skipping secondary, keeping in primary

[Stlheadake]

Historically, I brew in a primary, then after inital yeast activity slows (about a week or 10 days) I racked over to a secondary carboy. Then I read about a guy that somehow introduced nasties into his brew through the racking process. This scared me, though I've never had a problem. I should toss in, that I wasn't particularly careful when racking either.

I sanitized everything, but I would experiment with letting the wort bubble in the bottom of the carboy (the idea being, maybe the yeast need more O2 to keep eating), (I now know that's bad, so I don't do that anymore), but I just transferred it and let it sit.

Then I started just leaving it in primary. Typically now, I'll let whatever I am brewing just sit in the primary, unless it is something special, and there is a reason not to.

So my question, is there a reason I shouldn't do this? I haven't had any issue so far, but there's no sense in inviting trouble. Any thoughts?

 

[k1ngl1ves]

Nope. Secondaries are mostly unnecessary.

 

[DSorenson]

+1!

 

[pjj2ba]

So my question, is there a reason I shouldn't do this? I haven't had any issue so far, but there's no sense in inviting trouble. Any thoughts?

This depends on YOUR tastes. Beer left in primary longer picks up extra flavors from the yeast. Some folks like these flavors, some do not, and others don't care. If you prefer the flavors of the secondaried beer, then you will figure out what you need to do to limit the risk of infection and oxidation.

Otherwise, just leave it in primary

 

[DesignatedDrinker]

I like putting my beers in a secondary to minimize head space after co2 production slows way down. Doesnt matter if you leave it closed the entire time, but if you open to take samples and reading then it does.

also like the idea of not having my beer on a layer of dead yeast, yeast poop, and particles from the boil that have precipitated. just my two cents.

 

[masonsjax]

This is by far the most discussed and debated topic on this forum. It's ridiculous how often it comes up. If I had a nickel...

The short story is that there is no good reason to use a secondary except in a handful of situations, one being that you feel like it. Welcome to the forum!

 

[Croyzen]

The Feds will confiscate your fermenters if you secondary. You'll be kicked out of the hobby for not following the new new new rules set by John Palmer. They will give them back if homebrew talk again finds it acceptable and the latest version of "How to Brew" reflects the change. Otherwise continue to do what whoever screams the loudest here tells you to do.

 

[Grinder12000]

I keep my dark beers in the primary for 3+ week and my lighter color brews I transfer into a secondary for clear better PLUS it frees up a 6g carboy.

There are all sorts of rules that can be broken. Cooling your wort as fast as you can after boiling - NOPE - not needed! Lots of experiments on this one and there is only anecdotal evidence on the quick cool. (I always quick cool BTW).

 

[abeasst]

Leave on primary for 4 weeks then transfer to keg.

 

[jrgtr42]

I do just that, leave in primary for generally 3 weeks, then bottle. I don't secondary unless I need to bulk age - wood, fruit, or sour.
I also don't open it much.
I will check on the beer the first 48 hours or so - to make sure things are happening in there (I don't open it; I just check the airlock and maybe shine a flashlight through to check krausen levels.
I then forget about it for another 2 weeks and a bit. I will check the airlock liquid level when I am in my basement, but I don't worry about looking carefully.
At about 2 weeks, 5 days, I will usually open the top to check gravity, and make sure it's where I wanted / expected it to be. Presuming it is, I prepare to bottle a few days later.
On bottling day, I move the bucket to the counter as early as I can, to let things settle back down, and open it for the second and last time to verify the gravity is where it was when I checked before.

 

[Stlheadake]

When you put it that way it really makes me think. In short, I am not competing with my beers, and though I shouldn't say this out loud, I've never made a bad batch.

I just wondered if I was doing something heinous? Even if it tasted ok to me.


Sent from my SPH-L720 using Home Brew mobile app

 

[masonsjax]

Yeast poop?

 

[kombat]

This depends on YOUR tastes. Beer left in primary longer picks up extra flavors from the yeast.

Maybe, if by "longer" you mean "several months."

On the timelines typical of standard-gravity ale brewing, I don't think there's any perceptible difference. Whether you leave beer in the fermenter for 3 weeks, or 1 week in the fermenter followed by 2 weeks in another vessel (or any other combination totalling 3 weeks), I don't believe there would be any noticeable flavour difference in the resulting beers.

 

[kombat]

I also like the idea of not having my beer on a layer of dead yeast, yeast poop, and particles from the boil that have precipitated.

Again, I don't think typical brewing timelines (1-3 weeks) are long enough to generate any meaningful amount of "dead yeast" and their associated off-flavours.

I'm also not sure what "yeast poop" is. The yeast metabolize the sugars and minerals in the wort to produce ethanol, CO2, and other assorted esters and compounds that are what makes beer taste like beer. Why would you want to minimize that?

The other particles from the boil are just break material (protein) that settles to the bottom and doesn't really add any flavours to the beer the longer it's in contact with it, to my knowledge (again, talking about typical brewing timelines of 1-3 weeks. If you're leaving it for several months, perhaps that trub breaks down somehow and affects beer flavour, I don't know).

If you're careful, racking to secondary doesn't really hurt anything. There are lots of ways to skin this cat! To each their own!

 

[PaddyFrankie]

I just did my first brew this past Saturday. I started with the brewhouse red ale kit (a premade wort) and I did some hacking. I boiled the existing wort and added an oz of Warrior at 90 minutes and an ounce each of pacifica and nugget at 60 minutes. The OG came in at roughly 1.054. I would like to dry hop and have an ounce of pacifica and an ounce of citra. What I am wondering is if I should bother to rack this I to a secondary or of I should dry hop in the primary? If I keep it in the primary when would be the proper time to put in the dry hop?

 

[kombat]

You boiled a pre-hopped kit wort for 90 minutes? And added MORE hops? That is going to be one super-bitter beer! That wort would have been prepared with various hop additions already done at the appropriate times to create the desired hop bitterness, flavour, and aroma profile. By re-boiling it, you're turning any flavour and aroma additions into bittering additions, escalating the bitterness that was already present by their bittering addition. Then you added an ounce of your own bittering hop, then 2 more ounces of bittering additions!

But anyway, to answer your questions, no, I would not rack it to secondary unless you plan to wash and re-use the yeast. I would leave it in the fermenter for 3 full weeks, then add the dry hops directly to the fermenter, wait another week, then bottle.

Let us know how this one turns out, you've got me very curious.

 

[MindenMan]

Once again, it is a matter of choice. I commonly leave my wort in the primary from 3 to 6 weeks depending on my schedule, cold crash for a week, then rack into bottling bucket. I did secondary once to dry hop, and I probably didn't even need to. I figure if my method is wrong and there were "unwelcome flavors", I wouldn't have won a competition like I did.

 

[pjj2ba]

Maybe, if by "longer" you mean "several months."

On the timelines typical of standard-gravity ale brewing, I don't think there's any perceptible difference. Whether you leave beer in the fermenter for 3 weeks, or 1 week in the fermenter followed by 2 weeks in another vessel (or any other combination totalling 3 weeks), I don't believe there would be any noticeable flavour difference in the resulting beers.

I can taste the difference in a beer that was on the yeast for 10 days vs. 3 weeks. It may not be a big difference, but it is there. As I always say, it depends on the individual.

I had some friends over to test the taste difference that adding CaCl2 had on a porter. I was adding it in the glass. We used a triangle test format. The results were all over the board. Some could tell the difference at 20 ppm, and others could not at 60 ppm

 

[PaddyFrankie]

I did add in a half cup of honey to the boil as well. I read about reboiling and adding hops in a few places. I may have overdone it.but we will see. The original IBU of the wort was 16. This should drive it up to about 100 which is not a problem though. Hopefully it is drinkable. I think I will just dry hop it in the primary. Anything I could add with the dry hop that may combat over bittering?

 

[MindenMan]

You might get a balance of sorts by adding a non fermentable sweetener. Honey will ferment all the way out, making the beer even drier. Really dry beer, lots of hops... It may turn out to be a "hoppy (happy) accident", or you end up blending it when you serve it. Either way it will still be beer.
Good luck.

 

[fosaisu]

The Feds will confiscate your fermenters if you secondary. You'll be kicked out of the hobby for not following the new new new rules set by John Palmer. They will give them back if homebrew talk again finds it acceptable and the latest version of "How to Brew" reflects the change. Otherwise continue to do what whoever screams the loudest here tells you to do.

This seems a bit hysterical. The general consensus on HBT these days is that there's no need to secondary most beers, and there's sound evidence in that lots and lots of award winning beers have now been brewed that way. Of course lots and lots of award winning beers have been (and are still being) brewed by people using secondaries, so even if there's little/no benefit to the practice, the risk of infection and oxidization durring transfer to the secondary cannot be high if you're using proper technique.

I do think it's important to spread the word that secondaries aren't a mandatory part of home brewing (as opposed to say, sanitation), because anyone getting into the hobby and reading older books will read that they MUST use a secondary. That's extra work, and for the beginner there's also extra cost in buying a secondary vessel, and extra opportunity to screw up the beer if the transfer goes badly.

Having said that, I haven't done blind taste-tests of a split batch where half was secondaried and half wasn't. Sounds like pjj2ba may have done so and noticed a difference, which I'd be interested to learn more about!

 

[abeasst]

It seems like this argument comes up here about every 2 weeks.

 

[PaddyFrankie]

You might get a balance of sorts by adding a non fermentable sweetener. Honey will ferment all the way out, making the beer even drier. Really dry beer, lots of hops... It may turn out to be a "hoppy (happy) accident", or you end up blending it when you serve it. Either way it will still be beer.
Good luck.

Non-fermentable sweetener? Anyone have a suggestion. I am all ears.

 

[TheZymurgist]

I can taste the difference in a beer that was on the yeast for 10 days vs. 3 weeks. It may not be a big difference, but it is there. As I always say, it depends on the individual.

I had some friends over to test the taste difference that adding CaCl2 had on a porter. I was adding it in the glass. We used a triangle test format. The results were all over the board. Some could tell the difference at 20 ppm, and others could not at 60 ppm

What you're tasting has nothing to do with the yeast, unless you're in the vast minority and your taste is particularly sensitive to something the rest of us can't detect. Fresh beer changes pretty rapidly until the flavors have a chance to settle. You're probably referring to the "green" taste of new beer.

 

[kombat]

Non-fermentable sweetener? Anyone have a suggestion. I am all ears.

Vanilla beans?

 

[pjj2ba]

What you're tasting has nothing to do with the yeast, unless you're in the vast minority and your taste is particularly sensitive to something the rest of us can't detect. Fresh beer changes pretty rapidly until the flavors have a chance to settle. You're probably referring to the "green" taste of new beer.

No, not in green beer, fully matured beer. I'm far from the only one who can tell the difference

byo and basic brewing radio experiment does delayed racking harm your-beer.

Again, the difference is not much, but it is there. Since we are brewing to our own tastes, if one prefers one over the other way enough, then they will do what it takes to make it work. If one doesn't care, then leave it alone.

It has everything to do with the yeast. Yeast are not inert, and as long as there is yeast around it is influencing the flavor, and the more yeast, the more influence it has. Is there not clearly a difference if one dry hops for 7 days versus leaving the hops in for 3 weeks? How do yeast magically stop influencing the flavor of a beer once they settle out?

 

[PaddyFrankie]

Vanilla beans?

Not exactly the flavor I was going for but maybe on the right track.

I still can't decide on racking to the secondary or not. Some convincing arguments on either side.

 

[masonsjax]

Yeast finish influencing the flavor of beer when they run out of compounds they are capable of acting on. At that point they prepare for hibernation, settle down and go dormant. Not magic, it's nature.

 

[AnOldUR]

Yeast finish influencing the flavor of beer when they run out of compounds they are capable of acting on. At that point they prepare for hibernation, settle down and go dormant. Not magic, it's nature.

So, you're saying that yeast has to have biological activity to influence flavor and aroma? That there is no flavor component to dormant yeast that will be transferred to beer through contact over time the way hops, wood and other additions work?

From my experience, the yeast cake has a distinct aroma after the beer has been racked off. I'd think that it must be being diffused into the beer. Not nature, it's science.

 

[dobe12]

I do just that, leave in primary for generally 3 weeks, then bottle. I don't secondary unless I need to bulk age - wood, fruit, or sour.
I also don't open it much.
I will check on the beer the first 48 hours or so - to make sure things are happening in there (I don't open it; I just check the airlock and maybe shine a flashlight through to check krausen levels.
I then forget about it for another 2 weeks and a bit. I will check the airlock liquid level when I am in my basement, but I don't worry about looking carefully.
At about 2 weeks, 5 days, I will usually open the top to check gravity, and make sure it's where I wanted / expected it to be. Presuming it is, I prepare to bottle a few days later.
On bottling day, I move the bucket to the counter as early as I can, to let things settle back down, and open it for the second and last time to verify the gravity is where it was when I checked before.

This ^^^^ is pretty much exactly what I do. The only difference, I let most beers sit for 3 weeks, then keg. I don't even take a gravity reading or taste until I am ready to keg. I purge the keg with CO2 through the beer out dip tube, rack, then purge the top through the gas in, cap and done. My beer never comes in contact with oxygen.

If I do secondary, I make sure to purge the carboy with CO2. I sanitize the CO2 line and pump a bunch in until I can smell it coming from the top. I'm sure some oxygen is still present, but I'm also sure most is purged.