Racking to Secondary Question

[wburn]

Ok, so I just transfered my second homebrew (first was in conical) to a secondary carboy. I have a couple questions about using the auto siphon.

1) I was concerned about sucking up as little of the yeast/trub on the bottom as possible, and since I couldn't see the pump through the side, I lifted it up a little too far. To get it going again I had to pump it a few more times which caused bubbling in the secondary. Should I be worried about this?

2) Lastly, It seemed like I had a lot of beer left in the primary when I got done (about an inch or so), which makes me wonder...Should I just leave the little black cap on the auto siphon and let it sit on top of the trub/yeast? How much lost beer is normal when transferring?

Thanks in advance for any advice.

 

[avidhomebrewer]

1. No, the yeast will take care of it.

2. I leave the black cap on when transferring to secondary.

But, there has been some positive debate about racking to secondary. I used to religiously transfer each brew up until about a year ago; now I let all brews sit in primary (for normal strength) about 5 weeks, then package. Search the forum and form your own opinion about racking to secondary.

 

[wburn]

Yeah, I've been seeing that a lot, and honestly it seems like if enough people are saying the secondary isn't necessary, then there has to be something to it. The only reason I went with a secondary is because I kept seeing disclaimers like "...as long as its not high gravity..." etc.. The beer in question's OG was 1.082. This is just my second batch, so I'm not exactly sure how high "high gravity" is...

 

[avidhomebrewer]

That's up there for an og. I would consider that a big beer and a high gravity brew. I think secondary may not be necessary when you pitch the appropriate volume of yeast. I gather you pitched a large starter (about a gallon) for this brew?

 

[wburn]

It was a kit (albeit my last). For the most part I just followed the instructions. Like the first kit I bought it just came with a packet of dry yeast. The first time I just sprinkled it over the top like the instructions said, this time, after doing some reading I re-hydrated the yeast according to what I read in How to Brew. I considered doing a starter, but the book seemed only to talk about starters when referring to liquid yeasts. On a positive note though, SG was 1.018 when I transferred it earlier, so the yeast seems to have covered for my mistake this time.