secondary????

[akimbo78]

i know there are a lot of people on here that don't do secondaries for one reason or another. their points are valid. however, i just peaked in on a hoegaarden white that has been fermenting for 2 weeks. i am 1 point past the target fg. there is a huge head on this beer. should i rack between the head and trub to secondary and let it clear, or can should i go right to bottling bucket? knowing that wheat beers are never clear anyway.

 

[rycov]

you should take a gravity reading, then take another one a day or two later to make sure it doesn't change. that's how you'll know you've hit your FG. after that, it doesn't really matter if you secondary or not. it's a preference thing. being off by a gravity point of two on the FG is pretty normal. if it were my beer i would make sure it had hit final gravity then go ahead and bottle (since you want it cloudy and yeasty).

 

[ajf]

Target fgs can be very unreliable. I brew all grain, but my final gravities are almost always lower than published recipes with the same ingredients. If I use brewing software (such as Beersmith) that predicts a final gravity, my final gravities always end up lower.
If you are making an extract brew, but use a different extract than the recipe designer used, you could also end up with a different fg because different extracts have different degrees of fermentability.
However, I have never bottled or transferred to secondary while significant krausen was present. I have always assumed that krausen was an indication that fermentation was still active.
I could be wrong, but I doubt it.

-a.


​

 

[rycov]

you could have a krausen even after fermentation has stopped, but its more likely that it falls pretty soon after.

 

[Revvy]

Hoegaarden yeast tends to be long krauseing. I have used bottle harvested hoegaarden yeast that had had a krausen on it for upwards of 3 weeks, where even the gravity reading showed that the beer was finished.

The secondary/no secondary argument doesn't really fit here. Generally speaking if fermentation is still going on, as usually indicated by krausen for non witbier yeast, taking the beer off the yeast that is best able to finish the job, and moving it to a secondary usually results in a stuck fermentation. Because it is sort of tantamount to having your High school JV football team try to finish the 4th quarter of the superbowl.

You usually want to use the best yeast for the job.

If your hydro readings do show that your beer is finished, carefully racking the beer to your bottling bucket, and letting the krausen float down to the trub is usually all you need to do, it won't transfer across, instead it usually will just get stuck in the trub. Heck half the time just lifting the bucket up to your table to rack will knock the krausen loose.