Racking early to secondary?

[EVILsteve]

Ive always used glass carboys for fermenting and always struggled with foam over losses, transfer losses etc. so I'm trying out the plastic bins filled enough to allow me to fill the carboy as full as i want for secondary.

These are not airtight, air locked or able to keep sanitation for the long haul IMO. I would like to transfer to secondary as soon as the foam settles and ignore ensuring SG has stabilized and let it finish in the carboy. Will this be detrimental or should I just wait it out a week or so until its stabilized?





For your viewing pleasure

On the right aptly named the bottom bag.
coopers draught
mix of dextrose, table sugar, brown sugar and DME fermentables
0.75oz unlabelled mystery hops #1 for 1hr
.75oz unlabelled mystery hops #2.


left is
2.2kg DLME after flameout
1.3kg Dextrose after flameout
0.5oz fuggle for 1hr
.05oz fuggle for .5hr
.05oz cascade for .5hr
.05oz cascade for .15hr

 

[kh54s10]

Primary in the larger fermenters then, if you do a secondary at all, do it in a smaller vessel. With as little as possible headspace.

Watch your fermentation carefully and bottle quickly or transfer to secondary very soon after reaching final gravity.

To me this is over compensation for the possibility of blow off.

 

[EVILsteve]

Well its not just the blow off I was trying to eliminate.


I dont like to return a sample to the carboy so there's the SG check losses from the primary and the sediments at the bottom during transfer are fairly significant especially if I'm racking to secondary then again to a bottling bucket. I like the idea of starting in the buckets with an extra amount to eliminate headspace in the secondary but I dont like the increased odds of contaminating it either.
Id like to rack before reaching final gravity as soon as fermentation has slowed but will this slow or stop the fermentation process?

 

[blueseamonkey]

Id like to rack before reaching final gravity as soon as fermentation has slowed but will this slow or stop the fermentation process?

No. Racking early to secondary is likely to rouse some semi-dormant yeast from the lower yeast cake, while bringing along all the active yeast that is currently in suspension. This will be more than enough to continue fermentation at a good rate, it may even speed up for a while following the transfer.

Although racking to secondary has fallen out of favour with many homebrewers in recent years, (especially on this forum ) it was an accepted part of practice for a long time. Racking extra early - just as the first head of foam subsides a little - is very similar to the Dropping system, used by the majority of commercial British brewers up until the introduction of conical fermenters.