Transfer to secondary. Yes, no or maybe? I keep seeing arguments for and against transferring to secondary. This got me wondering why we transfer to secondary.
Some observations from my experience.
I am not advocating for or against. Personally, I don’t, unless I’m fermenting a big beer I want to age some before I package.
I started homebrewing in 2001 while stationed in Germany. It was me, Charlie Papazian’s the Joy of Homebrewing and a recipe kit. My home brewery, an unheated storage room in my basement that stayed at a fairly steady 65F in the summer and 50F in the winter, the “standard” ale and lager fermentation temps. I had a naturally temperature-controlled fermentation chamber. Same here in the states, my brew room stays below 70F. More on that.
Back then, and even today, every recipe you bought says to transfer to secondary. Why? Yeast Autolysis, look it up, I’m not going to regurgitate the internet.
Until recently we homebrewers did not really understand the importance of fermentation temperature control. We were told to put our beer in a cool (60-75F) dark room and let the yeast do its thing. Then after a week transfer it to a secondary fermenter. Fermentation creates heat, and if your room was at 75F, who knows how hot your beer got. That heat would stress the yeast causing it to go through autolysis faster. The idea was/is to get the beer off the yeast cake before autolysis could occur. I never had an autolysis problem because my fermentation areas stayed temperature controlled.
I looked through the Joy of Home Brewing series and How to Brew 2nd edition and neither one referenced fermentation temperature control, just to put the fermenter in a cool, dark room. Not until 2017 did John Palmer in his 4th edition of How To Brew did he reference the importance of fermentation temperature control.
So Should you transfer to secondary? IMO if you can control the fermentation temperature, no. If the area you are fermenting in stays near or above the recommended temperature for your yeast, then yes. Again, my opinion.