Reusing the Secondary

[blacklab]

Anyone else ever tried this?

Today I was bottling a brew that had some dryhopping going on in the secondary. So I rack to the bottling bucket, then look at the poor hops just sitting there on the bottom of the Better Bottle. 'Hmmm. I have that other IPA in primary just waiting to move over to a secondary. I'll bet those hops in there still have some life'.

So I racked my IPA into the 'used' secondary, and added my new dry hops to the 'used' secondary with the 'wet' dry hops.

I was crazy about sanitization as ever, so I'm thinking risk of introducing infection is low, plus I've got 4 oz of hops in there doing what they do.

I will probably lose some beer to the trub that was left from the previous brew-but there wasn't much goo on the bottom and figured I'd give it a shot and see what happens.

Only negatives I can see are; some mixed in flavor from the previous beer, and infection.

 

[blacklab]

Hmm. Guess not. I'll post the results here regardless.

 

[DeathBrewer]

lol, looks like no one has viewed your post yet. give it some time.

sounds like a fine idea to me...can't see any harm in it, if in fact there are something left in those hops for them to contribute.

 

[Beerthoven]

This is slightly OT, but I've wondered about pitching a new wort into a used secondary. Whenever I secondary, there is always some yeast flocculated to the bottom. Presumably these are the most viable of all the yeast since they took so long to flocculate out. So why not pitch on top of them instead of all the gunk and trub in the primary?

As for reusing the wet-hops in a secondary, I guess it could work, depending on how long the original dry hop was for. I usually dry hop for 14 days or more. I wouldn't want to reuse those hops. But if a beer was only in there for, say 5 or 7 days, then I bet those hops have something left in them.

 

[blacklab]

Well, it was a solid two week dryhop for the originals, so they may be spent.

 

[scinerd3000]

ive had this thought many times however i was always afraid of the autolysis of the yeast cells on the bottom of the secondary lending off tastes. Seems like a good idea though...i may try this next time as i have an IPA sitting in secondary with a bunch of hops. Im guessing this would only work with whole hops?

 

[blacklab]

ive had this thought many times however i was always afraid of the autolysis of the yeast cells on the bottom of the secondary lending off tastes. Seems like a good idea though...i may try this next time as i have an IPA sitting in secondary with a bunch of hops. Im guessing this would only work with whole hops?

I think so, cause the goo from the pellets falls out. I didn't think of autolysis, but from the opinions I've read around here...it's like bigfoot. Everybody's heard of him, but nobody's seen him. You would also get autolysis every time you pitched onto a yeast cake if that were the case.

 

[scinerd3000]

it depends on how long you let it sit on a yeast cake and how high the alcohol is. When i brew meads i make sure it doesnt sit on the yeast cake for more than a month before i transfer it to a clean vessel. Sitting for a really really long time tends to give some off flavors after primary ferment had subsided.

 

[blacklab]

So high alcohol = greater chance of autolysis, sooner?

 

[scinerd3000]

from what i understand. Autolysis is a product of temperature and alcohol and time:

Chapter 10 - What is Different for Brewing Lager Beer?
10.3 Autolysis

When a yeast cell dies, it ruptures - releasing several off-flavors into the beer. When you have a large yeast mass on the bottom of the fermentor, you have a large potential for off-flavors due to autolysis. If this ever happens to you, you will know it. The smell is one you will never forget. It happened to me one time when my wife was making paper as a hobby. She used boiled rice as the glue to hold the shredded paper together. After the rice had been boiled until it became a paste, the paper making was called off that weekend and the pot of rice paste was set aside on the counter top. A wild yeast must have got a hold of it during the next couple days ( I remember it bubbling) and the pot was ignored in the days that followed. A busy week went by along with another busy weekend and the unintentional Sake experiment still sat there forgotten. The following weekend, my wife was once again ready to try making paper. I picked up the pot and lifted the lid to see what had happened to it. My knees buckled. My wife turned green and ran to the door coughing and choking. The stench was appalling! It was heinous! The noxious aftermath of a late night of cheap beer and pickled eggs would be refreshing compared to the absolute stench of autolysis. I hope I never have to smell it again.

Luckily, the propensity of yeast to autolyze is decreased by a decrease in activity and a decrease in total yeast mass. What this means to a brewer is that racking to a secondary fermenter to get the beer off the dead yeast and lowering the temperature for the long cold storage allows the beer to condition without much risk of autolysis. At a minimum, a beer that has experienced autolysis will have a burnt rubber taste and smell and will probably be undrinkable. At worst it will be unapproachable.

As a final note on this subject, I should mention that by brewing with healthy yeast in a well-prepared wort, many experienced brewers, myself included, have been able to leave a beer in the primary fermenter for several months without any evidence of autolysis. Autolysis is not inevitable, but it is lurking.

 

[scinerd3000]

for the record i havent had it happen to me yet but it is always in the forefront of my mind.....i shudder to think about flushing 5 gallons of beer

 

[Revvy]

As a final note on this subject, I should mention that by brewing with healthy yeast in a well-prepared wort, many experienced brewers, myself included, have been able to leave a beer in the primary fermenter for several months without any evidence of autolysis.

This is the part that most people fail to notice, whenever the "dreaded autolysis is lurking under the bed" bogeyman pops up...

 

[blacklab]

Yeah, I really just don't see it as an issue. That Palmer stuff is about lagering for extended periods. Hopefully that won't bite me in the a$$.

 

[scinerd3000]

Yeah, I really just don't see it as an issue. That Palmer stuff is about lagering for extended periods. Hopefully that won't bite me in the a$$.

true....depends how many times you repitch on the same yeast cake. just playing devils advocate here. Like i said i have never had the problem and my first mead at like 15% sat on the trub for 2 months atleast in primary without noticable off flavors.

 

[blacklab]

true....depends how many times you repitch on the same yeast cake. just playing devils advocate here. Like i said i have never had the problem and my first mead at like 15% sat on the trub for 2 months atleast in primary without noticable off flavors.

Oh, gotcha. I think I would only do this once. The goal is really to just delay cleaning and get the max use out of the hops left in the Better Bottle.

Thanks for the input!

 

[uglygoat]

the yeast left over in secondary is gonna be pooped. you might try and ramp it up with a small starter, or even a mild gravity beer, but i'd lean towards it being spent. best to repitch on the primary cake.

 

[Revvy]

Oh, gotcha. I think I would only do this once. The goal is really to just delay cleaning and get the max use out of the hops left in the Better Bottle.

Thanks for the input!

It would be interesting to do a split batch, half normally dry hopped, and half in the reused secondary to see if there is a discernible difference between the 2.

 

[killerhertz]

If you are using whole hops I would think it's possible to reuse the hops for boiling in another batch right? You aren't isomerizing the alpha acids because the beer is at room temp. I can't imagine they'd be extracted, making them unusable, or are they?

 

[blacklab]

If you are using whole hops I would think it's possible to reuse the hops for boiling in another batch right? You aren't isomerizing the alpha acids because the beer is at room temp. I can't imagine they'd be extracted, making them unusable, or are they?

Biermuncher brought this up awhile ago and the consensus was that you could re-use dryhops for bittering for the exact reason you have mentioned. It would just be a PITA. But, in the current environment...what the hey.

 

[blacklab]

I have an update on this experiment. I wouldn't do it again. The beer I used for the experiment was an Imperial IPA. The beer sat in the secondary with the 2 oz of 'old' dryhops and the 2 oz of 'fresh' dryhops for 2 weeks. The hop aroma of this beer is lame, there is almost no hop finish to it. I have dryhopped smaller APA's with less than one oz of hops for the same two weeks and gotten more hop aroma than with this beer.

I have no idea why or how this technique impacted the dry hop process, or if it did at all. But, bottom line is I made an IPA with a 1/2 lb of hops in it using my normal procedures with the exception of this step. And it has zero hop aroma. I won't be doing this again. There are no shortcuts in brewing!

 

[scinerd3000]

at least now we know....

 

[blacklab]

Yeah, I have no idea if this test impacted the final product, but my $50 IPA is just kind of...meh.