( FG of 1.020) and then racking to a carbouy for 2-3 weeks. Then rack back to primary add priming sugar and bottle. I think if you bottle after 1 week your going to have a lot of crap in your bottles and your buddies will prefer a cheep can of Bud to yours.
Anybody now a good kit forum so we can stay out of your hair?

 

[Mr Bigins]

Mikyt, what we need here ( or somewhere) is a forum for us lowly kit makers, Your right about confusing info. I just started using canned kits myself and the first 2 batches are already gone. It was very good beer even though I made some mistakes. I used regular sugar with the first batch and it was 90% perfect. I am very fussy about which beer I drink and found my home brew to be equal to any store bought specialty brands.
So my answer to your question is do not follow the supplied instructions. They have you rushing along. You can make better beer buy just giving it a little more time ( which costs nothing) After reading a bit and asking questions I have followed this time line.. 3-5 days in primary ( FG of 1.020) and then racking to a carbouy for 2-3 weeks. Then rack back to primary add priming sugar and bottle. I think if you bottle after 1 week your going to have a lot of crap in your bottles and your buddies will prefer a cheep can of Bud to yours.
Anybody now a good kit forum so we can stay out of your hair?

What do you mean by kit makers? If you're going to brew a recipe beer, kit's arn't involved. If your kit calls for you to use table sugar, then the people you get your kit's from are idiots and you should get them elsewhere. I get my supply's from Midwest, Dave the owner and the people that work there all brew or make wine and they ALL know what they're doing. I've only recently got back into brewing and I use to get the majiority of Hops and malt for 7 months of brewing at a flea like market at a bar called Shelock's Home. I'd buy the hops directly from the growers, and the liquid malt from large venders. So reading some things some of you are saying it quite bizare to me. Let me give you a quick lesson on making your own recipe beer, and others that do so can chime in.

Let's go with a Stout. There're many ways to brew a Stout, you can even use different ingrediences and come up with a similar outcome. You could use Dark liquid malt with a grain such as chocolet, or, you could use Pale liquid malt with Black Patent grain and both would be quite similar in look and taste.

In my Stout recipe I use Black Patent(and alot of it) and Chocolet 2(BP) parts to 1(C) and 7-8lbs of Pale malt extract. From there you can hop your beer to your liking. I use 4oz bittering hops(Cascade) and 4oz aroma(Kent Goldings). The last 20 minutes of boiling I add about 1oz of aroma at 5 minute intervals. I pitch my Stout with liquid Brittish Ale yeast. This is a 5 gallon recipe.

I'm posting this to show you it really is that easy. Some people make more into it than it is, it's not rocket science and as long as you sanitize properly and brew and pitch the yeast properly, you'll be good. Back when I was brewing double 5 gallon batches at a time of my Stout every 2-3 weeks, I didn't even use a kit instruction sheet to guide me on the process. I just poured in the Pale malt from a 3 gallon jug without measuring, and threw in the hops from that were in my freezer without measuring. I always recyle my grain seeping bags. Making this recipe for years trnsfered me into being an excellent cook, seafood and an all day BBQ with 2 home made BBQ sauces.

Yes I was that good and all my friends said it was the best beer they had ever had. And I agree.


Now you nOOb's, especially the ones brewing with sugar(yuck!) should get a decent kit with proper instructions before coming up with a recipe. In my sig you'll see "Octane IPA". It's a great beer with a high alcohole content and would be a great kit to get you started brewing correctly. The kit comes with Hop pellets which I don't use but you can ask them to replace them with hop slugs or hop leaves.


Midwest
1-888-449-2739

http://www.midwestsupplies.com

 

[Engelramm]

Catfish is right. Spend your money on a big pot to boil in and start making your own wort. Brewers Best makes a good kit that's not much harder than what you're doing. Plus it will give you insight into how the process works when you decide to start using recipes or making your own recipes. Prehopped kits that tell you to add sugar are definitely not your best option. You deserve and are ready for better.


Next step would be to start buying liquid yeast.

Well stated.

I'm new at this and here's what I started with:
$45 for a big stainless pot
$50 for a Brewer's Best Ferment kit (buckets, hydrometer, racking cane, capper, instruction book, etc.)
$23-$26 for Brewer's Best Ingredient kit (even comes with caps!)
$16 for Papazian's The Complete Joy of Homebrewing

And I chose to use Brewer's Best Ingredient kits because I didn't know any better. I've figured out that they are kind of "intermediate" level brewing...and they make good beer.

 

[Monk]

What do you mean by kit makers?

I think they mean canned kits like Cooper's, or perhaps Brewferm, which was mentioned in the original post.

Mikyt, Jkenvere, if you would like good advice on making kits, as well as good discussion about brands and quality, I highly recommend this site:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/jim.dunleavy/

click on "Forum" near the top of the page.

Many people on that forum are into brewing with kits and have a lot of experience. Also, they are really nice and helpful fellas.

Good luck

Monk

 

[TheJadedDog]

I think the confusion comes from the fact that many ingredient kits come with 3.3 lbs of LME and suggest using sugar to bring up the amount of fermentables. My lhbs recommends using DME instead of sugar, so as a new brewer I buy the ingredient kits and add the appropriate amount of DME in increase my fermentables. It's not that sugar is inherently bad, but using DME will greatly improve your beer without making it any harder to brew.

In terms of recipes...kits are simply a surefire way to know you are getting all the right ingredients, not much different than reading a recipe and going to your lhms and asking for the listed ingredients, the biggest down side is they tend to be more expensive than just buying the ingredients a la carte.

 

[andylegate]

When I decided to try brewing, I came online and did a lot of research, reading threads in forums like this, and articles I found online.
Next, I looked at what I could afford, and what equipment I already had.
Last, I decided what to do: Which was to go to homebrewheaven.com and get one of their kits. Now their kits are either patial grain, or all extract brewing, and make anywhere from 5 to 6 gallons. You don't order blind either, they have everything online that you can read from any paticular kit so you can see what you are getting into. Their kits contain only the ingredients, not the equipment.
The instructions follow the 1-2-3 fermentation.
When the heavy box arrived, I made the beer, and 3 weeks later it was one heck of a good tasting experience. So I dove into it by making a trip to a homebrew store that's not too far from here, and tah-dah. The ingredients were the same, from the grains, to the extracts, etc, etc.
For me, the kit got me started and gave me a good experience so that I was willing to go out and try making other brews. Fortunatley for me, the kit was nothing more that partial grain brewing ingredients, and instructions on how to do it. Everything else was up to me. The instructions even explained things like why we use corn sugar instead of table sugar.
Now another kit tha someone handed me came from Walmart. It was a joke! and yes! It said to use table sugar!!! I laughed my rear off, and was very glad that I had gone the route that I went.

 

[mikeyt]

Blimey, I certainly have had plenty of replies to my query. Thanks very much for your time taken to drop us a line or two of advice.

Reading some of the comments, I think that some of you know what I'm going on about, yet I still have some people confused. Jkenvere - you know what I'm on about, and I shall try your advice. Your also right about all the crap in the bottom of the bottles. I really could do with trying to minimise that!

Don't worry, I never was or never would use table sugar, but I will now try and use a light spray malt extract and see what difference in flavour and texture that makes.

I must stress that at the moment, I'm really enjoying the homebrewing, and I don't think by using these kits I'm doing anything inferior. My local homebrew shop stocks dozens of different kits, from stout, lager, bitter, IPA - everything you guys make. I don't go for the '40 pints for £5' cans because like cheep brew in the shops, it's bound to taste awful. I am selective about which kits I buy, and prefer to buy those which are a little more expensive, but in the long run appear to offer more in flavour and enjoyment than just being a quick fix for getting drunk! In time, I will try my own brew from the start, and I love this forum for all the help and advice which is given, but just at this moment in time, I'm just trying to squeeze out the best from what I believe are already very good kit beers that I have done.

Thanks for all the advice, and I shall conitinue to read and post on other threads - I think I have exausted this thread now, until I get results from any secondary brewing, anyway!

 

[marshman]

I thnk the question that you wanted answered in all this regarded the necessity of secondary fermentation. I asked it, too, and the general consensus is that it's NOT a secondary fermentation, it's a secondary container for storage/aging. The idea is to drain the beer gently from its' primary fermenter to a second, also sanitized container, leaving as much of the trub (the muck at the bottom) behind. This will help with the clarity of the final product, as most of the remaining particles will have fallen to the bottom.

Most of the meisters here will, after a few weeks (or months, depending on the brew style), transfer to yet another container, leaving the particulates behind, and then add a small portion of fermentables right before bottling to provide carbonation.

 

[Mr Bigins]

I'm not in brewing to save money, and even though that happens, I'm in it to make great beer. You can get beer this good at a liquer store and if you did it would be upwards of $10 a 6 pack. Back when I bought my hops and liquid malt in bulk, and then would buy my grains when ready to brew, it cost about $.65 - $.70 cents a bottle. Now it's a doller a bottle and I have no problem with that.

But I actually keg now. :fro:

 

[Bobby_M]

Just to add to the idea that some kits are better than others, I got my start with a "brew your own beer" kit. It was for 1 gallon batches, single step ferment, and called for more dextrose in the wort than DME. I did two batches with that, the first was horrendous and it never actually carbonated for some reason. The second is actually in a secondary right now as I wanted one last practice run before initiating my first 5 gallon batch with real equipment/ingredients.

Just smelling the difference between the Cascade hops in kit Morebeer.com and the unbelievably skunky, unidentifiable crud in the "brew your own" kit was enough to make me realize the error of my ways. My wife thought I was going nuts because she found me sniffing the empty hop bag a couple times with a smile on my face ;-)

Bobby

 

[jkenvere]

Ya Mikeyt it's funny how some people just blow wind and never listen. I just bottled another Coopers kit and all is going smoothly. A friend layed 12 dozen old non twist top bottles on me. Been up to my elbows in tepid water and scrub brush etc. It was a light spray malt that I used. I used the 500 Kilo package and then used 500 kilos of regular corn sugar then used 1 1/3 cup to prime. and that made a big differance. Things just keep getting better.
Marshman Thanks for the clear answer.
Jaded dog- Coopers kits cost only $ 10 ? If thats to much then I'm mistified. I'm not using them to save money I'm making beer becase it's FUN. ( and I'm a lush)

 

[TREMBLE]

I think alot of confusion about kits comes from the fact you can buy what I refer to as kits, such as Coopers/Edme cans that you just add sugar/spray malts to and you can buy "kits" from places that are a pre selected bunch of ingrediants that you need to boil/steep and all that other stuff.

In the UK it is very hard to buy anything other than canned kits or bulk ingrediants, I am just using cans at the minute and have made some nice beer that I am very happy with. I have started looking towards using real ingrediants but have found it a little confusing when I need to source a receipe, convert american units to grams/KG and allow for the difference in your gallons to our gallons. Not to mention your shops seem to have different names for some items, so I need to convert all this then go try and buy the ingrediants. So far I have put it off!

Most Americans seem to go straight into extract/boiling rather than using canned kits so maybe don't realise these kits are around?

 

[andylegate]

Most Americans seem to go straight into extract/boiling rather than using canned kits so maybe don't realise these kits are around?

Take a look at this link here: http://www.homebrewheaven.com and you'll see what they list for kits. They are all simply the ingredients mixed up, be them all extract or partial grain / extract. Most have hops you have to add, with instructions of what to do. These "Kits" need you to get your own equipment. My LHBS does have the Cooper Can kits, that have the hopped malts, etc.
Once you get into using the ingredients from a kit that contains grains, it's hard to go back.
There are several recipe threads on this forum that you can find recipes for. I also recomend Beertools.com as they can let you make your own recipe and have TONS of home made recipes listed there, both All Grain and Extract ones.

 

[TREMBLE]

Yeah that is exactly what I mean, it seams any American's first intro to homebrew is straight into unhopped extract boiling. I have no doubt this gives a much better quality of beer than the kinda kits I am doing. Homwe Brewing is looked at as something alchoholics try over here in the UK and when I told my friends I had started I think they wanted to try and get me profesional help! Then I had my first party where they had to drink it and they where all really shocked to find they liked it!

The sort of kits American shops sell with all the ingredients ready to be boiled are the stage I am now wanting to be at, though I don't have a suitable boiler at this time. I suppose it is a double edge sword, you probably get better beer to start with when you make ingredient kits while we start alot cheaper when using non-boil kits. I have found (with the help of this forum) one shop in the UK selling ingredient kits for boiling and once I get a boiler (its my birthday in Nov, guess what I want!) I will definately be moving on to boil kits and hopefully mini mashing soon after that.

 

[andylegate]

Well I'd have to say that trying a kit like the kind I indicated, helps show you how beers are made (except for the extract part! ) and by seeing the different ingredients, having to steep the grains, then boil the wort and add the extract, and follow the hops schedual, etc, etc, shows you how it's not that hard. Now getting a boil pot, yah, a 22 quart (around 20 liters) cost about 45 to 50 US dollars if it's steel from one of our local Walmarts. I lucked out, my parents had an old pot they didn't want anymore. A 20 quart Stock Pot only cost about 20 US dollars at the same Walmart. Using these pots, you can make a 5 to 6 gallon batch using an extract or partial grain recipe.
Going All Grain is still a big step for some. It requires a bigger set up using much bigger pots! You also have to control the temps of the wort because you're having to extract the malts from the grain yourself now.
And yes, once you've done one of these kits or two, you'll find yourself wondering if you can come up with your own recipe(s) to try. I've had much success with mine. Only one batch didn't come out the way I wanted it to, which was my Carmel Cream Ale, the flavor was just right, but it was WAY too alcoholic for me. It ended up being almost 9.1%. So next time I make it I'll use a less aggressive yeast.
That's another thing you learn about. Yeasts. See, we think we're making the beer, but actually it's the yeast that's doing it!
I had a Honey Ale that I wanted red in color. Came out gold instead. Turned out I used the wrong grain when I steeped them. Still, I learned from it, and I'll use a different grain next time.
Mostly though, I do this for both the fun of making it, and how my beers taste!

 

[boo boo]

Well for a start, it would be wise to read this on-line book to get some ideas http://www.howtobrew.com/intro.html .
this book helped a lot of brewers and a lot of people still use it for reference, myself included.

We, at least a lot of us, started out making canned kits with the hope of a decent beer to reward ourselves with at the end. It just got to the point of us realizing that better beer could be brewed with a little more knowledge and better ingredients.

good luck.