First time brew- Primary to Secondary Question

[HBT0701]

Hello,

I'm just starting out on my first homebrew. When I poured the wort into the primary, I had gotten a bunch of trub in it. So, when I poured the primary into the secondary (day 7), I ran in it through a plastic mesh strainer that fit into my funnel. I'm looking at the beer in the secondary now and wondering if I had filtered out the yeast. There was a large cake of yeast on the bottom of primary that I left out.

Did I mess it up? And if so, can I just add some more yeast into the secondary?

Thanks for any help

 

[cvstrat]

You'll never filter out all of the yeast without a serious in line micro filter.

You should be using an auto siphon to transfer the beer into primary and secondary. They are dirt cheap.

The idea is to leave all of the trub behind including the yeast cake. There are bazillons of suspended yeast you can't see and that's more than enough to condition the beer when you bottle it.

Remember secondary is clarification stage, not a fermentation stage. Your fermentation should bebcomolete before racking to secondary. The idea is to let it sit in secondary for a few weeks and you'll see another slight dusting of yeast and hop matter on the bottom. This should be left behind when racking to the bottling bucket.

So you did fine. Also its just as good to skip secondary altogether and just let it sit a little longer in primary.

 

[Revvy]

Did you really POUR your beer from primary to secondary? That's really a bad thing to do especially through a strainer which further whipped it up. Oxygen and fermented beer is a bad combination. We try to eliminate oxygen exposure as much as possible, or else the beer could end up tasting like liquid cardboard...going stale. We call in oxydation.

That's why we use a siphon and hose or autosiphon to move our beer and do it carefully.

FYI, there's always plenty of yeast unless you use a complex several micron small filter setup to strip the beer of it. But normally there's always plenty of yeast left behind.

Your best bet now will be to consume the beer rather young, oxydation is a storage issue, as the beer matures it will start to stale.

In the future be more careful with moving your beer. In fact the latest recommendation is not to even use secondaries but to opt for long primaries (like a month instead) that limits excess moving of the beer which causes oxygen exposure and even risk of infection.

This is the latest recommendation, it is the same one many of us have been giving for several years on here.

Tom from Michigan asks:
I have a few questions about secondary fermentations. I've read both pros and cons for 2nd fermentations and it is driving me crazy what to do. One, are they necessary for lower Gravity beers?
Two, what is the dividing line between low gravity and high gravity beers? Is it 1.060 and higher?
Three, I have an American Brown Ale in the primary right now, a SG of 1.058, Should I secondary ferment this or not?
Your advice is appreciated, thanks for all you do!

Allen from New York asks:
John, please talk about why or why not you would NOT use a secondary fermenter (bright tank?) and why or why not a primary only fermentation is a good idea. In other words, give some clarification or reason why primary only is fine, versus the old theory of primary then secondary normal gravity ale fermentations.

Palmer answers:
These are good questions – When and why would you need to use a secondary fermenter? First some background – I used to recommend racking a beer to a secondary fermenter. My recommendation was based on the premise that (20 years ago) larger (higher gravity) beers took longer to ferment completely, and that getting the beer off the yeast reduced the risk of yeast autolysis (ie., meaty or rubbery off-flavors) and it allowed more time for flocculation and clarification, reducing the amount of yeast and trub carryover to the bottle. Twenty years ago, a homebrewed beer typically had better flavor, or perhaps less risk of off-flavors, if it was racked off the trub and clarified before bottling. Today that is not the case.

The risk inherent to any beer transfer, whether it is fermenter-to-fermenter or fermenter-to-bottles, is oxidation and staling. Any oxygen exposure after fermentation will lead to staling, and the more exposure, and the warmer the storage temperature, the faster the beer will go stale.

Racking to a secondary fermenter used to be recommended because staling was simply a fact of life – like death and taxes. But the risk of autolysis was real and worth avoiding – like cholera. In other words, you know you are going to die eventually, but death by cholera is worth avoiding.

But then modern medicine appeared, or in our case, better yeast and better yeast-handling information. Suddenly, death by autolysis is rare for a beer because of two factors: the freshness and health of the yeast being pitched has drastically improved, and proper pitching rates are better understood. The yeast no longer drop dead and burst like Mr. Creosote from Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life when fermentation is complete – they are able to hibernate and wait for the next fermentation to come around. The beer has time to clarify in the primary fermenter without generating off-flavors. With autolysis no longer a concern, staling becomes the main problem. The shelf life of a beer can be greatly enhanced by avoiding oxygen exposure and storing the beer cold (after it has had time to carbonate).

Therefore I, and Jamil and White Labs and Wyeast Labs, do not recommend racking to a secondary fermenter for ANY ale, except when conducting an actual second fermentation, such as adding fruit or souring. Racking to prevent autolysis is not necessary, and therefore the risk of oxidation is completely avoidable. Even lagers do not require racking to a second fermenter before lagering. With the right pitching rate, using fresh healthy yeast, and proper aeration of the wort prior to pitching, the fermentation of the beer will be complete within 3-8 days (bigger = longer). This time period includes the secondary or conditioning phase of fermentation when the yeast clean up acetaldehyde and diacetyl. The real purpose of lagering a beer is to use the colder temperatures to encourage the yeast to flocculate and promote the precipitation and sedimentation of microparticles and haze.

So, the new rule of thumb: don’t rack a beer to a secondary, ever, unless you are going to conduct a secondary fermentation.

THIS is where the latest discussion and all your questions answered.
We have multiple threads about this all over the place, like this one,so we really don't need to go over it again, all the info you need is here;

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f163/secondary-not-john-palmer-jamil-zainasheff-weigh-176837/

We basically proved that old theory wrong on here 5 years ago, and now the rest fo the brewing community is catching up. Though a lot of old dogs don't tend to follow the latest news, and perpetuate the old stuff.

The autolysis from prolong yeast contact has fallen by the wayside, in fact yeast contact is now seen as a good thing.

All my beers sit a minimum of 1 month in the primary. And I recently bottled a beer that sat in primary for 5.5 months with no ill effects.....

You'll find that more and more recipes these days do not advocate moving to a secondary at all, but mention primary for a month, which is starting to reflect the shift in brewing culture that has occurred in the last 4 years, MOSTLY because of many of us on here, skipping secondary, opting for longer primaries, and writing about it. Recipes in BYO have begun stating that in their magazine. I remember the "scandal" it caused i the letters to the editor's section a month later, it was just like how it was here when we began discussing it, except a lot more civil than it was here. But after the Byo/Basic brewing experiment, they started reflecting it in their recipes.