When to rack to secondary??

[dawn_kiebawls]

Hey guys and gals, I recently brewed a holiday saison and all went well for the most part, considering its my first AG brew. Fermentation is going quite well and I am preparing for secondary.

Since I will be racking on to 5+ pounds of berries (organic, fresh off the vine from the farm down the road. Not sure if that matters at all or not) and introducing a lot of extra sugars, do I need to wait for primary to be finished?

In my mind I don't want primary to be finished in order to maintain a positive pressure in the carboy, reducing risk of oxidation, but I'm not sure if that is standard operating procedure. Does it matter? Should I wait for a stable FG before racking? Is racking unnecessary and just toss vanilla beans and raspberries into primary?

Thanks again for all your help!

 

[Roland_deschain]

How long were you going to have it sit on the berries? If it's a week or two I'd just put it in the primary. Anything longer and I'd rack to secondary after a few weeks.

 

[dawn_kiebawls]

How long were you going to have it sit on the berries? If it's a week or two I'd just put it in the primary. Anything longer and I'd rack to secondary after a few weeks.

Thanks for the quick response! The recipe only says to leave it in secondary for 10 days. You would recommend to just put the berries and vanilla beans directly into primary? That would certainly be easier, I just wasn't sure if that would mess things up at all some how. Thanks again!

 

[Roland_deschain]

I would stick with primary.

 

[cactusgarrett]

Stick with adding it to the primary. The only time I use a secondary vessel is when i've added fruit and i want it to clear better. I'll add fruit to the primary, then rack to a secondary for another week or two after fermentation from the fruit addition dies down. This helps clear the beer after fruit fermentation.

The reason Roland mentioned time, regarding whether to secondary or not, is that (dealing with fruit aside) there's a belief out there the after some time, the yeast die off (autolysis), and keeping the beer for extended periods of time on the autolysized yeast in the primary leads to off flavors. However, I (personally) believe this timeline is on the order of months and months, and is usually only experienced on larger scales that what homebrewers are dealing with.