This is a very interesting thread to me, because of points made regarding secondary being an old school of thought due to the yeast available.
I started brewing in 1999, using Dave Miller's Complete Handbook of Brewing, and he wrote over and over about autolysis. All the recipes mentioned packets - I assume dry yeast. So secondary was the way to avoid autolysis, by getting the beer off this presumably inferior quality yeast.
I have always used liquid - except on a few occasions when dry was required - so it's interesting to learn that there probably was never an issue, and that 70+ batches with secondary were unnecessary. I never thought to question the logic of secondary, and never thought about the layer of yeast in secondary being wasted, as it would have been useful to clean and attenuate the beer in primary. Clear beer is not too much of an issue for me, both in not having an issue but also not caring, but the tight yeast cake and added attenuation are. I'm sure my recent issue with bottle bombs is from just this subject - racking to secondary instead of leaving it in primary, then bottling too soon, so that there is still sugar that the yeast can ferment, in addition to the priming sugar.
Now it all makes sense: brewers make wort; yeast makes beer, so let them do their thing.
I have a mild fermenting on a 1469 yeast cake that has a weird mead-y smell, so I am all for leaving it as long as possible to let the yeast clean it up. It fermented out in about 3 days at 70, and filled my airlock for about a day and a half, so I'm sure that it was too warm and too short a time. It's also why I usually stick to White Labs: never have these issues with temperature/taste/smell. But that's another topic.
I started brewing in 1999, using Dave Miller's Complete Handbook of Brewing, and he wrote over and over about autolysis. All the recipes mentioned packets - I assume dry yeast. So secondary was the way to avoid autolysis, by getting the beer off this presumably inferior quality yeast.
I have always used liquid - except on a few occasions when dry was required - so it's interesting to learn that there probably was never an issue, and that 70+ batches with secondary were unnecessary. I never thought to question the logic of secondary, and never thought about the layer of yeast in secondary being wasted, as it would have been useful to clean and attenuate the beer in primary. Clear beer is not too much of an issue for me, both in not having an issue but also not caring, but the tight yeast cake and added attenuation are. I'm sure my recent issue with bottle bombs is from just this subject - racking to secondary instead of leaving it in primary, then bottling too soon, so that there is still sugar that the yeast can ferment, in addition to the priming sugar.
Now it all makes sense: brewers make wort; yeast makes beer, so let them do their thing.
I have a mild fermenting on a 1469 yeast cake that has a weird mead-y smell, so I am all for leaving it as long as possible to let the yeast clean it up. It fermented out in about 3 days at 70, and filled my airlock for about a day and a half, so I'm sure that it was too warm and too short a time. It's also why I usually stick to White Labs: never have these issues with temperature/taste/smell. But that's another topic.