Secondary for New Ale?

[Clint Yeastwood]

My first beer after my long hiatus is approaching the end of fermentation. I am not planning to do a secondary.

Since it has been so long since I left home brewing, I would like to know if the common wisdom has changed. A lot of people back then were not doing secondaries. Have opinions changed?

I am not too concerned about clarity. I bought Irish moss, but I chose not to use it. This is a warm-fermented ale which is a little crazy.

I don't have a carboy right now. I guess I could shove it in my Fermzilla All-Rounder which just arrived.

 

[Clint Yeastwood]

It's worse than it sounds. It wasn't a real pressure washer. It was one of those pressure wands at a do-it-yourself car wash.

It was in a small town so I suppose everyone saw it or heard about it.

The worst thing is that he made my cousin drive him to the car wash on a Chevy C60 flatbed truck, and he sat on the toilet during the trip to prevent it from falling off.

 

[Kickass]

he sat on the toilet during the trip to prevent it from falling off.

You don’t have to secondary in the toilet, that’s optional. I certainly think sitting on it the whole time might be extraneous and unnecessary.

 

[Clint Yeastwood]

That's a relief.

This forum doesn't seem to like my phone much. That post made a lot more sense in the thread where it was supposed to go.

 

[IslandLizard]

I am not planning to do a secondary.

That's good and proper strategy! Leave it in the (primary) fermenter for at least another week. Don't even open it.

Your beer doesn't need a secondary because... there's (almost) nothing to ferment anymore. Even if there was, such as adding more fermentables now, the risk of oxidation (and infection) rises.
By racking to another vessel you will undoubtedly expose it to oxygen, which may/will oxidize your beer. Especially in beginners hands.
Secondaries are pretty much old hat, only useful/beneficial in some cases, none apply to regular fermentations, like the one you have here.

I guess I could shove it in my Fermzilla All-Rounder which just arrived.

See above.^
Inaugurate it with your next brew.

 

[Clint Yeastwood]

I'm using a refractometer for the first time, and yesterday, I learned that the reason the reading looked fuzzy was that I wasn't pushing the little flappy thing down on the glass. I thought I was at 1.024, but now it looks like 1.028. So I'm down .026 from the OG, unless I'm still doing something wrong.

 

[IslandLizard]

I'm using a refractometer for the first time, and yesterday, I learned that the reason the reading looked fuzzy was that I wasn't pushing the little flappy thing down on the glass.

Glad you figure that out.
What else could the purpose of that flappy be?

I thought I was at 1.024, but now it looks like 1.028. So I'm down .026 from the OG, unless I'm still doing something wrong.

Have you used the correction formula to compensate for the alcohol that's present in your refractometer sample?
https://www.brewersfriend.com/refractometer-calculator/

 

[kevin58]

The use of a secondary vessel is information that is outdated. It keeps hanging on because it was suggested in the 1st edition of book How to Brew by John Palmer. However by the 3rd edition of the book (we are now on the 4th edition) John had reversed his opinion about the benefits of a secondary and now recommends not using them. I lifted this from another thread on the forum... it is a transcript of an interview on the Brew Strong podcast between John Palmer and Jamil Zainasheff:

John: And unfortunately I'm an perpetuator of the myth at HowtoBrew.com. The 1st edition talks about the benefits of transferring the beer off the yeast.
Jamil: Well that was the popular way of doing things. But that was what, the 1st edition? Stop getting the thing off the internet. Buy yourself the 3rd addition copy and get the updated information.
John: As we've gotten more educated on how much good healthy yeast you need for optimum fermentation the advice that we used to give 20 years ago has changed. 10 years ago, 20 years ago, homebrewers were using with a single packet of dry yeast that was taped to the top of the can. There weren't as many liquid yeast cultures available.
Jamil: People didn't make starters either.
John: Right. So the whole health and vitality of yeast was different back then compared to know. Back then it made sense. You had weaker yeast that had finished fermentation that were more susceptible to autolysis and breaking down. Now that is not the case. The bar of homebrewing has risen to where we are able to make beer that has the same robustness as professional beer. We've gotten our techniques and understanding of what makes a good fermentation up to that level, so you don't need to transfer the beer off the yeast to avoid autolysis like we used to recommend.
Jamil: Unless you are going to do long term at warm temperatures, but even then we are talking over a month. I thought about this as well and I think one of the reasons autolysis....and the fact that people were using weak yeast in inappropriate amounts and the transfer would add some oxygen to it which would help attenuate a few more points. I think that was part of the deal why transferring was considered appropriate years ago.
John: But these days we don't recommend secondary transfer. Leave it in the primary, you know, a month. Today's fermentations are typically healthy enough that you are not going to get autolysis flavors or off-flavors from leaving the beer on the yeast for an extended period of time.
Jamil: And if you are using healthy yeast and the appropriate amount and the thing is... homebrew style fermentors..if you are using a carboy or plastic bucket which have that broad base when the yeast flocculate out they lay in a nice thin layer. When you're dealing with large, tall...one of the things you know people go "Well the commercial brewers they remove the yeast because it is gonna break down, die, and make the beer bad. We should be doing the same thing." That's where alot of this comes from. But the commerical brewers are working with 100 bbl fermenters that are very tall and put a lot of pressure on the yeast. The yeast are jammed into this little cone in the bottom and they are stacked very deep and there is a lot of heat buildup. The core of that yeast mass can be several degrees C higher than the rest of that yeast mass and it can actually cook the yeast and cause them to die faster and cause those problems with flavor and within a couple of days the viability of that yeast which the commercial brewers are going to reuse is going to drop 25%, 50% over a couple of days so they need to get that yeast out of there. You don't have that restriction as a homebrewer. You've got these broad fermenter bases that allow the yeast to be distributed evently. It's an advantage for cleaning up the beer. You have the advantage that the yeast don't break down as fast. You don't have as high a head pressure. There are a lot of advantages.

 

[Clint Yeastwood]

I am looking into the correction now.

If memory serves (HA), back in the Mesozoic Era, we just took an OG and an FG, using a primitive hydrometer, and thought we were finished. I must be right about compensation being a recently developed concept, because online, I see people trying to figure things out almost a decade after I quit brewing.

Hard as it may be to believe, I am not a total idiot about physics. I have a degree and a couple of years in grad school. When you brought up compensation, I figured it had to be really simple, but it looks like it's not, because no simple physics problem survived the 17th century. Nobody was arguing about simple problems in 2015. I assume a differential equation is used here, and I have no idea what that equation is or what goes into it. If it's not a differential equation, somebody must have done a bunch of measurements and made an equation up from them. I guess.

Since I am not likely to understand this without studying it for hours, and maybe not even then, I am going to take your helpful advice and use online calculators.

Unbelievably, I didn't do a good job taking notes when I brewed. I was determined to be a good lab student, but you know what Mike Tyson says: "Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth."

Things were burning and spilling, and the machine was giving me error warnings, so I was a little rushed. I did not write down the original Brix reading. I converted to SG and used that. I feel positive it was 13.2, and I got 1.054 from that using a chart, but now I see sources saying it's really 1.052.

The calculator you sent me to says I now have a gravity of 1.007, which is 17 points lower than I thought. I don't know if that can be right after such a short fermentation. I was expecting 1.010 from 1.057, though, so 1.007 looks reasonable for 1.052.

If things are this far along, I need to seal the bucket and wait for my kegs. There should be no danger of pressure building up now.

 

[Clint Yeastwood]

Oh, boy. This is insane. Now I'm seeing I'm supposed to find 30 samples of unfermented wort to calibrate my refractometer and get a "wort correction factor."

Yeah, that's totally going to happen.

 

[DBhomebrew]

Oh, boy. This is insane. Now I'm seeing I'm supposed to find 30 samples of unfermented wort to calibrate my refractometer and get a "wort correction factor."

Yeah, that's totally going to happen.

Just use 1.04

WCF is per wort composition, not per individual refractometer.

 

[IslandLizard]

I found the thread you started on this first brew, sadly, with no replies yet:
First Braumeister Beer Progress:

Here are the specs for the yeast you used:
Monastery Ale Yeast - WLP500
Yeast: Specialty/Belgian
Organic Strains
ATTENUATION : 75% - 80%
FLOCCULATION : Low to Medium
ALCOHOL TOLERANCE : High (10-15%)
FERMENTATION TEMPERATURE : 65° - 72° F / 18° - 22° C
STA1 : Negative

I hope you save the yeast cake from this (small) batch and put it to good use with something big and Belgian, in your new All-Rounder.

With 80% attenuation your 1.052 OG beer would end up around 1.010. But if you had very fermentable wort, it could go a bit lower, yup. 1.007 is not totally inconceivable.

Now I'm seeing I'm supposed to find 30 samples of unfermented wort to calibrate my refractometer and get a "wort correction factor."

I was going to suggest what @DBhomebrew already said while I typed this:

Just use 1.04

WCF is per wort composition, not per individual refractometer.

Just use 1.040

Did you calibrate your refractometer, so a drop of (distilled or RO) water reads at the bottom line, 0.00 Brix (1.000 SG)?

 

[Erik the Anglophile]

I am looking into the correction now.

If memory serves (HA), back in the Mesozoic Era, we just took an OG and an FG, using a primitive hydrometer, and thought we were finished. I must be right about compensation being a recently developed concept, because online, I see people trying to figure things out almost a decade after I quit brewing.

Hard as it may be to believe, I am not a total idiot about physics. I have a degree and a couple of years in grad school. When you brought up compensation, I figured it had to be really simple, but it looks like it's not, because no simple physics problem survived the 17th century. Nobody was arguing about simple problems in 2015. I assume a differential equation is used here, and I have no idea what that equation is or what goes into it. If it's not a differential equation, somebody must have done a bunch of measurements and made an equation up from them. I guess.

Since I am not likely to understand this without studying it for hours, and maybe not even then, I am going to take your helpful advice and use online calculators.

Unbelievably, I didn't do a good job taking notes when I brewed. I was determined to be a good lab student, but you know what Mike Tyson says: "Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth."

Things were burning and spilling, and the machine was giving me error warnings, so I was a little rushed. I did not write down the original Brix reading. I converted to SG and used that. I feel positive it was 13.2, and I got 1.054 from that using a chart, but now I see sources saying it's really 1.052.

The calculator you sent me to says I now have a gravity of 1.007, which is 17 points lower than I thought. I don't know if that can be right after such a short fermentation. I was expecting 1.010 from 1.057, though, so 1.007 looks reasonable for 1.052.

If things are this far along, I need to seal the bucket and wait for my kegs. There should be no danger of pressure building up now.

I believe the general consensus is a refractometer is good for measuring OG, and to take 2 small samples to confirm completed fermentation of a big beer etc.
If you want to get an accurate post fermentation reading to calculate abv the hydrometer is still king.

 

[Clint Yeastwood]

I'm getting a new graduated cylinder. I don't have time for this. I will take Erik's advice and use the refractometer on panic day and then go to the hydrometer after that.

 

[Clint Yeastwood]

I calibrated my refractometer, if you can call it calibration, using purified water, possibly from Winn-Dixie, vintage 2022. I looked around online, and it appeared any inaccuracies coming from bottled water would be pretty insignificant for my purposes.

 

[PCABrewing]

I calibrated my refractometer, if you can call it calibration, using purified water, possibly from Winn-Dixie, vintage 2022. I looked around online, and it appeared any inaccuracies coming from bottled water would be pretty insignificant for my purposes.

Distilled water would be slightly better. Purified will likely have some added minerals back into it but probably not a big difference.
I have some of each, I think I may give it a try later just out of curiosity.

 

[IslandLizard]

The calculator you sent me to says I now have a gravity of 1.007, which is 17 points lower than I thought.

No, the gravity is 17 points lower than the refractometer measured. The measurement you took IS the correct refraction for that wort/alcohol mixture you tested. The correction formula calculates the amount of alcohol produced from your given FG and OG, and returns a more realistic SG value.

The charm of using a refractometer (even with the possibility of being a few points off after the correction formula has been applied) is that it only takes one drop, which can be easily retrieved without opening the fermenter, which would make you lose all the protective CO2 in the headspace, replacing it with air, containing 21% oxygen, slowly oxidizing your beer from now on.

 

[Erik the Anglophile]

That's why you put a spigot on your fermenter m'dude.

 

[hotbeer]

Use the refractometer when it's more convenient. However for OG and FG you should have enough extra wort or beer to spare for a proper hydrometer in a cylinder flask. Then compare that with you refractometer at the time so you'll know if your refractometer corrections are a little off.

I wouldn't worry too much about calibrating it. If it's consistently off by a certain amount, then you can simply add or subtract that to get a truer value.

As for secondary fermenters. I only tried to use one once. It was and still is the worst beer I ever brewed. I have left beer in the FV for six weeks on a thick trub layer. They were some of the beers I enjoyed the most for taste and sparkling clarity.

 

[Clint Yeastwood]

I can't believe I wasted all that time and money in the past on secondary fermentations.

 

[kevin58]

I can't believe I wasted all that time and money in the past on secondary fermentations.

We all did. I've got some really nice, glass carboy's downstairs doing nothing.

 

[beren]

Oh, boy. This is insane. Now I'm seeing I'm supposed to find 30 samples of unfermented wort to calibrate my refractometer and get a "wort correction factor."

Yeah, that's totally going to happen.

This is why I gave up using it and just use a hydrometer. I never seemed to get consistent numbers with the refractometer.

 

[RM-MN]

We all did. I've got some really nice, glass carboy's downstairs doing nothing.

Put the carboys to work making ciders or wines. There is no point to storing those lazy carboys.

 

[kevin58]

I do make a batch of wine every once in a while. That's the only workout those carboys get.

 

[RM-MN]

I do make a batch of wine every once in a while. That's the only workout those carboys get.

With only that much exercise they will get fat. Make them work harder, make ciders and wine and mead.

 

[bellhp]

I've always fermented in a carboy ... I've always been scared to put wort in plastic buckets which I primarily use for bottling beer. only batch I ever secondaried was a Scottish wee heavy and i used two glass carboys and thinking back on it I will not secondary on my next one. So if ya'll wanna clear out your glass carboys I'll put 'em to good use