ESB to secondary?

[iamtommyboy]

Hi all. I have brewed only my 4th batch of beer, an extra special bitter reciped from a LHBS. It has been in primary for 5 days now and still looks really cloudy. It is still bubbling away, so I know that fermentation is not finished yet. My question is, should I secondary this beer? There looks to be a lot of much floating in it. I have not disturbed it at all, so it isn't as if the sediment has been stirred up...maybe I just need to wait until fermentation completes then judge the clarity and decide on a secondary or not? Thoughts? Recommendations?

 

[Ace_Club]

No need to secondary. Let it sit in the primary for 4 weeks or so. It will clear up nicely on its own.

 

[Hockeyhunter99]

5 days is still really early. my Light ESB didn't drop krausen for 10+ days. i did rack to secondary on mine but i dry-hopped for 10 days. little long for DH but it still turned out great. going to copy it this weekend.

 

[BmillaTheBrewzilla]

I agree with Ace. The issue of transferring to secondary is one of the most confusing issues to the new homebrewer. A lot of people like to secondary, and there's nothing wrong with that... but there are tons of homebrewers (myself included) who have found that ales turn out better sitting in primary for three or four weeks with no secondary. Most of the homebrew experts I've been reading or listening to on webcasts advocate the no secondary thing for modern homebrewers. If you pitch lots of healthy yeast, letting the beer sit in primary allows plenty of time for the nasty byproducts of fermentation to clean up... transferring to secondary increases risk of infection, oxidation, etc.

Good luck with that beer!

 

[brewit2it]

Hi all. I have brewed only my 4th batch of beer, an extra special bitter reciped from a LHBS. It has been in primary for 5 days now and still looks really cloudy. It is still bubbling away, so I know that fermentation is not finished yet. My question is, should I secondary this beer? There looks to be a lot of much floating in it. I have not disturbed it at all, so it isn't as if the sediment has been stirred up...maybe I just need to wait until fermentation completes then judge the clarity and decide on a secondary or not? Thoughts? Recommendations?

It's funny you mention this. I posted about this earlier today in this thread:

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f39/1st-2-batches-bring-up-some-questions-long-ish-217231/


I made only 2 batches both very recently and the second one that I brewed on saturday looks exactly like you describe, completely cloudy like it is fermenting from top to bottom. It seems to be chugging along fine but I wasn't expecting it to look like this since the first batch I made was fairly clear at this stage with the exception of the top krausen. One of the main differences is the yeast. In the cloudy one I used Nottingham ale yeast while in the first batch it was safale-05.

I'm personally not planning on using a secondary since I'm too lazy and stick to the mantra of KISS. Why risk oxidizing or contaminating? I'm just going to ride it out. If I have to wait 3 weeks for it to completely settle thats fine because I'm drinking the first batch already and have a lot of commercial beer as well to tide me over.