racking to secondary and attenuation

[Honda88]

Hello,

Its been awhile since I posted on here. Busy with life I guess. I am currently an extract/partial grain brewer. I brew mainly kits but next time I brew I'm probably going to put together my own recipe. Anyways I'm not a complete noob but the other day I was wondering if racking to secondary for clearing purposes has any effect on attenuation? My kit manufacturers recommend doing this before fermentation is complete(similar to wine). I haven't had any problems doing this with wine but I did notice that the oatmeal stout I brewed a few months ago seemed to be overly sweet.. I was concerned that maybe taking it off the yeast cake contributed to this. Is this possibly only a problem with higher gravity beers? thanks

 

[flars]

I just let my beers clear in the primary. Usually bottle around day 21 after the start of active fermentation.

I used a secondary clearing vessel for a period of time until getting my one and only infected beer. I figured since I couldn't infect a beer doing primary only the racking to a secondary was the unnecessary risk factor.

 

[porterpounder]

Yes, racking to a secondary pre-maturely usually stalls the fermentation with its subsequent lack of attenuation. Also agree with the lack of need for a dedicated secondary to clearing. I consider my kegs secondary/conditioning and those are purged and under CO2.

 

[Honda88]

I cant say I have ever left beer in primary for 21 days but that's just how I do things. I'm not really worried about infection. I have been racking both beer and wine for quite some time now and never had any infections. I was more concerned with stressing the yeast and not reaching the intended final gravity. I guess I could do my own experiments but was wondering if anyone had any insight.

 

[Honda88]

Its odd that the kit maker recommends this practice. They even say in the instructions to rack it before the fermentation is complete. Always seemed weird to me.

 

[Cavpilot2000]

Its odd that the kit maker recommends this practice. They even say in the instructions to rack it before the fermentation is complete. Always seemed weird to me.

They're just repeating "conventional wisdom".
Racking to a secondary after the majority (or all) of visible fermentation subsides has been "standard" practice going back decades. The reasons cited were usually autolysis (live yeast cannibalizing dead yeast when there is no more sugar for them to consume, thereby giving off bad flavor byproducts). I think it has generally been proven these days that autolysis is not really a factor in the scale and timeline homebrewers deal with, but back in the 90's, we were told by the old-timers that you were practically guaranteed a bad beer if you let it sit on the lees for more than two weeks.
Maybe sanitation practices were not as good back in the day.
Anyway, we now know that most beers are fine several weeks in the primary if your sanitation practices are good.

But anyway, I'm sure that's why the mfr instructions say that.
There are some advantages to using a secondary, but they must be weighed against the risk of contamination or oxidation.

 

[Honda88]

Well, the main advantage for a home brewer is clarity....If I were filtering and force carbonating I would never consider doing a secondary(unless barrel aging or adding some other long term flavoring). Maybe in this case the kit maker feels like clarity is worth the risk of lost attenuation. I have done it both ways and I know for a fact it does create slightly clearer beer. Thanks for the input. I should probably just primary my beer in a carboy instead of the bucket and rack off the carboy so I can see where my cane is. This will probably be my method from now on.