Only 18% Of Homebrewers Rack To Secondary?

[Snow]

Food for thought.

Sorry Pete, it's only food for my thought if you can tell us where that quote was sourced.

- Snow

 

[big78sam]

Thanks for that info Pete. My question would be, if you're bottling how is the improvement mentioned in the info you pasted any different to conditioning while in the bottle?

 

[reVoxAHB]

One of the reasons I go secondary is to rack on loose hop flowers (and pellets), or vanilla pod, or ground espresso or whatever. You can't do loose in the keg straight from primary and packing 100g (or more!) into a SS tea ball or muslin won't be as effective, imo. Having said that, I rarely go to secondary.. ok let's to a stab at 18% of the time (and not always for the reasons outlined above).

Agreed 100% with frasier regarding poor sanitation and poor process. No need to don the flame suit on that one. And certainly, fourstar is also correct with his assessment of our not operating in sterile environment. I think the average dude can safely live in middle ground with ill effect, but I lean (personally speaking, as a brewer) in the direction of FJ's paranoia *cough proper sanitation, process, gear, etc.

In the end, flavour/quality-wise, do a split batch and decide for yourself. Split one half to primary only, the other to secondary, etc.

If you dick around with condition time and temps, I'd hazard you'll pull differing result.. That is to say, if you go straight to CC from primary to bottle/keg while leaving the split@ 18C for addl. 10 days, the final product will be different. In a sense, that's the crux of going secondary as most (especially keggers) won't rack from primary at 18C.

Pretty straight forward stuff. Plenty of variables but comparative splitting beats trying secondary one month, then primary only the next month (even when ostensibly nailing the same recipe).

reVox

 

[reVoxAHB]

Sorry Pete, it's only food for my thought if you can tell us where that quote was sourced.

- Snow

Palmer

 

[Phoney]

Sorry Pete, it's only food for my thought if you can tell us where that quote was sourced.

- Snow

What, you havent read the bible? :blink:

http://www.howtobrew.com/section1/chapter8-2-3.html


EDIT; beaten to it :lol:

 

[Nick JD]

I rack to tertiary! I is hardcore. h34r:

By the time I've finished racking I'm completely racked off because my beer is 999.3% bacteria. Brewtastic!

 

[DUANNE]

i rack to secondary most of the time because i reuse my yeast. i dont like the idea of polyclar being in the yeast cake when i split it up. also with lagers i always rack cause i dont want to take up my fermenting fridge and vessel when i could have another beer fermenting. 0 infections from the secondary so far so ill keep doing what im doing.

 

[pmolou]

Anything i had at 6 months and over would usually end in a gusher. 12 months would be like trying to find a needle in a haystack for a good beer in a case of 24.

:icon_offtopic: why is this i also find this happens with some beers

 

[InCider]

You can prove anything with data and statistics. 78.26% of people know that.

 

[Fourstar]

:icon_offtopic: why is this i also find this happens with some beers

could be the uptake of wild yeast upon transfer or a poor sanitation regieme for bottles leading to infections after conditioning. Long term storage is the biggest issue if these pickup nasties along the way.

 

[avaneyk]

I used to rack to secondary - stopped bothering a couple of batches ago and haven't noticed any differences. I stopped racking to secondary mainly because of the effort. Now I just drop the fermenting fridge to between 0 and 3 for a week then rack to a keg.

 

[hazard]

could be the uptake of wild yeast upon transfer or a poor sanitation regieme for bottles leading to infections after conditioning. Long term storage is the biggest issue if these pickup nasties along the way.

Just by coincidence - tonight i opened a bottle of red ale that I brewed in April last year - came out very highly carbonated, much more so than I remember when I was drinking the rest of the batch last year. Not quite a gusher but the beer in the bottle continued to foam after I poured a glass of half beer half head, at first I was wondering why it had continued to carb up, but reading this thread the answer appears to be a form of infection. But would wild yeast cause this? Wouldn't they only eat simpler sugars like our favourite yeasts? Is it more likely to be a bacteria - I've come across the tern "gusher bug" in some of my readings, is this likely to be the culprit?

 

[rude]

I've been doing pommy bitters no chilling & have racked all except one.

For me I prefer to rack better taste, but when I fill my cube everything goes in (loose hops) allso when I fill my fermenter the same the lot goes in.

So usually after 2 to 3 days I rack to get it off all the stuff in the bottom of the fermenter.

Sanitation isnt a problem for me

 

[kieran]

I rack all of my beers into secondary. This is where I add finings (gelatine) and crash cool it. I don't know if its nessary but I do it anyway.

Ditto, more or less. I rack, then add finings and crash cool to 1^oC, for 24-48 hours and then pass it through a filter into the keg.

I use a plate chiller, so a fair bit of cold break ends up in the fermenter. A rack helps get the beer body off the cold break and dead yeast. Just for a day or so to let the remaining suspended yeast floculate and the finings to do the work taking out any extra yeast and suspended protein content.

I feel it opens up the body of the beer, accentuating the malt notes more and 'opening' up a subtle hop freshness in low-hopped beers - and it does it that little bit more than when not racking (which I did stop doing for a while, now I'm doing it again because I think its better - even with the filter). It isn't a whole other world of difference, but enough for me to notice and really finish off the beer nicely.
I notice the difference a lot when brewing AG Scottish 80/- ales that I pour through my beer engine. Because they are served "warm" and are aerated through a sparkler, I think those sort of beers really show up their faults more if everything isn't just 'right' (particularly phenolic and astringent notes) and I've done one with racking and one without -- and I'll always rack when doing one of these brews now.

That being said, in my experience, the notes gained through racking it are pretty brew specific for me. I don't bother for an IPA or a hop feast. It's so heavy on the palate that many subtle differences gained from racking are unnoticable for me. But it is for others, and I rack for those.

all the best.

 

[Yeldarb]

I used to rack to a secondary...but now that I have temperature under control I am more than happy for everything to sit in the primary for an extra couple of weeks. It's less effort, and I get the same result.

 

[cooperplace]

I pour my beer into a glass.

yes, it's much easier than trying to lift the keg up to your mouth!!

 

[Fourstar]

Just by coincidence - tonight i opened a bottle of red ale that I brewed in April last year - came out very highly carbonated, much more so than I remember when I was drinking the rest of the batch last year. Not quite a gusher but the beer in the bottle continued to foam after I poured a glass of half beer half head, at first I was wondering why it had continued to carb up, but reading this thread the answer appears to be a form of infection. But would wild yeast cause this? Wouldn't they only eat simpler sugars like our favourite yeasts? Is it more likely to be a bacteria - I've come across the tern "gusher bug" in some of my readings, is this likely to be the culprit?

I couldnt tell you, it could be anything for a poorly seated cap and oxygen being drawn in with fluctuating temperatures, it could be a dirty cap which had brett/lactic bacteria on it and its chewed away over months, a dirty bottle or it could be something else altogether. The stickler for me was always very loose bubbles and head formation along with spritzy rolling carbonation usually being present.

At BJCP on tuesday we had two bottles of Fullers 1845. One end of the table poured theirs and we poured ours. Ours poured with a high amount of foam and loose head as described above so i immediatly called for their bottle. The differences where staggering. Ours (the infected bottle) literally tasted of nothing but some spicy phenolics and low lingering bitterness. It was like everything had been stripped out. Theirs was perfect, malty sweet, complex, a great hop profile, clean aromas, beautiful.

None of us could really pick what kind of infection it was other than possibly being wild yeast or some bacteria from a dodgy cap as they where both from the same batch (or so it seemed). maybe someone a little more educated on the matter could chime in on what kind of bug it was or what combination of things caused this issue?

 

[peas_and_corn]

Acouple of questions; why would racking to secondary increase the risk of oxidisation or infection any more than when you rack to bulk prime?

Also, why do almost all of the recipes in the AHB Database suggest a two stage fermentation, if so few brewers rack to secondary?

This is mainly because bulk priming also involves adding sugar to reactivate the yeast- which will quickly consume any oxygen that would have been absorbed in the process.

 

[mika]

........... But would wild yeast cause this? Wouldn't they only eat simpler sugars like our favourite yeasts? ......

Brett is a yeast, it'll take the beer to 1.000 or below. It has no problems chewing up complex sugars that regular brewer's yeast won't touch.

 

[mika]

I always assumed racking improved the finished product but after reading this thread I'll only do it at the bulk priming step.

I had read that racking to secondary can kick off a stalled ferment or enliven a ferment that has really slowed down. I also read you should rack when the fermentation isn't quite finished so the continuing co2 production ensured the headspace isn't filled with oxygen. As a result I've always racked when fermentation is almost complete hoping to give it a boost so it completely ferments out and brings the fg down a bit more.

However, I've noticed a couple of times recently that racking seems to have completely stopped a fermentation that was still slowly progressing in the primary. I guess this could be because almost all of the yeast has already flocculated out so removing it from the cake was a bad idea. Maybe giving the primary a swirl is the better way to go...

I have had the same scenario with a beer that refused to go lower. Racked off to secondary and the beer finally dropped the last couple of points I wanted. Strange enough, after I'd racked off the primary yeast cake I could still see it bubbling and showing sigs of activity. The only explanation that I've seen for this is CO2 Saturation causing problems with the yeast. For whatever reason it worked. You're not going to leave behind enough yeast that the beer won't be able to finish, otherwise people who rack wouldn't be able to bottle condition beers.

FWIW, I don't rack. Prefer to leave the beer on the yeast cake and let the yeast do it's thing and thoroughly finish. But each to their own. There's room in the hobby for all kinds of crackpot ideas h34r: