# Racking



## aspro (16/8/05)

G Day all
I have a few questions about racking please
1 Is it possible to rack for to long
2 Do I have to rack at a certain temp (does it have to be placed in fridge or can it be stored at room temp)

I checked the faqs and couldnt find answers sorry if I missed them.

CHEERS


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## pint of lager (16/8/05)

Hello aspro,

If you could just clarify your post.


> Is it possible to rack for to long


Do you mean, is it ok to store the racked beer too long?

As to the racking temperature. It is much more important to understand why you are racking, when you are racking and to do the process with as little oxygenation, into a container that has zero headspace once the racked beer is in the container it is racked to.

If you can organise the beer to be at a cooler temperature, without disturbing the sediment by shifting it around, by all means rack at this temperature. Otherwise, just leave the beer at primary temperature, rack, then store at your secondary temperature.

For newer brewers, the terms of racking, secondary and primary get a bit confusing. The best bet for new brewers is not to rack. Keep your ales fermenting at 20 degrees, leave in the primary fermenter for 14 days, then keg or bottle. Concentrate on sanitation and temperature contrl. Get his right, then move to racking.


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## RobW (16/8/05)

Hi Aspro

Racking is the action of transferring fermented wort or beer from one container to another (generally after the primary fermentation into a secondary container). Most people who rack to secondary usually leave it there for 1-2 weeks. This allows yeast & suspended matter to drop out & is sometimes called brightening. Certain beers are stored in secondary at low temperatures for several months (lagering) which has the added benefit of smoothing the flavours out. If you follow good sanitary methods you shouldn't have any problems storing in secondary for extended periods. Most home brewers who rack to secondary usually leave it there for 1-2 weeks (often in the fridge - called cold conditioning) before bottling or kegging, although many don't bother.


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## aspro (16/8/05)

Hi pint of lager

sorry what I wanted to know was if I did not have an empty keg ready would it matter if the beer remained in the 2nd vessel for a long time say more than 4 or 5 weeks.

CHEERS


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## aspro (16/8/05)

HEY THERE 

The main thing i am trying to do is get my beer more clear I ferment for 14 days and then keg it I try to leave it for 3 weeks and then drink it but it has never been really clear but it still tastes good 


CHEERS


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## sluggerdog (16/8/05)

aspro said:


> HEY THERE
> 
> The main thing i am trying to do is get my beer more clear I ferment for 14 days and then keg it I try to leave it for 3 weeks and then drink it but it has never been really clear but it still tastes good
> 
> ...



I have found gelatine to work wonders clearing up a brew.

After you have had your brew in secondary for 2 of your 3 weeks, mix up 2 teaspoons of gelatine with cup warm water (not boiling) once dissolved from stiring, pour the mixture into your cube/secondary container, leave it for your last week (or even just a few days) and then bottle/keg as usual..

I have found that when I use safale for by brews I can ferment for 5 days, transfer to a cube for 5 days with the gelatine and then keg and drink within 2 weeks...

This brew will come out crystal clear because of the gelatine...


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## pint of lager (16/8/05)

This is a great way to store your beer till you have a keg freed up.

Rack the fully fermented beer to a sanitised spare fermenter or jerry can. You really need zero headspace. Any oxygen is the enemy of finished beer. Store the container somewhere cool and in the dark. A fridge is ideal if you have the space. It will be fine for up to 2 months. Long term, some plastics do allow some oxygen to pass through.

You can never have too many kegs. Ask for more as presents. Or, check out the thread for cheap kegs from RCB Equipment Ends up costing about AUS$50-55 for kegs including shipping.


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## aspro (16/8/05)

hey



Thanks alot everyone that helps me heaps and I like the quote '"you can never have too many kegs" thats good advice. :beer: 




CHEERS


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## cubbie (16/8/05)

Aspro,

i think you have recieved some good advice. just to clarify some of the above, the difference in time that some people suggest are related to the style of beer eg Ale or Lager.

generally for an Ale you would do something like 7 days primary, 7 days secondary (same temp as primary) and 7 days cold condition. To cold condition you just need to drop the temp 2-5c, no need to rack to a new vessle (if you can't keg you can leave in CC until you are ready)

If you can't rack, you would be safe to ferment for 14 days. If you can rack but can't CC you can leave in secondary for about 14 days but you should really try to keep the temp down a little.


For a lager you ferment for about 2 weeks, then rack and turn the fridge on (lagering). You can leave it there for as long as you need. No need for a secondary ferment (though you might throw in a rest). Becuase you ferment a lager at a lower temp it is probably safe to leave in primary for a bit longer than 2 weeks. If you rack but can't drop the temp, I would think you are safe for another 2 weeks.


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## rodderz (16/8/05)

I have just done my 1st racking effort a few days ago

As you may have read in my other thread (hop sediment) I was a bit worried about the bits of hop pellets floating around in the primary. Good news is while it was transferring from primary to secondary it left most sediment in the 1st fermenter and now even after a couple of days it's twice as clear.

Only thing I'll do for my next effort is buy either a smaller fermenter (25lt) or jerry can to reduce the headspace, currently all i have is a 2nd 30Lt version


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## muga (17/8/05)

I rack in to the exact same sized fermenter and I never have any problems. I rack after 7 days and it still has enough give to push all the remaining air out without a problem - I used a jerry a couple of times and there was no improvement that I wasn't already getting from using something with a larger headspace.. only thing I found was the jerry was harder to clean.

I understand that air can ruin a beer but I don't think it's all that much o be concerned over, unless you store it in a bucket without a lid or something stupid like that.


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## archimedes24 (17/8/05)

Hi Muga, all,

I really like the idea of racking to an identical container. That'd be handy. Also hear a lot of discussion about using big plastic water jugs from the office water cooler. Should be able to find something before I start my next brew...

My question is, when removing brew from the fermenter, to your secondary container, what's the best way to do this? Just open the lids and pour away? Seems this is the time when you want to avoid aerating (as opposed to the initial mixing step when you WANT to aerate), so siphoning is the best way to go. 

I think this is explained a bit more in howtobrew, but just wanted to ask for any advice/experience in this transfer process.

Thx,
A


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## archimedes24 (17/8/05)

Think I answered my own question...

"How to Siphon
When racking or bottling , you cannot start a siphon by sucking on it or you will contaminate and sour the batch with bacteria from your mouth.

All parts of the siphon (racking cane, tubing, and cutoff valve or bottle filler) need to be sanitized, especially the inside. After sanitizing, leave the siphon full of sanitizer and carefully place the racking cane in your beer. Release the clamp/valve or your clean-and-sanitized thumb and allow the sanitizer to drain into a jar. Make sure the outlet is lower than the fermenter, or you will drain the sanitizer into your beer.

As the sanitizer drains, it will draw the beer into the siphon and you can stop and transfer the outlet to your bottling bucket or bottles. Thus you can siphon without risk of contamination."

This sound about right? What diameter of tube/wand are recommended? Any recommendation on where to get these materials? (Bunnings, etc.)

Thx!


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## RobW (17/8/05)

Sanitise the fermenter tap than attach a length of sanitised food grade tube to the tap & make sure it reaches to the bottom of the secondary container to avoid splashing. Carefully open the tap & let the beer slowly run into the secondary container until it covers the bottom of the tube & then you can open the tap fully. Stop racking before you start to transfer sediment. You can then run the remainder of the muddy wort into a sanitised 2 litre PET bottle, let it stand overnight & tip the clear stuff off the top if you want to. FWIW I find 10 litre plastic jerry cans are good for secondary containers because there is enough room in 2 of them to just fit 22 or 23 litres with very little headspace & they are easy to lift.


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## archimedes24 (17/8/05)

Hi Rob,

Thanks for the info. I have a few more questions...

What did the jerry cans set you back? Did you get them from Bunnings, or an outdoor supply place? Do they have taps?

Once you've filled your 10L jerry cans, do you bottle, or keg? If you bottle, can you explain the next few steps (adding bottling sugar, mixing sugar w/ brew, etc.) ? I'm assuming once the secondary fermentation is over, there'll be very little sediment, so the issue of how to "gently mix bottling sugar into brew w/o stirring up the sediment" isn't a very big one?

Do you save the yeasty leftovers from primary fermentation for anything? I hear it said that if you have some of this residue left over, you can bottle it and refrigerate it and re-use it. Have you ever tried this? ( I know this question doesn't belong under "racking" but since you got me started...  )

Thanks for the input. I'll definitely plan on racking my next brew.

Rgds,
A


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## RobW (17/8/05)

Archimedes

Jerry cans I got at Bunnings & they were about $9 each with taps IIRC.
I currently bottle. When I am ready to do that I sanitise a fermenter & add priming sugar dissolved in a few hundred mls of boiling water then gently rack from the jerries into the fermenter as described. I like to give a gentle stir at this point to make sure the priming sugar is evenly distributed but opinion is divided on whether that's really necessary (peace of mind for me). Then I fit one of those plastic bottle fillers to the tap & fill the bottles. It's pretty straight forward if a little time consuming. Actually looking forward to switching to kegs at the end of the year.

I do store yeast from smack packs & if you hunt around this site there are a lot of good posts on how to do that. I store mine under sterilised water as described on Craftbrewers (www.craftbrewer.org.au) in 5 mL aliquots because I don't particularly want heaps of stubbies full of yeast. I've successfully recultured from these after more than 12 months in storage.


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## warrenlw63 (17/8/05)

Rob,

You won't look back. :beerbang: Bottling is a chore. With kegs you don't even really need to worry about a secondary. Lower grav Ales can just go from primary to keg.  

Easy as. 

Warren -


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## RobW (17/8/05)

warrenlw63 said:


> Rob,
> 
> You won't look back. :beerbang: Bottling is a chore. With kegs you don't even really need to worry about a secondary. Lower grav Ales can just go from primary to keg.
> 
> ...



Yep it's definitely the way to go. Just need to squirrel away enough $$


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## c0z (17/8/05)

warren can you give us a smidge more info on primary to keg? due to space this is what i wanna do


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## jimmythehuman (30/5/12)

Sorry to drag up and old thread...but is the above process likely to remove any of the yeast needed to carb in the bottle? Should the fining/racking/chilling to remove as much 'stuff' as possible be reserved for keggers so there is enough yeast to carb the bottles? Or does it make no difference at all?


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## mwd (30/5/12)

No problem even clear looking beer will still contain enough yeast to carbonate may take a little longer.

You might have problems if you were to filter through a 1 micron element.


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## Adam Pike (30/5/12)

I think "some people" just get obsessed with "clear beer", it's typical commercial beer stereo typing!!! I say a little bit of cloudiness is better!!! More flavors to enjoy! Cheers!


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