Secondary fermenter vs secondary fermentation conflation

[Boden]

I’ve noticed a very common conflation.

A secondary fermenter is a container most often used to continue primary fermentation after transferring from the primary fermenter.

A secondary fermentation is when you add sugar after primary fermentation has finished to restart fermentation for the purpose of carbonation or in rare cases to add secondary yeast attributes.

Not to be confused with adding sugar or yeast to a stuck primary fermentation. In that case you’re still in primary fermentation.


I completely understand why these terms are being confused. It’s easy to write “The wine is in secondary” unfortunately that is meaningless without clarifying if you are referring to a secondary fermenter or secondary fermentation.

This may seem pedantic but this seems to be the cause of much confusion.

I may get flamed for this. Luckily I’m wearing my asbestos jumpsuit.

Edit: I’m sure there are some other reasons to start a secondary fermentation that I’ve never heard of, if you know of one please share.

 

[SoCal-Doug]

"Secondary fermenter" - Are there still people that use a secondary? That's not still a thing, is it? LOL
"Secondary fermentation" - Call it "bottle conditioning" instead
"Primary" and "Secondary" - Then become obsolete words

 

[tellyho]

Yeah, I've never been a fan of the term "secondary fermentation". It implies that there's something significant going on there, instead of sample carbonation.

 

[day_trippr]

Or even less than that.

I bet 98% of folks that use a "secondary fermentor" are simply racking the beer off the yeast cake and letting it sit for some reason...

Cheers!

 

[Boden]

"Secondary fermenter" - Are there still people that use a secondary? That's not still a thing, is it? LOL
"Secondary fermentation" - Call it "bottle conditioning" instead
"Primary" and "Secondary" - Then become obsolete words

Agree completely. My cousin who is a professional wine maker taught these terms to me ~20 years ago. Getting rid of “secondary” for more specific terms seems necessary in this global community.

Yeah, I've never been a fan of the term "secondary fermentation". It implies that there's something significant going on there, instead of sample carbonation.

There are some drinks that are made with a bacterial secondary fermentation, IPA for example uses a Brettanomyces claussenii in secondary fermentation.

I had a weird drink that used two different yeast. One for primary that ran dry then that was pasteurized and a second yeast and more sugar was added for a secondary fermentation.

For home brewing all this may be a bit much.