How long in secondary?

[johnrougeux]

I have a batch in the secondary fermenter waiting to be kegged. I have 3 kegs, but only room for 2 in fridge.

My questions are:
1. How long can I leave the beer in the secondary?
2. Would it be better in secondary or in un-refrigerated and unpressurized keg until ready to chill and carbonate?
3. If kegging is better than longer term secondary, how long before I have to cool/carbonate?

What I would like to do is have beer ready to keg as backup.

Thanks!

 

[binkman]

1. It depends on the beer. If its really off the yeast it will keep a long time, especially for darker and more alcoholic beers, I've heard.

2. It really wouldn't matter. All things being equal, shuffling it around as little as possible is best, so go for the keg if you can.

3. Same as #1, but it would be harder to tell if any yeast is settling out. If you're sitting on a yeast cake of any size, you'll want to refrigerate it.

 

[Teromous]

A lot of this has to do with what you have available. A lightly pressurized keg (just to hold the seal and maintain CO2 cap) would be beneficial for a number of reasons. It is easier to move around, it won't break like glass, it will free a carboy for other beers, it doesn't require an airlock, it doesn't allow light in, and it is very easy to just pop on the CO2 when you're ready to carb it up. You can leave it there for as long as you like. It's best if you familiarize yourself with what beers age well, and how long people commonly age them. There is no single rule of thumb that encompasses all beers. I leave my beers uncarbonated until a week or so before I want it ready. Set to pressure, and let it absorb slowly. Vent, check sample, etc. Sometimes it takes more than a week for it to taste its best after carbonating.

 

[Terence]

OK, I've read all this. What's sitting on the bottom of the bottles when you carbonate with a sugar? Isn't that a little yeast cake! If you scale that to a keg size it's a fair bit. So, bottled and stored in the shed, why hasn't the beer gone sour after twelve months in a bottle? Most stories I hear and read, beers get better after that sort of time.
(just askin')

 

[homebrewdad]

OK, I've read all this. What's sitting on the bottom of the bottles when you carbonate with a sugar? Isn't that a little yeast cake! If you scale that to a keg size it's a fair bit. So, bottled and stored in the shed, why hasn't the beer gone sour after twelve months in a bottle? Most stories I hear and read, beers get better after that sort of time.
(just askin')

Many beers will keep fine for twelve months, or longer. Some bigger beers (imperials, barleywines) don't even hit their peak until a year.

It honestly depends on the style, and on the conditions you keep the beer at.

Heck, I've read several threads here where people fine old homebrew (as in, multiple years old) that may not be perfect, but is still quite drinkable. Alcohol makes a great preservative... which, in case you forgot, is one of the big reasons that beer became popular to begin with.

 

[CTS]

I racked a Black Ale from Austin Home Brew supply that had been sitting in the Carboy for a year.

And the last month I had it moved over to a second Carboy with a vanilla bean and about a 1/2 cup of vodka.

I just racked it last Tuesday in to a keg and drank it this past weekend.

I was a little scared of how it would turnout but it ended up being the best beer I have made.

Gotta love home brewing. There really are no rules to how it's done.

 

[binkman]

Alcohol makes a great preservative... which, in case you forgot, is one of the big reasons that beer became popular to begin with.

What made beer popular to begin with was not alcohol's preservative power, but rather the psychoactive effects of ethanol. For the first 4500 years of beer production, most brews went sour in less than a week despite their alcohol content. Refrigeration was the most important preservative for beer. That and germ theory leading to better sanitation.

How well a beer ages doesn't just depend on infection, though. The off-flavors contributed by yeast cell autolysis is what you have to worry about when leaving a beer on the yeast.

OK, I've read all this. What's sitting on the bottom of the bottles when you carbonate with a sugar? Isn't that a little yeast cake! If you scale that to a keg size it's a fair bit. So, bottled and stored in the shed, why hasn't the beer gone sour after twelve months in a bottle? Most stories I hear and read, beers get better after that sort of time.
(just askin')

Again, yeast cell autolysis doesn't make beer go sour. That's due to the presence of other microbes.

Yes, the yeast cells in the bottom of a bottle are a little yeast cake, but here's the difference: A lot of the yeast on the bottom of the fermenter is gimpy and on its way to autolysis. When you bottle, you're only picking up yeast still in suspension. Generally, these are very healthy yeast. So bottling is a kind of Darwinian 'bottleneck' (pun intended) which selects for healthier yeast, less likely to undergo autolysis any time soon. So aging on those yeast in the bottles is a lot less of an issue, though they will eventually die and rot away down there, despite the presence of any amount of alcohol, contributing off-flavors to the beer, though that might take a year or even more as opposed to a few months.

The long and short of it is this: after about a month on the yeast cake the flavor benefit of those yeast being around starts to become a flavor liability. If they are cooled down, you buy yourself more time.