Secondary Fermenting

[Pourmeanother]

Hi All

I am new to this brewing caper and have two brews under the belt now. I keep hearing about people putting there brews into a secondary ? Is this another fermenter and does this take place instead of the second ferment stage in the bottle as i was under the impresion that this happend with carbonation ? Any clarification would be nice thanks

Also what is the best time of the day to put a brew down ?

Thanks

 

[kelbygreen]

secondary is more like a storage vessel I only use them when doing lagers, this is to get the brew off the bulk of the yeast trub so you can condition it for about a month. Other people prob do it for other reasons but its not really worth it unless you are trying to get it off the bulk of the yeast for one reason or another. You can also use the vessel to bulk prime I have done that once and found for me it wasnt a great time saver.

best time to brew is when you get time to can be 1am can be 1pm it doesnt matter it still makes beer

 

[beerdrinkingbob]

agree with above, although never done a lager I don't have the patience

You raise an interesting point too Kelby regarding the time factor, I don't think bulk priming is that great for it either. The one big difference i guess is the brewer can tweak the priming levels to suit the beer they are making.

As for the time of day, the closer to midnight you get the more likely you are of not putting the bag or false bottom in your mash tun and a whole world of brew day disaster possibilities h34r:

 

[Tanga]

In summer I do mine first thing in the morning - that way the water out of the cold water tap is actually cold (as opposed to luke warm / hot) and it makes it a lot easier to get everything down to pitching temperature quickly. Those with a brew fridge don't have to worry I guess, but if your temperature control is blocks of ice, then it makes a huge difference.

 

[mwd]

More info on Secondary fermentation Here

 

[Bribie G]

When people say secondary fermentation they often actually mean "cold crashing" or "cold conditioning" where you run the beer out of the fermenter into another smaller vessel so the beer can sit in a cool or cold area such as a fridge, with no headspace above the beer to cause oxidation, and then it can settle down, clarify and clean up before bottling or kegging. At that stage it can be treated with finings to settle the yeast out, or Polyclar to remove chill haze, and you can end up with nice clear beer into the bottle or keg.

With kit beers I wouldn't do this, just give it a good time in the primary fermenter where it is sitting under a blanket of CO2 anyway, and if you wish to use finings, add them quickly then reseal, a day or so before bottling. Edit: I still make kit beers occasionally such as Coopers stout, and just bottle / keg out of the primary fermenter.

 

[felten]

You can CC in the primary as well, yeast breakdown occurs a lot slower at colder temps so if you aren't CCing for many weeks at a time (lagers) it won't be a problem.

IMO racking is only useful if you are extending aging at ferment temps onto fruit/wood/bacteria/hops so on, or for long term cold temps with lagers. Not counting bulk priming ofc.

If you wanted to get pedantic about it, there's a difference between what some people refer to as racking and others as secondary fermentation. The practice of removing the beer from the trub before FG is reached is sometimes refered to as 2ndary fermentation and isn't a good idea because you want that original yeast mass there to help clean up any byproducts. Whereas racking is just transferring between containers.

 

[Pourmeanother]

Thanks for all the info guys .

Can see this site is going to be very useful in the future .

 

[kelbygreen]

also another thing about bulk priming (sorry bit OT) is if you have different size bottles or ones say 500ml or 330ml that you cant use a scoop for. But if you got all tallies and you can waigh in a soon roughly the disired amount and then try to match every spoon the same. Just go to kegging easier and quicker