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tritch

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Hey everyone,

I am very excited to be brewing my first batch this weekend (just a american pale ale extract) and these forums have been very helpful.

I read a lot of the long primary vs secondary fermenter posts and do not mean to start that whole thing again but it seemed like most of the people involved brewed all grain. I was wondering if a long primary could be better for just all grain or if there was any real difference at that stage between the two.

Thank you!
 
You'll get a lot of different answers but this is what works for me. Higher gravity beers I will let it sit a little longer in the primary. I don't do secondary. It will take awhile for you to figure out what works best for you.
 
I think it's personal preference for the most part. I usually do run a secondary. I didn't when I started originally because of lack of equipment. With that being said my good friend does all grain, and he doesn't use a secondary. So find out what works best for you! Cheers!
 
Ive done over 100 batches and only 3 secondaries. Those were for adding large amounts of something like fruit (not a few oz of dry hops)

its your first brew, dont complicate things with an unnecessary step. Youll be freaking out about enough stuff
 
There are some cases where a secondary is a good idea, pale ale isn't one of them. All of the benefits of secondary don't apply when you're fermenting for less than 3 weeks.
 
3 weeks primary, then cold crash, gelatin, and straight to kegging/bottling.

I don't mean to hijack your thread @tritch but I had a question about this comment. I'll be bottling my first extract brew next week and I was just going to siphon to bottling bucket and add priming sugar and bottle. What's this talk about cold crash and gelatin?
 
I don't mean to hijack your thread @tritch but I had a question about this comment. I'll be bottling my first extract brew next week and I was just going to siphon to bottling bucket and add priming sugar and bottle. What's this talk about cold crash and gelatin?

Cold crash and using gelatin is to help clear out the beer. The lowered temperature puts the yeast into a dormant state and it falls out of the solution to the bottom. The Gelatin is supposed to attach to particles and fall to the bottom also. Or at least that is what I have gathered about reading thru the forums.

I never do the above, I just let the ferment go for about 3 weeks then do like you are going to do (siphon to bottling bucket, add priming sugar to that while siphoning and bottle).
 
Don't worry @weaver I was wondering the same thing also. Thank you everyone for your answers I can't wait to start brewing!
 
Secondaries aren't really needed for modern yeast strains. I wouldn't worry about it. Just rock your primary.

More importantly, make sure your sanitization is immaculate, and absolutely make sure you hit the right cooling temp before pitching. Log everything in your 'brewing book,' grab a nice cigar for brew day and enjoy!
 
I am in the minority here by using a secondary for all my beers. I did when I started because I simply enjoyed "playing with my beer." Many claim an increased chance of oxidation, but if done correctly, you won't have an issue. Does it help the clarity? It surely doesn't hurt, IMO. Plus, I did it to free up my primary so I could get another batch going soon. However, if you buy another bucket/carboy, that solves that problem. Like other posters said, do what you want/experiment - see what works for you.
 
Agree with the above. I use secondary for the majority of my beers, it's purely subjective (my perception based on past batches) but I feel that beers that have not gone through secondary often have a less pleasant taste or take longer to end up well than ones that have. and it kind of works as an imaginary production line for my beers. "now up, next up in primary"
 
I rarely use a secondary, and would never recommend using one until you have your brewing practices and sanitation down to a science. A secondary can be useful to ensure clarity, and is necessary for brewing lagers, fruit beers, sours, and some other styles.

For a Pale Ale, use a primary only. A secondary will expose your beer to a higher risk of oxygenation and a risk of infection.

My two cents. I've used both methods, and for my money, the quality of my beer was not discernibly different with a secondary.
 
I just started being last year got 15 batches under my belt from May to nov, do not worry about a secondry unless like others have said ur adding a flavoring agent for extended ageing. I test my primary at day 10 and 14 and gravity is usually stable by then so I dry hop always in primary for about 5 days then move the carboy to garage fridge to cold crash for 3-4 days. That's it and I've been pretty successful its my outcomes but u can dry hop in primary there's no prob with that at all.
 
"Secondary for improved clarity" is a persistent myth with no basis in logic or science.

Objectively, racking to secondary is actually detrimental to clarity.

After the yeast complete active fermentation, they begin falling out of solution. The cells that happen to already be near the bottom of the fermenter don't have far to go, and begin piling up at the bottom. Conversely, the cells near the top have to fall through the entire batch, so they'll take longer to precipitate out. Consequently, visually, the beer will clear from the "top down." That is, the top portion of the beer will look clear, while the remainder still appears cloudy as the cells that started out near the top slowly fall down toward the bottom.

Eventually, the top half of the beer will be clear while the bottom half still contains yeast cells making their way to the bottom. If, at this point, you were to rack the beer to another vessel, you'd be taking those cells that hadn't yet reached the bottom, and redistributing them evenly throughout the solution. Your beer wouldn't be as cloudy as it was immediately after fermentation finished (since half of the yeast cells had successfully made it to the bottom of the fermenter and would be left behind during racking), but the cells that hadn't yet made it all the way to the bottom would now be evenly mixed throughout the beer. Some of those cells would be back at the top of the solution, and would have to once again begin falling all the way through the entire batch of beer.

If that's not enough to convince you, then consider it from the other side of the argument. What is it about the presence of yeast at the bottom of the fermenter that would prevent the beer from clearing? Why would the presence of a yeast cake at the bottom of the fermenter inhibit cells in solution from precipitating out? Why would the absence of yeast at the bottom result in the beer clearing faster? There's no logical case to support the argument.

The use of secondaries is an outdated practice based on wine making and large-scale brewing, where factors like yeast autolysis are a legitimate concern, due to aging length and the higher osmotic pressure inherent in drastically larger volumes of liquid. These concerns are not valid for the short (3 weeks or less) fermentation times for beer, and the smaller volumes used at the home brewing scale.

Conclusion: The use of a secondary vessel results is no improvement in either clarity or flavour of the resulting beer. It does, however, expose the beer to an increased risk of oxidation and infection. There are legitimate cases for using a secondary vessel (only have one primary fermenter, need to re-use the yeast, need to protect the yeast from contamination from post-fermentation additions like dry hops, fruit, or wood chips, plan on aging the beer for an extended period, fermenting a large volume of beer), but for a standard 5-gallon batch of beer with no post-fermentation ingredients and no intention of extended aging, it's a pointless exercise that serves only to increase the risk of ruining the batch.
 
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