Carboy Question

I've read and heard the advice that there is no reason for home brewers to transfer to a carboy prior to kegging or lagering. And, it makes a lot of sense - why does what's going on in the beer care about the yeast slurry at the bottom?

That said, my experience is that the beer clears VERY quickly once transferred into a carboy and off the sludge. My most recent example is a very cloudy munich helles that, after two days in the carboy, I could see through.

I'm a little worried about the fact that my own experience differs from what the yeast experts see. Do others see the same thing I do?

 

I won't pretend to be a yeast "expert", but I suspect your helles would have cleared up regardless of whether you transferred it to a secondary or not. I myself don't use secondary fermenters, and get very clear beer. There are advantages to leaving your beer on the yeast cake for a few days -- namely that it cleans up some diacetyl.

That said, if you have better results with transferring your beer into a secondary carboy for a few days, by all means do so. One great reason for doing it is you get access to that great yeast for brewing another beer sooner!

 

Sure, it's completely plausible that I'm always pulling the beer off the yeast at approximately the same time to (incorrectly) give the indication that the act of racking caused the trub to settle. (I'm the sort of systems engineering geek that just might tune a process to produce just that result.) That's why I'm curious if others have seen the same -- much stuff flocculating to the bottom 1-2 days after racking.