The size of the secondary

[RobbyBeers]

Hola all,

I am not brand new to homebrewing, but I am in the middle of brewing my first batch at my own home, unsupervised. He's all growns up.

I've found this board helpful, so I wanted to bring my question here. I was given a kit for Xmas, and it came with a 5-gallon carboy for secondary. I did a test fill of this carboy so I could mark the water levels on the glass, and I was surprised to find that the carboy is EXACTLY 5 gallons (i.e., zero headspace).

Is this normal? I am brewing a big belgian that has lost some volume due to a good amount of blowoff; but by the time I go to secondary, will the batch be ok with an airlock and very little headspace?

Any advice is appreciated.

 

[nebben]

Seriously? 5 gallons to the neck? I have a 6 gallon/23 liter carboy that I measured up, and came to closer to 6 3/4 gallons to the airlock. Interesting...

Anyway, I suspect most of the fermenting has happened already in primary, and less foam should be produced from now on. I'd bet you could get pretty close to the top without any worries.

 

[johnnyc]

To be safe I'd use a blow off tube instead of an airlock, just in case racking it to the secondary causes any new yeast activity.

 

[CiscoKid]

I'm a n00b, but I can probably answer this pretty well:

If you decide/need to use a secondary, you don't want a lot of headspace. Since fermentation should be pretty well complete before you rack, the yeast are not going to be producing CO2 and forcing the O2 out of the headspace like they were in the primary. Sure, you'll likely have some CO2 that comes out of suspension in the liquid, but not enough to displace the large volume of room air on top of that beer. Oxidation is your enemy here, and the less headspace you have in secondary, the better.

That said, now I'm sure one of the "vets" can tell me where I'm wrong.

 

[RyanT]

I just bought myself a 6 gal glass corboy, and put about 4.5 gal of IPA in there for 5 days as a secondary. Bottled it up last night, and did a little taste test with the hydrometer liquid. I had no problems and the beer tasted good.

 

[ifishsum]

Primary fermentation should be completely finished before moving to secondary, so you should not have to worry about any foam at all. Just make sure it's completely finished fermenting before you rack - wait at least 10 days and check the gravity first, if it's not done then leave it in primary another week. If you need a blowoff on your secondary, your racking way too early.

Keep in mind that if you plan to dry hop, you'll want to leave enough headspace for that.

You'll also lose some volume to the trub, so I think you'll be fine. My batches start at 5.5 gallons and by the time they get moved into the 5 gallon carboys there's usually still enough headspace for dry hopping.

 

[RobbyBeers]

Seriously? 5 gallons to the neck?

Funny, that's what I said. Out loud. To myself.

I do understand the argument in favor of the small carboy, in that less headspace is safest, but I was still having reservations about how far I could push it (i.e., fill her to the top?).

I guess I have two options: (1) keep the small-ish carboy and make sure the primary is done before switching over, or (2) trade in for a bigger carboy and let a little more oxygen sit over my beer.

I imagine it's probably true that I will lose enough volume in the primary to make it fit regardless, and I'll keep sampling the gravity just to make sure this thing stays on the rails.

Thanks all for the advice.

 

[RobbyBeers]

Update, FYI.

I had lost a good amount of volume by the time I moved to secondary. I had room to dry hop, plus room to spare. Even if I had gotten closer to 5 gallons, it probably would have been ok because the beer is very calm now (despite its wild adolescent period), and it's not likely to blow its stopper. The mini-carboy might not be such a bad deal after all.

Thanks again for the suggestions.