MY starter kit arrived today and looking at the instructions I realized that the Irish Ale I got required 2nd stage fermentation. I know I can skip that and leave it in the fermentation bucket an extra week, but thought to look if this was a good idea.
I couldn't find much on if glass or plastic was better, but I found comments talking about using the carboy as the Primary fermenter and not using the Fermentation bucket.
Can anyone explain why you would do this? I don't understand what would change in a carboy vs the bucket unless light has an effect?
For primary the use of HDPE (plastic bucket), or PETE (better bottle, plastic carboy), or glass is all personal preference. I prefer using 6g Better Bottle knock-offs (which I find to be more durable than the actual Better Bottle brand) Although, if you are doing a secondary you should try to do so in a carboy shaped vessel that is glass or PETE, not a HDPE bucket.
For you, as a beginner, I would recommend 3-4 weeks in primary and then straight to bottles for 2 weeks and then enjoy.
I am trying to make this concise, the reason you want to use a carboy shaped secondary of the same size as your batch is to reduce head space and surface area of the beer coming in contact with the gasses above the beer. 5g of liquid going into a 5g carboy will fill it right up to the bottom/middle of the neck. Thus, reducing the surface area of the beer coming in contact with the gasses above (head space). This is desirable because it greatly reduces oxidation and probably infection.
Keeping this in mind, you need to brew with the end in mind. If you end up going into secondary and you only brewed 4.5g of wort (which often happens with beginners and 5g kit beers) and your vessel is 5g, you will defeat the purpose, I've done this and ended up with a very oxidated Belgian Tripel after 3 months.
I brew about 140g a beer a year and rarely use a secondary. I mean rarely. I dry hop in primary, I add oak (if for a short period) in primary. I'll use secondary if I am making a big beer like RIS that I'm going to age for 9-12 months, which is about 1 time a year.
I simply don't like to secondary unless you absolutely have to.