Secondary Fermentation - How do you stop it :) ?

[trustyrusty]

I was looking at some recipes and they say fermentation 7 days and secondary 7 days...
How do you stop the secondary ? Do you have to?

I thought that if put in a bottle with sugar for carb then is that not 3rd fermentation? Even so if you put a storage vessel before using in keg or put in keg for storage will it not continue to ferment?

What have I missed this time

I think I might answer my own question here.. They are not saying the fermentation stops after 7 days - it is just put in secondary to move off yeast bed etc... I suppose fermentation never stops - unless it is commercial beer, pasteurized and filtered...

thanks

 

[Judanero]

You can just keep it in the primary, two weeks is enough time for the fermentation to be complete and yeast byproducts metabolised.

The point of the secondary is to condition for a while and instead of doing it on top of the yeast cake where potential off flavours from the yeast cake may develop, it is done in another vessel where there is a lot less yeast present but still enough to clean up .

I don't use a secondary (rarely) and most brewers I know don't use a secondary anymore. Secondary is just another opportunity for oxidation and infection to occur imo.

 

[Judanero]

Yep that's why, fermentation does stop though once the yeast has consumed all the sugars they are able to.

 

[barls]

secondary fermentation will always happen this is when the yeast cleans up the byproducts from fermentation.
what your talking about is using a secondary fermentor to :
1. remove the beer from the yeast cake- to prevent off flavours, now out of fashion
2. supposedly help clear the beer faster. doesn't always work that way

have a read of howtobrew.com this is his online version which covers most things but has been updated in his book.

 

[trustyrusty]

1. remove the beer from the yeast cake- to prevent off flavours, now out of fashion

Do you know why is now old fashioned.... ? Never really happened or yeast is better/different now?

I did watch a video the other day where Boston Lager transfer to storage tanks after 5 days as a seondary fermentation... but it might be different at large commercial size batches...

 

[MHB]

I think you got there in the end, there is no such thing as "secondary fermentation" its all just a continuation of the ferment, in part you are right in thinking that fermentation doesn't stop, well not like turning off a light switch, it gets slower and slower as the amount of sugar available goes down. The yeast will start to do different things like cleaning up diacetyl and chipping away at some of the more complex chemicals in the wort.

People are generally referring to second fermenters (racking) or bottling/kegging where the beer is moved to a second, third... container rather than a different type of fermentation.
There is a technical sense a use for the term secondary fermentation, it involves the diet the yeast is choosing, it will first consume the easiest to digest sugars glucose, fructose maltose... then harder to work on ones (secondary sugars) as it gets a smaller energy return from these sugars. But this isn't what most home brewers are talking about.
Mark

 

[Judanero]

I think it went out of vogue when people weren't able to detect any significant off flavours from the relatively short time spent on the yeast cake.

Also dependent on beer type too; a heavily hopped AIPA or a roasty stout won't display any subtle offf flavours anyway because there is a multitude of other flavours to cover it up.

For a super clean lager/ cream ale/ kolsch etc. I can see the benefit but I believe on a HB scale it is a risk vs reward thing, risk could be minimised though if transferring in a closed system under C02.

 

[Lethaldog]

I've pretty much always used a secondary fermenter, it was the thing to do when I started brewing ( apparently ) and I'm still of the belief that it improves my beer as apposed to not using one ( yes I have not used aswell) each to their own but I've never had anything go wrong from this process!

 

[trustyrusty]

Hi Guys

FYI - I am using my Keg is a secondary fermentor ... After 7 days in primary I move it there, and leave it until I used.... I have to move it keg anyway...
The keg is clean obviously and under co2 - so infection chance is minimal...

 

[Jens-Kristian]

I've pretty much always used a secondary fermenter, it was the thing to do when I started brewing ( apparently ) and I'm still of the belief that it improves my beer as apposed to not using one ( yes I have not used aswell) each to their own but I've never had anything go wrong from this process!

That's sort of how I've been doing it, too. Whether it has actually made a difference to my beer or not, I can't really say because I haven't been methodical in noting any differences between the two.

I will say though, that when brewing high alcohol, heavier beers I like to leave it in the fermenter for a few months and in those cases I transfer to secondary without fault. I don't know if I have to or not, but I'm pretty sure I've never had any negative impact from it, even though I don't purge the secondary with CO2. What I do, is that I hook up the two taps and transfer it that way. It seems to me there won't be much risk of it getting oxidised that way.That said, I don't have a kegging setup yet but when I do, i'll probably use CO2 like many others.

 

[Mr B]

Interesting - Do you notice a significant reduction in trub/yeast etc in the secondary fermenter?

I assume so, any indication of volume differences between a primary fermentation and a secondary?

Cheers

 

[Lethaldog]

There's deffinately less in the second which is the main point of doing it and the volume difference is maybe a litre but you would lose this from primary/bottling stage anyway, it could be a little more or less I've never really bothered to measure!

 

[trustyrusty]

I dont find much trub at all, and it packs down anyway and does not really effect the pull - still clean - , in the fridge to it packs down even more..
I have recently put a beer in the keg a little earlier... so I will check at the end... cheers

 

[Killer Brew]

Is it not secondary fermentation if you add further fermentables post primary (eg. Rack onto fruit)?

 

[Bribie G]

When "modern" home brewing took off in the 1960s and 1970s back in the days of CJJ Berry and Dave Line and other gurus of that era, home wine making was already quite a "mature" hobby.
A lot of the techniques of winemaking were transferred to home beer making, as the original authors were competent winemakers in their own right and just went with what they knew to work, for example airlocks (not common in Commercial breweries at the time) and of course good old secondary fermentation, which was valuable in wine making where the process took months or years and there was a need to get the wine off the lees as quickly as possible.

You particularly see this in the USA with their love affair with carboys.

In the 19th century when beers were often near-wine strength, and of course with European Lager beers that need to be fermented over several months, it was necessary to get the beer off the original yeast cake into lagering or vatting (keeping the strong beer in secondary to mature over several months before casking or bottling).
This was common in Australia as well if you read "Bronzed Brews".

However, forgetting lagering, the ales we make nowadays are mostly derived from the "running beers" introduced in the early 20th century and don't need vatting or secondary.

edit: with beers that are a throwback to those earlier styles such as Russian Imperial Stout, Baltic Porter and I suppose even the double IPAs that would be similar to the Victorian brews sent out to India, I'd certainly "vat" them, probably in a dedicated corny keg for several months, but that's a bit different to what the OP is asking about.

 

[MHB]

I think some of the beer history there might be a bit jumbled up and while I don't agree with all of the conclusions reached, there is some validity in the conclusions.

Where I would raise a note of caution is in fruit picking the lessons from commercial brewing with out paying attention to the steps they take to avoid problems.
You don't need to rack Ale or Wheat beer if you can get the ferment over before the oldest yeast starts to break down and do harm to your beer. At commercial brewing temperatures 2 weeks is generally considered the maximum time for safe contact before measurable harm is detected.

Commercial brewers rely on big yeast pitches and very good aeration, nutrient, temperature control... and will generally have reach FG in not more than 7 days.
Then rack to maturation vessels, the yeast still in suspension is young and healthy, there is enough of it to complete the fermentation and do the cleaning up that we as brewers want to achieve - without autolysing and harming the beer during maturation.
The risk of infection or oxidisation is real, but if you are aware of it and task steps accordingly the risk is remote and to my mind smaller than the potential for harm to the beer resulting for not racking and leaving the beer on the old yeast too long.

Commercial brewers do still rack, or use CCV's (conical fermenters) to achieve the same result, the urge to do otherwise is driven by a misunderstanding of what is happening during fermentation and laziness, not a desire to make better beer.
Mark

 

[Bribie G]

Re the history I was referring to the switchover from the old "keeping beers" to the new "running beers" that are still the main ales produced in the UK and in Australia until the 1970s, that just get racked straight into casks or filtered and carbed then into kegs, and are really the most brewed beers by amateurs here. Obviously the use of racking to maturation tanks or conicals is a must with lagers, i.e. the overwhelming volume of beer brewed around the World and in Australia.

The old keeping beers or stock beers are also referred to here in Encyclopaedia Britannica 1911:

Racking, &c.—After the fermentation and cleansing operations are completed, the beer is racked off (sometimes after passing a few hours in a settling tank) into storage vessels or trade casks. The finest "stock" and "pale" ales are stored from six weeks to three months prior to going out, but "running" beers (mild ales, &c.) are frequently sent out of the brewery within a week or ten days of mashing. It is usual to add some hops in cask (this is called dry hopping) in the case of many of the better beers. Running beers, which must be put into condition rapidly, or beers that have become flat, are generally primed. Priming consists in adding a small quantity of sugar solution to the beer in cask. This rapidly ferments and so produces "condition."

 

[MHB]

Yes, Which goes to point up what I was saying, for a beer to be finished and conditioned in 7-10 days means you will have had to pitch a lot of healthy yeast into a well prepared wort!
The exact opposite to what has become conventional wisdom on AHB, where it is apparently just fine to leave beer on the "lees" for months. If you don't want to rack, you need to make other process changes, so your beer is ready to package quickly.

Mark

 

[Feldon]

Is the comparison between commercial brewing practice and homebrewing valid here? Commercial fermentors are of much bigger volume and the beer exerts much more pressure on the yeast sediment than it does in a typical low volume homebrew batch. The great pressure at depth causes more rapid onset of autolysis - not something we homebewers need to be so concerned about.

 

[MHB]

Agree that not everything commercial brewers do translates directly to home brewing.
They are however the people doing all the research, if only because they have all the lovely expensive toys.
If you contend that the higher pressure accelerates autolysis (not sure how to substantiate that), you could equally argue that the higher pressure reduces other side issues (plenty of threads on the "benefits" of pressure fermentation). It's likely that in a complex system there isn't a single result to any change.
If you made a starter and left it sit for a couple of weeks it would have measurable changes (not just autolysis) and you probably couldn't get a smaller fermenter than that, but the yeast still changes and if it changes it will change the beer...

I don't contend that you need to rack - nor that you shouldn't, just be aware that if you don't want to and you don't act to prevent issues from long contact time your beer will be affected.
Mark