Primary/Secondary/Bottle Question

[Makushr1]

Hi guys. I'm on my 4th brew, currently in the primary on day 10 (Belgian Dubbel).

I was over my buddy's house brewing beer this weekend, he has been doing it for years so I'm there to pick up tips and tricks. Anyway, one thing he said that stuck out was that he likes to move to his secondary asap because leaving the fermented beer on the yeast cake too long allows the yeast to eat some of the flavors of the beer once they get done eating the sugars. He explained it better, but that's the gist of it.
Is that true?
My second part of the question is if that is the case, once my beer hits my FG, can I just move it to the bottles and let them condition in there for maybe 3 weeks, rather than move it to the secondary for 2 and then bottles for 1?

 

[Revvy]

No, he has it wrong, you leave it on the yeast cake longer, so that it eats the byproducts of fermentation that leads to off flavors.

Even if you rack to a secondary, to clear the beer it's a good idea to leave the beer in primary for a few more days so the yeast can clean up after themselves.....or like many of us do, just leave the beer in primary for a month. Which those of us who do so, believe it makes for clearer, cleaner tasting beer.

He seems to have collided two different ideas and scrambled them up....He seems to have the idea of the yeast autolyzing which is an old concept that had folks rushing the beer off the yeast because they were afraid of off flavors, with what I mentioned above, the more recent believe that leaving the yeast in contact with the beer actually IMPROVES the beer.

Remember the old game telephone? Sounds like you've sort of been at the recieving end of scrambled advice.

Nowadays even many instructions, in BYO magazine, and even some kits suggest a long primary as opposed to using a secondary. So it's pretty obviously that they're not buying that bogeyman anymore either.

I suggest you read THIS thread, it's become the "uber discussion" on this topic thread.

To Secondary or Not? John Palmer and Jamil Zainasheff Weigh In .

It's not like it was in the 60's and 70's (when most of those opinions that you espouse about autolysis originated from) when our hobby was still illegal, and there wasn't a lot of FRESH yeast available to us. The yeast used in hobby brewing was usually in cake form, which came from Germany and England in hot cargo ships and may have sat on a store shelf for a long time....or the brewer just used bread yeast.

John Palmer, wrote about this....

So the whole health and vitality of yeast was different back then compared to now. Back then it made sense. You had weaker yeast that had finished fermentation that were more susceptible to autolysis and breaking down. Now that is not the case. The bar of homebrewing has risen to where we are able to make beer that has the same robustness as professional beer. We've gotten our techniques and understanding of what makes a good fermentation up to that level, so you don't need to transfer the beer off the yeast to avoid autolysis like we used to recommend.

Yeast in the 21st century is much healthier to begin with, and is less prone to have issues like their cells autolysing....just like our own health tends to be better these days.

Many of us leave our beers a MINIMUM of 1 month before racking or bottling, folks have left their beers in primary for a year or more with no issues. This is not something these days that most brewers (except noobs just stumbling onto Palmer's free book,) worry about.

 

[TopherM]

^This! Always listen to Buddy Christ