No secondary... so longer in primary?

[tiredofbuyingbeer]

My third beer has been sitting in the primary fermenter for a little over one week. It's a Northern Brewer extract kit: their Don't Be Mean to People saison. My other two beers didn't turn out very well: the first may have fermented too hot, the second looks oxidized (much darker after bottling and weird flavors).

Anyway, after reading some posts on this forum, I'm thinking about not doing a secondary with this beer, contrary to Northern Brewer's instructions. But does that mean that I should primary for longer? And for how much longer? The kit instructions suggest 1-2 weeks in the primary and 1-2 weeks in the secondary. Should I do 4 weeks of primary? 3 weeks? Just two weeks and done? All assuming that the beer has reached more or less its predicted FG.

Also, a related question: I'm planning on brewing the Dead Ringer IPA kit after this one (a clone of Bell's Two-Hearted). It says to do a normal primary and then secondary for 2-4 weeks. If I decide to stay on the no-secondary team, should I make this an exception because of the long suggested secondary? If I don't do a secondary, should I really leave it in primary for 4-6 weeks, or should I just bottle after hitting a stable FG?

All questions assume that I'm not in too much of a hurry and that I just want tasty beer. The main worry that I have is that if I don't secondary, it seems like I should bottle the beer when it's spent less time in a fermenter than the Northern Brewer instructions suggest (since most recipes without secondary fermentation don't say to leave a beer in primary for 3-4 weeks), and I want my beer to taste as good as possible.

 

[msayler]

As many will also tell you, secondary is not really necessary unless you're racking on top of fruit or other flavoring, or doing a very long aging.

Early in my brewing, I ruined an IPA by transferring it to secondary and oxidizing the crap out of it. Tasted like soggy, Mosaic-scented cardboard after a few weeks of carbing up in bottles.

And yeah, just leave it in primary for 2-4 weeks, or until you get to your target gravity / stable final gravity. I got busy/lazy and left a brown ale in primary from April 12th to August 28th, and it turned out OK, and even carbed up in a reasonably fast timeframe.

 

[BrewInspector]

Simply leave it in the primary. Once FG is reached it can be bottled but leaving it will aid clearing and allow the yeast to clean up after themselves. You can consider any time after FG is reached as time in secondary.

Don't let the instructions dictate exactly how long any of that will be.

I don't secondary except for the occasional fruit additions. Nor do i routinely monitor progress towards FG.

 

[RM-MN]

After about 10 days in primary you beer will most likely have hit its FG. Any time after that (provided you have identical hydrometer readings a couple days apart) you can bottle your beer. Leaving it longer in the fermenter will allow more yeast to settle out there instead of in the bottles and your beer will begin to mature there instead of in the bottles. How much longer in the fermenter will depend on how much yeast you want to settle out and how patient you are. Beers that I leave in the fermenter for 4 weeks will have so little yeast in the bottle that it will be hard to see even when I use clear bottles.

 

[C-Rider]

I usually go 3-4 weeks in primary. Have gotten many really clear pale ales w/o cold crashing or gelatin.