jbaker9 said:
I expect that in commercial breweries this is for economical reasons.
In the large conical fermenters that they use they can drain trub and yeast cake from the bottom without requiring transfer. However, for primary ferment a larger fermenter is required. Once primary fermentation is finished they can transfer to a smaller fermenter.
Remember that a lot of what applies to a commercial brewery does not apply at home brew levels. Many of the old homebrew practices were transferred from commercial research. At their scale there are very real reasons for some of these practices.
My advise is:
- Keep it simple. Why add extra steps if they don't add value (as the evidence from some of the top homebrew authors suggests)
- Figure out what your objectives are. If you need to brew a lot of beer quickly this should be taken into consideration in your practices. If you will bottle then leave the fermenter empty for the next month maybe you can leave it a little longer. Maybe you have big fermenters for primary and smaller ones that exactly fit a batch and you need to free up the big fermenter. If you are doing it because a 20 year old brewing book says that it is absolutely essential maybe you should get some of the new books.
- If you want to do the research for your own interest, go for it.
- If it makes you feel warm and fuzzy, go for it.
If you have good processes and have the capability to CO2 flush your secondary you will get good beer either way.
As Denny Conn says, "don't worry, it's just beer".
I think we're roughly on the same page.
How To Brew and Mastering Homebrew are both great books, with some good sections for reference for brewers whose have moved past the basics. Both books are aimed at inexperienced brewers, so are quite pragmatic, and have a focus on simplification to get 70-80% there and increase a new brewer's chances of making half decent beer. I think we all know this is the right approach and 10's of thousands of brewers have likely benefited from John Palmer's book in particular.
One thing I've learned from working with a lot of Americans in the last few years is that they often miss the finer points, are over-confident and take their word as definitive. Look at American beer journalism and forums and it is plain to see. I saw it in some equipment failures where near enough was good enough: in particular, gas leaks where design and installation wasn't quite right; and lunching a $10mil turbine because they thought the oil was clean enough - rather than going through the fine detail and thinking about it a bit.
I like the pragmatism that John Palmer and Denny Conn show, and what comes through in Randy Mosher's book - it's important to have this when brewing, but a lot of brewers will strive to improve from each beer to the next and I think this is worthwhile too.
There is a spectrum from "who cares" right up to the most pedantic, pain-staking practices. This does not necessarily correlate with the quality or enjoyment of the beer, but there is certainly a good chunk where the correlation is there.
Randy acknowledges transfer to secondary should be done for certain beers. I think we're all in agreement here. Yet a number of German brewers and commercial brewers go to the effort of separating fermentation trub/scum from the beer in primary - through either skimming, dumping or transferring. This is extra effort employed for some reason and unlikely to be to do with turnover in the case of skimming and dumping.
I learned very quickly that just because a confident American says something does not make it definitive. Commercial breweries and detailed reference books practising something should make it worth considering at the very least, not being dismissed as warm and/or fuzzy.
