Hot answers tagged secondary-fermentation
14
I'll simply quote part of what John Palmer said in the "Ask the Experts" section if the American Homebrewers Association website....
"The risk inherent to any beer transfer, whether it is fermenter-to-fermenter or fermenter-to-bottles, is oxidation and staling. Any oxygen exposure after fermentation will lead to staling, and the more exposure, and the ...
8
The debate is basically whether there is any benefit to the risk(s) caused by racking to a secondary fermenter after the primary fermentation has completed.
There are many reasons people rack to a secondary fermenter. This isn't the place to discuss whether they're myths or not, but here are the reasons:
Getting the beer off the trub helps it clarify
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5
I think secondary "fermentation" is kind of a misnomer, since fermentation is largely complete by this point. It's more of a secondary "clarification" stage where yeast and other stuff falls out to the vessel bottom.
Given this, I think it would certainly be safe to try. All of the alcohol is already in there, acting as a natural preservative. If anything ...
4
A secondary fermentation can have benefits depending on what you want to do:
If you want to reuse or re-pitch the yeast in the primary, racking the beer to a secondary fermentor is a better way to go because you will get a cleaner pitch for the next batch if you do not want to wash the yeast. Washing is not hard just a little time consuming.
Another ...
4
You probably won't get a contamination from that, but i can suggest a device:
Get a 2 litters coke pet bottle
Cut out top and bottom to make a tube
Cut it on it's length so you can roll it on itself, diminishing the diameter
Insert the rolled tube on your bag, let it free so it go back to the original diameter.
Put hops in, slide tube out.
Finally, ...
4
Racking to secondary and letting it sit for a few more days or a week can improve clarity slightly but is by no means necessary. It will however make things easier to bottle without stirring up sediment in the process. If you're careful you can bottle straight from primary with about the same results.
I'm guessing since this is your first brew that you will ...
4
If you have the time (ie, don't otherwise need/want to use the bucket), you can easily leave it until it's finished fermenting; a carboy is not strictly necessary.
The biggest differences between bucket and (glass) carboy is oxygen permeability for long-term storage and the ability to clean, especially with "bugs": souring yeast/bacteria cultures. If ...
4
There are a variety of techniques to clarify beer. Filtering is the quickest method but will strip out the yeast you need for natural carbonation, and potentially also some flavor compounds. Finings (gelatin, isinglass, others) will help large particles drop out; I'd recommend reading posts here about finings and/or talking to your LHBS about techniques with ...
3
Avoiding sediment floating around in the glass is often a function of carefully pouring from the bottle. If bottled beer is allowed to sit and condition properly, given time the yeast and other solids in suspension will settle to the bottom and create a fairly tight sediment in the base of the bottle. Upon opening a careful pour should leave much of it ...
3
In my experience, the biggest cause of non-clear beer in your glass is chill haze. You can rush from fermentation being complete to bottling, without any significant "conditioning" time, and the beer in the bottles will become crystal clear quite soon. But put those bottles in the fridge and you'll have chill haze by the time the beer is at drinking ...
3
As long as you practiced good siphoning technique and minimized splashing of the beer I think you should be just fine. I personally rack most of my beers to secondary (This isn't actually considered "Best Practice" anymore) because I dnjoy really clear beer.
I have never experienced the effects of oxidization but am very careful to let the fluid drain along ...
3
A secondary isn't required for regular strength beers, but for high gravity beers like your tripel, the conditioning time is much longer, and so a secondary is beneficial. Also, high gravity beers use about twice as much yeast as with the regular beer, so leaving on the yeast for a long time will give some yeast bite.
If you can get hold of a carboy before ...
3
A few drops of vodka (or higher proof Everclear if you can get it) on top of the spices/additives, just enough to wet them. Let sit for 60 seconds and add to beer.
Realistically, you probably would be fine adding them directly to the beer without sanitizing. Finished beer is aseptic enough to withstand additives without infecting, it's unfermented wort that ...
3
Use Secondary Fermentation Do Not Use Secondary
Fermentation
-------------------- --------------------- ----------------------------
Oxydation Risk Increased risk of oxydation. No increased risk of
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3
The only practical reason I know of for racking to secondary is the improved clarity of beer. By racking off the yeast cake in primary gives the yeast a chance to settle out again which greatly improves the clarity of a beer. This was covered nicely in an experiment by Basic Brewing with a great pictorial example here:
...
3
Second part first...
In my experience don't bother with pectic enzyme for cranberries. They don't seem to release that much. I speculate its do to their firm skins vs. raspberries or other fruits. A gelatin rest for should be fine. The few cranberried beers I've done cleared up just fine with out pectin.
The first part second...
If you let primary come ...
2
When you serve from the keg, the first couple of pints will be cloudy, even if the rest of the beer is clear, so you need to pull a couple of pints before you can judge cloudiness.
There are a couple of ways to speed up sedimentation
cold crash - chill the beer to 33F for a week or longer
use gelatin finings - again, chill the beer to 33F or as cold as ...
2
I don't think that having CO2 in solution will really affect fermentation or aging one way or another. The last lager I made was actually slightly carbonated after primary, presumably due to the cold temperature allowing more CO2 to stay in solution.
If you transfer it while carbonated, be careful to do it slowly and preferably cold to avoid foaming. If ...
2
Disinfection (99.9% kill) occurs with 62% ethyl alcohol with a wet contact time of about 30 seconds. Note that hand sanitizers are required to have "at least 62% ethyl alcohol". I'm doubting that you have vodka that is over 120 proof that you would want to waste on sanitizing something for a brew!!!!! I've always found pasteurizing, or even boiling with a ...
2
I don't claim to know all the facets of all the arguments, but here's what I've garnered from what I've read.
Argument for racking to secondary:
Allowing the beer to sit on the yeast cake will produce off flavors.
Argument Against:
Racking can lead to oxidation and letting the beer sit on the yeast isn't really going to do much.
The "argument against" ...
2
So the thing is, you really should wait until the beer is fermented fully before you bottle it. The beer will ferment until it is done, regardless of when you bottle it, so if you bottle it too early, your going to have exploding bottles and all sorts of mess. So you shouldn't really think of bottling in terms of when you think it tastes good but more in ...
1
The basic problem you will have is that you need some yeast in suspension for bottle carbonation (if you don't have them, you need to add them).
Racking to secondary will increase the clearness of you beer, while adding another chance for getting the beer infected. Generally all literature today recommends you not to rack to secondary unless you have to ...
1
Racking to secondary most definitely helps with clarity, if you are unwilling (or unable) to rack to a secondary another great option is using gelatin to clear up the brew.
2/3 cup water
1 tsp gelatin
Heat the two ingredients together in a microwave (most recommend 15 sec increments) shoot for about 150F and then stir to dissolve the gelatin into the ...
1
I can offer only my personal experience from almost 10 years ago when me and my friends first started brewing when we were 16. We added glucose to the beer before sealing the bottles to create a sort of second fermentation. We only did this because we had some really poor materials and equipment to start with and it made the beer taste genuinely better, have ...
1
Leaving beer warm for extended periods, a couple of months, will cause it to stale quicker. But leaving it for a couple of weeks to carb and condition will be fine.
One thing to watch out for though is that the keg should be chilled before pouring a pint, or the dispensing pressure will be too high, and you'll get a glass of foam, unless you use a very ...
1
I use something called a "china cap strainer" to strain my wort before it goes into the fermentor. These things work greater, as it fits into the funnel I use on top of the fermentor and they have a good handle to jostle the strainer to encourage the wort to work it's way past the captured hops and trub.
An example of a "china cap strainer" can be seen ...
1
I chill my wort in place on the stovetop and transfer to my primary with an autosiphon. But I transfer to a larger metal screen strainer on top of my primary fermentor that has a paint strainer bag arranged inside it. This strains out the debris (hops, whirlyfloc, and hot break) and helps with aeration. I have also used a nylon stocking and the paint ...
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