MHB said:
I disagree with nearly everything in the above
1/ You're presupposing that 1 week is speed fermenting. Rather 2 weeks is slow fermenting, with a proper pitch and good temperature control there is no compromise involved, apparently Budvar get primary done in 3 days at 8oC, no apparent ferment faults.
2/ Racking or a healthy pitch doesn't cause oxidisation, bad brewing practice does.
3/ "the general consensus with most experts" Name one expert, not someone who posts a lot, but a single reference suggesting that getting off the trub is a bad idea.
4/ Good beer takes time, my objective is to brew the best beer I can. Maturation takes time and a bigger pitch has nothing to do with getting the beer into the glass faster. Two parts to the answer, a bigger pitch of healthy yeast will produce less off flavours that need cleaning up (low stress), the other is that there is and should be plenty of yeast in the beer when it's racked, its just that its yeast that is still working not lying on the bottom heading toward autolysis. At the time when beer is cask clearer are still looking at somewhere in the order of 10,000 c/mL - heaps to condition the beer, not enough to cause much if any trouble.
Mark
Hi Mark,
I agree with most of what you say above. I have no doubt that you get excellent beer with primary/secondary. It sounds like you have good processes to avoid the potential negatives of racking to secondary.
I will go through your points above.
1. I don't make any assumption about the time for ferment. Sure, for a low gravity ale with sufficient healthy yeast they can be done in 3 days. This will vary depending on gravity, brewing temperature, yeast strain etc. I agree 2 weeks would be a long primary ferment. Do Budvar bottle after 6 1/2 days? Fermentation is one thing. Once that is complete the yeast are still conditioning the beer to clean up some off flavours (this will still happen if the beer is racked to secondary and sufficient time). In the book Yeast by Chris White (of White Labs) and Jamil Jainasheff they state that a problem with many commercial beers is that they don't leave beer long enough to condition, resulting in high diacetyl levels.
2. Again, agreed. As per my original comment, it is an opportunity for oxidisation that has questionable benefit for a standard gravity ale.
3. I have read the books by John Palmer (How to Brew), Randy Mosher (Mastering Homebrew) and regularly listed to podcasts by the authors of Experimental Brewing Denny Conn and Drew Beechum. They all agree that for most ales there is no benefit to racking to a secondary. I would agree that secondary is important for high gravity beers that will be aged a long time, lagers, adding fruit and some other applications. Older texts do recommend this, but plenty of research has been done to come to the conclusion that yeast cake and trub will not negatively effect your beer over the course of a normal ale fermentation.
4. I agree with your comments in point 4 in full except for the point on autolysis (unless you are aging a long time). However, the original post is start ferment to bottle in 6 1/2 days. Maybe with the control of a commercial brewery this can be achieved, at home I have my doubts.
Don't get me wrong, I don't think that there is anything wrong with your process however I think that this belief about effects from autolysis and trub over short time periods are outdated by the latest research and literature. I wouldn't want a new brewer to think that they need to rack to secondary to make good beer - if they do this without getting all of their process down they may end up making it worse rather than better.
h34r:
