Thoughts on secondary fermentation

[bbelsey1]

Do you guys use or believe in it? I'm debating of continuing dong it. What about beer you put extra floating ingredients? Made a white IPA with some orange peel in it that I haven't tried yet but had a hell of a time siphoning it.

 

[m00ps]

I personally have only done 1-2 secondaries in 100+ batches. There is really no need for it anymore. This is especially true with IPAs where you want to minimize oxygen exposure at all costs. I would never, ever secondary an IPA> i dump dry hops, cacao nibs, vanilla beans, coffee, spices, just about anything into the primary since i feel like any small splashing from that will be much much less oxygen pickup than siphoning into an entire another container full of oxygen

 

[Vamptrump]

This is easily one of the most debated topics on these forums. Also, "believe" might not be the word you are looking for .

I'm a firm believer in leaving the beer alone as much as possible. There are cases though that a secondary has its uses.

1) Long term batch aging - autolysis is a big bad boogeyman. Will it happen to your beer, probably not. Is it possible with long (I'm talking months) term exposure sitting on the yeast cake, sure. Do I want to risk this when I want to bulk age an RIS, nope.

That being said, there are also times when I need to let the beer sit for a bit longer to finish (not fermentation, talking about clarity/cleaning up). I may need the primary again during this time. At this point I will go ahead and transfer to a secondary.

2) Fruit - Any fruit addition in primary during vigorous fermentation is going to disappear. Adding lbs of fruit is a little different than small additions like coffee, vanilla, etc.

3) Saving the Yeast - If you want to save the yeast cake before you do anything to the beer, such as spicing, dry hop, etc. This is another reason to use secondary.

The one thing I would make sure to do though when utilizing a secondary is to flush the carboy out with CO2. Re-establish the protective CO2 blanket that you lost to prevent nasty oxidation.

 

[ricshayne]

I just added Brett to a saison in a secondary, besides that I will never, ever use one, never had the need to and have made great beer without it

 

[doug293cz]

If you can't explain why you need to secondary a particular beer, then don't.

Brew on

 

[Vamptrump]

If you can't explain why you need to secondary a particular beer, then don't.

Brew on

Best advice I've heard all day. Pretty much can apply to most things.

 

[Schol-R-LEA]

Strictly speaking, what most homebrewers who use a secondary do isn't a secondary fermentation, but a bright rest - the first fermentation is still ongoing, but they are removing it from the yeast cake to clarify and avoid yeast autolysis. A real secondary fermentation would involve adding either additional fermentables, or a separate microbiota pitch (or both).

Here's the crux of the issue: yeast autolysis. This is a serious issue for commercial brewers, especially the BMCs, because of the batch size. The larger the batch, the more the yeast cake gets compressed, especially in conical fermenter. However, since one of the purposes of a conical is to allow you to draw off the yeast cake, this rarely becomes an issue unless the brewers are really sloppy. In any case, any batch size less than (for sake of argument, as I don't know the actual size) 10 barrels isn't likely to compress the yeast enough to cause a problem. Compression autolysis is rarely a factor for craft brewers, and pretty much never comes up for homebrewers.

Most lager brewers will lager in a separate bright tank, more to free up the fermenter than anything else. This lets the beer clarify off of the yeast cake while lagering.

Yeast autolysis used to be a big issue for homebrewers, but for a completely different reason. Up until the late 1990s, the dry yeast most homebrewers had access to was of poor quality at best - it wasn't uncommon for baking yeast to get repackaged as brewer's yeast, and even when a real brewing strain was used, the preparation and handling of the yeast was often sub-par. A large part of the reason liquid yeast became popular when it first appeared in 1991 was that it was generally much better quality yeast, and the yeast health was better from more careful handling.

This isn't nearly as much of problem today, however - dry yeast manufacturers for homebrewing have really cleaned up their act in the past twenty years, and the problem of yeast health is almost gone today. Unless you have the misfortune of getting some ancient yeast packet with a Coopers' kit that has been sitting on the shelf for five years, or you let your fermentation get to temperatures above 90 degrees F for an extended period, you should be able to keep your beer on the yeast cake for a month or more with no measurable risk of the yeast autolyzing.

 

[JustLooking]

This is especially true with IPAs where you want to minimize oxygen exposure at all costs.

I have always been told that problems from oxygen exposure took a while to develope and that IPA's should be consumed young.

[...] i feel like any small splashing from that will be much much less oxygen pickup than siphoning into an entire another container full of oxygen

It's as much drawing O2 into your fermenter when you make the addition as it is splashing. Purging before and after would seem to make sense in either case.

A search will show that hop character is different when done on the yeast cake. Not saying better, but different. You decide.