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

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I've done a few beers with spices now that have had a month or more in primary, and the results have been excellent. I do not do secondaries now unless racking on fruit or if my secondary is empty and I need a primary :)
 
ON my first 10 gallon batch (Yooper's DFH 60 Clone) I left 5 gallons in primary for 3 weeks and transferred the other 5 gallons to secondary after 2 weeks and then 1 week in secondary.

Both were dry hopped for 1 week.

I wanted to see if there was any taste or clarity difference between the 2.

The one that I transferred stayed at my house, the one I left in primary went to my buddies house.

I've been drinking on mine for about a week and a 1/2 I guess. He had went to the beach and couldn't tap his till this past Saturday night.

I finally got over there yesterday afternoon and he poured me a pint. Crystal clear and tasted awesome! We decided in the next day or so that we would compare the 2 side by side for taste but I could already tell it was close if not exactly like my 5 gallons.

When I got there, he and his buddies were hitting that keg pretty hard and after I left and got home, he called and said the keg RAN OUT!!!!! haha.. 5 gallons in 2 days!

Sooo, no side by side taste test for this batch but I"m still convinced enough from what I know mine tasted / looked like compared to his, to say I doubt I'll do any transfers to secondary anymore, even when dry hopping!

Probably will only transfer in the future when I start harvesting yeast!
 
I blindly followed the no secondary method immediately after reading it on this site. Mainly because it just one less thing to do in a labor intensive hobby and I enjoy being lazy. Now everyone needs to put there heads together on this site and come up with something else I can cut out of the homebrewing equation with out compromising beer quality.
 
I almost feel like I should get some kind of "Completed Training" certificate after reading all 25 pages of this. What a boat load of information!

I do have one small quetion.

Someone had posted that the Krausen falls back down after fermentation. I'm brewing my first beer and it has been in my Primary for 6 days (4 days of vigorous fermenation...its now slowing down)...The krausen in my Primary is not "falling down" but it seems to be sticking to the sides? Normal? If its not normal what steps should I take if any?

Thanks,
 
Jayman931 said:
I almost feel like I should get some kind of "Completed Training" certificate after reading all 25 pages of this. What a boat load of information!

I do have one small quetion.

Someone had posted that the Krausen falls back down after fermentation. I'm brewing my first beer and it has been in my Primary for 6 days (4 days of vigorous fermenation...its now slowing down)...The krausen in my Primary is not "falling down" but it seems to be sticking to the sides? Normal? If its not normal what steps should I take if any?

Thanks,
Click to expand...

Your hydrometer is the only way to tell. My wits with bottle harvest hoegaarden yeast averages about 3 weeks with krausens, even though the hydro readings show terminal gravity has been reached. Some krausen's have been known to dissapear after 24 hours or so. I don't believe there's ever anything "normal" in brewing where the yeast is concerned.
 
Jayman931 said:
Someone had posted that the Krausen falls back down after fermentation. I'm brewing my first beer and it has been in my Primary for 6 days (4 days of vigorous fermenation...its now slowing down)...The krausen in my Primary is not "falling down" but it seems to be sticking to the sides? Normal? If its not normal what steps should I take if any?

Thanks,
Click to expand...

Normal. RDWHAHB.
 
Revvy said:
Your hydrometer is the only way to tell. My wits with bottle harvest hoegaarden yeast averages about 3 weeks with krausens, even though the hydro readings show terminal gravity has been reached. Some krausen's have been known to dissapear after 24 hours or so. I don't believe there's ever anything "normal" in brewing where the yeast is concerned.
Click to expand...

Ditto.

I've seen little or no krausen, or a whole lot (all over the place!). Usually, after 3 weeks or so, they pretty much disappear.
 
I guess I should rephrase that....the Krausen has fallen but there is a nice layer of it sticking to the glass of my carboy...When I switched from my blow off to my air lock I noticed looking down into the carboy that the krausen is in the Neck of the Carboy and stuck (not blocking of the air..still bubbles coming out of the airlock)...I was going to push it down into the beer and let the yeast take care of it...but I am going to dry hop in my primary so I think I will just wait till that time to do it. Will 10 days of dry hopping take care of the small amout of Krausen that will fall into the beer or should I knock the krausen that is in the neck into it now while I still have about 14 days left in the primary before Dry Hopping so it will settle?

Thanks again for all the replies.

Hope that made sense...I'm not worried about it..just looking for advice.
 
I always have gunk on the sides of my primary leftover from the krausen. It's usually dried-on, and stays put when I rack to bottles or secondary. I don't think there's anything there that needs to be taken care of by you or the yeast.
 
I brew in the standard white plastic bucket. Some krausen falls as trub to the bottom of the bucket, some forms a ring at beer level. How much forms where depends on the beer. The beer is siphoned out, so no harm done, as far as I can tell.....
 
What a great thread, I was taught by an old school brewer of 28 years to never use secondary unless for dry hopping or adding fruit, ect. He also stated to never keep my beer in primary for much more than a week. I will now be experimenting with 2-4 week primaries and I hope to have cleaner, clearer beer. My question is whether or not to try and tell the old school brewer that gave me the original advice about what I have read here or not...
 
I've been leaving my beer in the primary for 3 weeks+ forever. Mostly because I'm lazy. It's always turned out well but I always contributed it to living in a cold area.

Does temp play any role?
 
Surely beer in a bottle after 4 days fermentation is the same as a few more days in primary and a few days in secondary. The same reactions and changes happen in bottle unless anybody can persuade me that 11 gallons bulk behaves dirrerently to a one pint bottle.
 
Revvy said:
It's not an art....guys, we all move our beers, from the basement lager up to the kitchen, or from the brewing closet up to the table to rack to the bottling bucket. We kick stuff up all the time, and those of us who long primary STILL don't have cloudy beers.

What do you think we do, levitate our fermenters from place on pink fluffy clouds? :D

First- The longer you primary the tighter the yeast cake gets (That is what Jamil and palmer are talking about in terms of larger volumes of beer in commercial vats pressing down on the yeast and possibly autolyzing, just on a smaller scale for our homebrewing beer volumes.) your yeast is tighter than if you rack to a secondary or only play with your beer after a couple weeks.

It's NOT going to kick up that much, and anything that does is just going to settle back down shortly after. But it's not going to be as much as you all think.

Heck, half the time I forget adding finnings like moss in the boil.

I don't do anything special when racking or lifting my beers, they get shaken as much as the next guy, and yet for having my beers in primary for a month, I STILL get comments from judges about the clarity of my beers. I don't even cold crash them.

Secondly- when we talk about the "yeast cleaning up after themselves' we're talking about the yeast having plenty of time to go the extra mile and pull a lot more proteins and stuff out of solution which results in overall clarity. Think of it like polishing the beer molecules. The beer as a whole takes on a cleaner, and crisper flavor profile and overall visual clarity, including reducing chill haze proteins.

Then like I said, they are pulled tighter and tighter in the yeast cake over the month or more in secondary.

In fact when racking it to my bottling bucket I rub the bottom of my autosiphon once across the bottom of my primary to kick up a little extra yeast for bottle. Just to insure that there is plenty of yeast to do the job.

And STILL my beer is pretty clear. It's been called Jewell-like on scoresheets, and I didn't put my beer fermenter in bubble wrap to keep from disturbing the delicate trub at the bottom.:rolleyes:

You're over negatizing the process. It's not a special process, you don't have to be an expert racker or experienced brewer to do this, it's the ANTI Complexity trick. Leaving beer longer in primary actually takes more gunk out of the beer, and leaves more behind at racking to a keg or bottling bucket.

It's really foolproof.

The other thing that further leads to clearer beer is long time in the fridge or chill chest if it's a keg. Again more stuff is dragged out of solution and made tighter in the yeastcake/trub.

I found a bottle of beer that had been in the back of the fridge for 3 months and at pouring the sediment in the bottom of the bottle was so tight that I could fully upend the bottle while pouring it, and even smacking the bottom of the bottle a couple times like you do a ketchup bottle, would dislodge it one bit...The beer was like a polished crystal.

It ain't rocket science or complicated.....
Click to expand...


I am brand new to the site and now I see why people commend your advice. Great stuff.
 
BOBTHEukBREWER said:
The same reactions and changes happen in bottle unless anybody can persuade me that 11 gallons bulk behaves dirrerently to a one pint bottle.
Click to expand...

I was wondering about this myself. One of my best beers was actually my very first, an Imperial Pale Ale which was around 8.5% ABV which I bottled after 10 days in a primary. Some people might think this is crazy for a "big" beer. I then tried a bottle after 1 week in the bottle because I didn't know any better. Sure it was pretty green and kind of harsh, but I still enjoyed tasting that part of the process. A couple of weeks later it was amazing. As long as it's stored warm, wouldn't about the same thing happen once it's carbonated?

Thanks for all the great discussion, everybody! If there were only one good way to brew, the beer world would be a very boring place. :mug:
 
BOBTHEukBREWER said:
Surely beer in a bottle after 4 days fermentation is the same as a few more days in primary and a few days in secondary. The same reactions and changes happen in bottle unless anybody can persuade me that 11 gallons bulk behaves dirrerently to a one pint bottle.
Click to expand...

Aging is faster the smaller the package. Ask any wine nerd about magnums vs 750s, they'll talk your ear off about it.

The reason I don't like to bottle is that you can't really do anything to the beer so at that point the fun ends for me.

That said extended aging of beer in carboys is problematic so if you can't get it into a sealed tank (corny) you should get it into a bottle.
 
remilard said:
Aging is faster the smaller the package. Ask any wine nerd about magnums vs 750s, they'll talk your ear off about it.

The reason I don't like to bottle is that you can't really do anything to the beer so at that point the fun ends for me.

That said extended aging of beer in carboys is problematic so if you can't get it into a sealed tank (corny) you should get it into a bottle.
Click to expand...

That's because the cork has the same cross-sectional area for both bottles. Same O2 diffusion for larger/smaller bottles. We don't really have this issue with beer, unless yer corking of course....
 
Ok why the hell isn't this thread stickied somewhere? Everyone and their brother jokes that "this has been covered a million times, but" and I don't see this or any other thread on this sticked, which leads me to believe this is why well meaning learners (such as myself) tend to start mew threads on the subject.

I'm extremely excited to dryhop into my first two AG batches, one a Stone Ruination clone and the other a burning river PA clone, either tonight or Friday night, instead of having to rack one into my only betterboy, then clean out that primary to rack the other one into it. Ecstatic, even.
 
natewv said:
I'm extremely excited to dryhop into my first two AG batches, one a Stone Ruination clone and the other a burning river PA clone, either tonight or Friday night, instead of having to rack one into my only betterboy, then clean out that primary to rack the other one into it. Ecstatic, even.
Click to expand...

lol Happy to save you the trouble. A sticky would be cool.
 
Don't secondary unless your beer really needs it. All the bull**** about yeast autolyzin is crap. I've left beers on cakes fr 6 months and they taste better after.

Never secondary unless you really need to for something, dry hopping doesn't count, and even then only do it after a month
 
i couldn't spare the time to read all 27 pages of messages on this thread, but I did get a wealth of info from the couple that I did look at.
Good to know about the lack of need for secondary most of the time. I am planning to dry hop this most recent batch of what I'm calling Half-Assed IPA, but it sounds like I can just toss that batch of hop pellets right into the primary and wait some more. Thanks to everyone for their help, even with beginners like me.
 
tallguybrewing said:
i couldn't spare the time to read all 27 pages of messages on this thread, but I did get a wealth of info from the couple that I did look at.
Good to know about the lack of need for secondary most of the time. I am planning to dry hop this most recent batch of what I'm calling Half-Assed IPA, but it sounds like I can just toss that batch of hop pellets right into the primary and wait some more. Thanks to everyone for their help, even with beginners like me.
Click to expand...

That's exactly what I've been doing...and with good results. :mug:
 
What about headspace concerns? I usually secondary anything that will be sitting longer than 2 weeks or so. NOT because I'm afraid of the autolysis monster, but because I don't want my beer sitting for very long with as much headspace as is required in a primary fermenter. I mean, most of us ferment 5 gallon batches in a minimum of a 6.5 gallon container. I know that during vigorous fermentation CO2 will fill this space, but I don't like the idea of letting my beer sit for a month after that with a gallon and a half of headspace. But I haven't heard anyone from the anti-secondary club report oxidation issues, so this is not a problem apparently. I suppose racking beer to a secondary probably can introduce just as much oxygen though. While it's good to know that you CAN leave your beer in primary for an extended period without negative results, I still feel that secondaries result in clear beer faster(and I have tried both ways). It seems that there is a hint of arrogance to the anti-secondary club. Somewhere along the line, they jumped from "you don't NEED a secondary to make good, clear beer" to "if you use a secondary you are a sucker that has no idea what you are doing" (*not necessarily referring specifically to things said in this thread, just the general attitude out there amongst some people on this and other message boards.)
 
Adam, I hear what you're saying about what may be a hint of arrogance. I can't speak for others--and to be honest, don't really care what others do to their own beer--but I will say that as a pro-primary fermenter, it's not arrogance but a mix of relief and irritation in finding that the 2ndary mantra wasn't really true for a lot of reasons. I read 2-3 books before ever brewing and was indoctrinated by the secondary camp, so to read here and then discover for myself thru experiment led to a strong reaction.

That being said,i do want to do a side-by-side comparison to see clarity effects for my own process.

Cheers!

"All your home brew are belong to us!"
 
AdamWiz said:
What about headspace concerns? I usually secondary anything that will be sitting longer than 2 weeks or so. NOT because I'm afraid of the autolysis monster, but because I don't want my beer sitting for very long with as much headspace as is required in a primary fermenter. I mean, most of us ferment 5 gallon batches in a minimum of a 6.5 gallon container. I know that during vigorous fermentation CO2 will fill this space, but I don't like the idea of letting my beer sit for a month after that with a gallon and a half of headspace. But I haven't heard anyone from the anti-secondary club report oxidation issues, so this is not a problem apparently. I suppose racking beer to a secondary probably can introduce just as much oxygen though. While it's good to know that you CAN leave your beer in primary for an extended period without negative results, I still feel that secondaries result in clear beer faster(and I have tried both ways). It seems that there is a hint of arrogance to the anti-secondary club. Somewhere along the line, they jumped from "you don't NEED a secondary to make good, clear beer" to "if you use a secondary you are a sucker that has no idea what you are doing" (*not necessarily referring specifically to things said in this thread, just the general attitude out there amongst some people on this and other message boards.)
Click to expand...

That headspace would still contain a nice blanket of CO2 and should do no harm. If you transfer to secondary, your beer will be setting under a blanket of oxygen unless you purge the headspace with CO2.
 
jdubb75 said:
That headspace would still contain a nice blanket of CO2 and should do no harm. If you transfer to secondary, your beer will be setting under a blanket of oxygen unless you purge the headspace with CO2.
Click to expand...
This makes a lot of sense. Not sure why I didn't think about it that way. I do make sure that when I secondary I top it up so there is minimal headspace, but I'm starting to think that I may be better off leaving it in the primary. Even though there is a lot of headspace, there is still a lot of CO2 in there from the primary fermentation to keep oxygen off the beer. I think for my next few brews I'm going to go with no secondary, just extended primaries to see if there is any improvement.
 
As far as o2 in secondaries, I've always noticed some co2 released despite FG being reached and stable. So I don't think that's an issue.

I secondary only out of habit and not fear of yeast dying. I like to do primaries in glass carboys to watch the fermentation but after just move it to plastics and leave it.

I never worry about picking up a little sediment either. A little yeast is never a bad thing to have.
 
Hal2418 in post #105 makes great point about yeast strain being important as to when you can rack from primary to keg/bottle. Kolsch yeast (029) has a gentle fermentation and will take a good while to be ready. On other hand, English Ale yeast (002), which will be in blowoff tube in 36 hours, will clear rapidly and leave bottom of primary looking like it has concrete hardened in it.
Not disputing anyone's argument here, but varying factors can contribute to when beer is actually ready to keg/bottle.
As for me, the four weeks in primary seems to be a reasonable amount of time for most ales to turn the corner without going past point of no return.
 
AdamWiz said:
This makes a lot of sense. Not sure why I didn't think about it that way. I do make sure that when I secondary I top it up so there is minimal headspace, but I'm starting to think that I may be better off leaving it in the primary. Even though there is a lot of headspace, there is still a lot of CO2 in there from the primary fermentation to keep oxygen off the beer. I think for my next few brews I'm going to go with no secondary, just extended primaries to see if there is any improvement.
Click to expand...

It all depends on your fermenter too. If you ferment in a glass carboy or a better bottle with a good airlock, then there really should be NO oxygen left in the head space after primary fermentation is done. The beer pushes out a lot of CO2 during primary fermentation, which in turn pushes out all of the oxygen. So in this case, its not really a "blanket of CO2", its just that your head-space is literally full of CO2.

Now if you're using a plastic bucket, the same would be the case, but the seals on the buckets are less solid and more permeable to oxygen from outside the fermenter getting into the fermenter through poor seals.

I use a glass carboy with a 3-piece airlock, and I've left plenty of beers in primary for several months (up to 3.5) with zero noticeable oxidation. (I have had one beer that became oxidized b/c of an airlock drying up, so I definitely know what to look for w.r.t. oxidation flavors)
 
I asked this in the yeast washing thread but will ask here too. My 1st AG and 1st no secondary brew was the same brew, a Stone ruination IPA Clone (so lots of trub). I ended up with over a gallon of trub, how much success do Primary only AG brewers have in harvesting/washing their yeast when there is so so so much extra ****e at the bottom of the fermenter upon tranferring to bottling bucket or keg...and in particular what steps do you take to do so?
 

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