question about secondary

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jonwest

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My Pumpkin Ale has been in primary for almost a week now, and I plan on moving it to a secondary for another week or two. I have never used a secondary before and I was just wondering if there was anything I needed to know.

I'm assuming I want to limit the amount of exposure to air to avoid contamination. Is this correct or is it not really a big deal?

My plan was to us the auto-siphon to move from the bucket to carboy and seal with an airlock. Pretty straight forward right?

Sorry for such a lame question. I just wanted to make sure I wasn't missing something here. I have a lot of people waiting to taste this at a Halloween party, and I would hate to disappoint them.

Thanks in advance.
 
Transfer to your secondary vessel and make sure you have as little head space as possible. Seal and sanitize with a stopper/airlock as you mentioned. Let it sit out of light for the duration of secondary. I throw an old t-shirt over my carboys to prevent skunking during secondary.
 
You might want to check the gravity, to make sure it's done. If you move it off the yeast too soon, it may not finish.

Cheers!
 
OH NO MAN not the secondary vs primary debate again :). If you want to use a secondary I would wait a little more than a week before I transferred. Give the yeast a chance to cleanup after themselves. Also listen to frazier and take gravity reading to make sure your fermentation has finished, then transfer and wait. With all that said many including myself feel that a secondary is not required and some would make a wonderful case that it is unnecessary. I guess that's what makes home brewing so wonderful, the diversity of process and opinion. :mug:

As far as the process of moving to a secondary you have it right. At this point there is alcohol in the beer and it is tougher than you think. There less of a chance of an infection as long as you don't leave the beer uncovered for a long period of time and limit air flow in the room in which your working.
 
frazier said:
You might want to check the gravity, to make sure it's done. If you move it off the yeast too soon, it may not finish.

Cheers!

Good point. I was planning on doing this, but didn't mention it in my post.
 
Yes it's fairly straightforward:

Clean & sanitize secondary, autosiphon, tubing.
Make sure you have enough tubing to allow for it to reach and curl around the bottom of your secondary, you don't want any of the beer to splash from the end of the tubing to the bottom of the secondary.
Position secondary below primary, a couple pumps on the autosiphon and you're good to go.
 
Racking to a secondary is easy. But wait at least another week. But why secondary? Are you adding additional spices/ pumpkin?
 
I used to secondary all the time, but it's a useless step unless your adding fruit, I let it sit in primary the entire time (1 month) then bottle.......It's a hobby, it's doesn't suppose to be a pain in the a**.........
 
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