To "Secondary" or NOT to "Secondary" – That is the Question!

Mashing
1

Ok… I’m thoroughly confused…

When I buy a recipe kit, all the instructions so far say to rack to a Secondary. However, many people on here say you don’t need to rack to a Secondary, and in some cases, it’s best to NOT rack to a Secondary so that the yeast/trub can work on any potential “off” flavors/by-products during the additional time in the Primary.

However, others warn of NOT racking to a Secondary within two weeks or so, in order to avoid “grassy,” or other “off” flavors, that the trub might impart.

I (somewhat) understand racking to a Secondary to help with additional clarification (although why wouldn’t a beer continue to clarify in the primary with additional time – but I digress…), but how do you know which beers to rack to a Secondary, and which ones to not? Is there a “rule?” …is it simply a matter of opinion?

Right now I have a Hefe, an Irish Red, and a WryPA in their respective Primaries. I am planning on racking the Red (for added clarification), and NOT racking the Hefe, but what about the WryPA? What about ANY of them???

Thoughts/opinions are most welcome on this! …I’ll need to do (or not do) something by next weekend. Thanks!

2

You are not digressing here… this is exactly the point. There is no real flavor benefit to racking to secondary. To me, that’s the only important factor: flavor. It is in fact somewhat risky to secondary if you are racking into a new vessel that might possibly not be 100% sanitary and which certainly contains an oxygen rich environment which is precisely where you do NOT want to put a finished beer. Plus if you rack too early, it can stall fermentation and lock in off-flavors. There are really no advantages with respect to taste/flavor.

The only reasons I ever rack to secondary:

  1. To purposely stall fermentation. I do this with all my ciders because without racking, they will often ferment way way down to a specific gravity of 0.992, which is way too dry for my tastes. So if I want them to finish fermenting at closer to 1.010, then I rack about once per week to get rid of a lot of the yeast and slow it down to a crawl and eventually to a halt.

  2. I needed the fermentation vessel. Right now I have two 3-gallon carboys and one 5-gallon carboy. I recently brewed about 5.25 gallons of ale, so I fermented this in the two 3-gallon carboys as it would not all fit in the 5-gallon carboy. However after fermentation, there was more than a quart of trub in the bottom of both fermenters. So then when I wanted to brew a new 5.25-gallon batch, I wanted to do the same thing again. So I was able to rack the other batch into my 5-gallon carboy and then use the two 3-gallon carboys for my new batch, and put off bottling the older batch for later. So I racked it. This was a really odd situation that happens very rarely for me but in this instance it just made sense.

  3. A pellicle forms on top of the beer that looks suspicious. I have this going on right now where I’ve added oak chips – probably gave my beer a Lacto or Brett infection, which I didn’t really want. So I’ll probably give it a taste today and rack to another vessel to try to limit the effects as best as I can. I have saved a few beers by racking in the past so it’s worth a shot. If you rack carefully you can remove 95% of whatever the contaminant is.

  4. You want to add a ton of fruit. If you ever wanted to add cherries or raspberries or whatever to your beer, you’ll want to use roughly 2 pounds per gallon of beer. So for 5 gallons, that’s a huge volume of fruit. Rather than dumping all of that on top of your beer and splashing a lot, it is safer and easier to just fill a new sanitized vessel with the fruit and then very calmly and slowly rack the beer on top of the fruit.

As you can see, none of these reasons has anything to do with clarity, although it does have something to do with removing excess yeast or contaminants where applicable with a goal of purposely stalling fermentation. But visually, a fermentation should clear in the primary just as easily as in secondary. If it doesn’t, then try adding gelatin. Dissolve a pack of unflavored gelatin (I use Knox brand) in a couple of ounces of very hot water (it takes several minutes to dissolve it all), then pour this into your beer. 48 hours later, the beer should be considerably clearer. And you can do this in primary just as well as secondary. Don’t worry, it doesn’t remove all the yeast, and your beer will still carbonate naturally just fine.

There have been quite a few experiments recently that have tested the advantages and need for secondary, and they always seem to conclude that there were no real flavor differences between beers that were racked or not racked. I believe Basic Brewing Radio had an episode or two about this, and following is a link to another one from Brulosophy.com. But don’t take my word for it or anyone else’s. I recommend running your own experiments so you can come to your very own conclusion one way or the other.

http://brulosophy.com/2014/08/12/primar ... t-results/

:cheers:

3

Related to 2 above, if I want the yeast from batch A to re-pitch into batch B before I’m ready to bottle A, I’ll rack A to a secondary.

I also do 3-gallon batches, but I ferment in 5-gallon primaries; my freezer can hold my two 5-gallon primaries or one 5-gallon and two 3-gallon. So if I need three batches going, I have to rack. But this is more of a workaround for bad planning or recovering from “s*** happens” and not something I try to do.

4

Good point, Mac, I forgot the yeast harvesting reason. I hear ya man.

5

That’s precisely the primary reason (no pun intended) that I still rack to a secondary vessel. To be clear, I do perceive an beneficial difference in flavor when doing a secondary or double drop (which I readily admit may just be reinforced by habit more than anything else)…but the main reason I do a transfer to a second vessel remains the ability to harvest the yeast (which I routinely do through up to a dozen generations of subsequent brews).

6

Ok, but what about the concerns of “grassy” tasting beer because of sitting on trub too long???

7

I’ve never heard of that before. Seems like an invalid concern until proven otherwise.

8

It simply doesn’t happen. There could be other problems from sitting on trub too long, but those take months to happen, not days or weeks.

Check this by John Palmer from the “Ask the Experts” section of the AHA forum…

When and why would you need to use a secondary fermenter? First some background – I used to recommend racking a beer to a secondary fermenter. My recommendation was based on the premise that (20 years ago) larger (higher gravity) beers took longer to ferment completely, and that getting the beer off the yeast reduced the risk of yeast autolysis (ie., meaty or rubbery off-flavors) and it allowed more time for flocculation and clarification, reducing the amount of yeast and trub carryover to the bottle. Twenty years ago, a homebrewed beer typically had better flavor, or perhaps less risk of off-flavors, if it was racked off the trub and clarified before bottling. Today that is not the case.

The risk inherent to any beer transfer, whether it is fermenter-to-fermenter or fermenter-to-bottles, is oxidation and staling. Any oxygen exposure after fermentation will lead to staling, and the more exposure, and the warmer the storage temperature, the faster the beer will go stale.

Racking to a secondary fermenter used to be recommended because staling was simply a fact of life – like death and taxes. But the risk of autolysis was real and worth avoiding – like cholera. In other words, you know you are going to die eventually, but death by cholera is worth avoiding.

But then modern medicine appeared, or in our case, better yeast and better yeast-handling information. Suddenly, death by autolysis is rare for a beer because of two factors: the freshness and health of the yeast being pitched has drastically improved, and proper pitching rates are better understood. The yeast no longer drop dead and burst like Mr. Creosote from Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life when fermentation is complete – they are able to hibernate and wait for the next fermentation to come around. The beer has time to clarify in the primary fermenter without generating off-flavors. With autolysis no longer a concern, staling becomes the main problem. The shelf life of a beer can be greatly enhanced by avoiding oxygen exposure and storing the beer cold (after it has had time to carbonate).

Therefore I, and Jamil and White Labs and Wyeast Labs, do not recommend racking to a secondary fermenter for ANY ale, except when conducting an actual second fermentation, such as adding fruit or souring. Racking to prevent autolysis is not necessary, and therefore the risk of oxidation is completely avoidable. Even lagers do not require racking to a second fermenter before lagering. With the right pitching rate, using fresh healthy yeast, and proper aeration of the wort prior to pitching, the fermentation of the beer will be complete within 3-8 days (bigger = longer). This time period includes the secondary or conditioning phase of fermentation when the yeast clean up acetaldehyde and diacetyl. The real purpose of lagering a beer is to use the colder temperatures to encourage the yeast to flocculate and promote the precipitation and sedimentation of microparticles and haze.

So, the new rule of thumb: don’t rack a beer to a secondary, ever, unless you are going to conduct a secondary fermentation.

9

Awesome! Thanks Denny.

Now, onto the other question: If this is [becoming] the direction things are headed, why are folks (NB and others in their recipes) still calling for racking to a Secondary? …simply stuck in the “old ways” of doing things, or are they trying to achieve/avoid something else? For new brewers, following the directions would have them racking everything to as Secondary after 1-2 weeks.

10

[quote=“Chris Roe”]Awesome! Thanks Denny.

Now, onto the other question: If this is [becoming] the direction things are headed, why are folks (NB and others in their recipes) still calling for racking to a Secondary? …simply stuck in the “old ways” of doing things, or are they trying to achieve/avoid something else? For new brewers, following the directions would have them racking everything to as Secondary after 1-2 weeks.[/quote]

You’d have to ask them. I won’t speculate.

11

I’ll speculate. This is dang near fact.

12

I’ll speculate. This is dang near fact.[/quote]

Well, if I WAS gonna speculate, that’s what I’d spec…

13

Great information guys.

When it comes to harvesting yeast from your primary, is there any/much benefit to racking the beer into a secondary vessel to get the yeast sooner? For most ales, I’d prefer to leave them to condition for a few weeks (in the primary, based on the advice from this thread). It seems that the primary would be an ideal environment to leave the yeast for a few weeks before harvesting.

14

It’s too bad there’s no way to flag this thread as a must-read for all new brewers. It seems Dave, JMcK and Denny have covered this topic thoroughly and succinctly.

15

Brick - as someone who does a bunch of Searching on here, IMO it can be a pain to find the info you’re looking for buried in nebulous titles. So… knowing this was a topic that others were likely going to ask about in the future, and with “search-ability” in mind, I chose the thread title so that it would be easy to find. I hope it is, anyway.

16

Won’t help at all because no one uses the advanced search options to narrow down their results and even if you do, like you found the volume of info here can be daunting to weed through.

This is certainly not the first time nor will it be the last that guys like Dave and Denny expound on this topic in great detail.

Maybe it’s good though?

Maybe one day soon Dave will shock us and say WAIT guys! I’m racking EVERYTHING to secondary now because…yea i doubt it too…never mind.

:cheers:

17

Funny you should mention this, because this kind of thing has actually happened to me several times. I used to be a big supporter of plastic bucket fermenters, but now I only use glass fermenters for fear of contamination and oxidation. I have flip-flopped on Nottingham ale yeast over the years as well, used to love it, then refused to use it when they had quality control problems, but that problem was fixed and now I love it again. Things can happen to turn a guy around. I consider all of the information available and then make a judgment. If new information is presented that causes a re-evaluation, I will occasionally flip-flop and do the opposite. It happens. It’s all a part of gaining personal experience. I encourage everyone to do the same. Don’t just take the advice of one or two or three guys (on the internet or anywhere else). Experiment for yourself and make your own decisions. We might not always agree, but I hope we can always respect each other’s conclusions and experience.

18

[quote=“dmtaylo2”]
Funny you should mention this, because this kind of thing has actually happened to me several times. [/quote]
There is nothing wrong with being open-minded and willing to change. :cheers:

19

[quote=“Brown’s Beer”]Great information guys.

When it comes to harvesting yeast from your primary, is there any/much benefit to racking the beer into a secondary vessel to get the yeast sooner? For most ales, I’d prefer to leave them to condition for a few weeks (in the primary, based on the advice from this thread). It seems that the primary would be an ideal environment to leave the yeast for a few weeks before harvesting.[/quote]

Nope, no benefit at all in my experience.

20

[quote=“Denny”][quote=“Brown’s Beer”]Great information guys.

When it comes to harvesting yeast from your primary, is there any/much benefit to racking the beer into a secondary vessel to get the yeast sooner? For most ales, I’d prefer to leave them to condition for a few weeks (in the primary, based on the advice from this thread). It seems that the primary would be an ideal environment to leave the yeast for a few weeks before harvesting.[/quote]

Nope, no benefit at all in my experience.[/quote]

Thanks Denny.