I have two glass carboys that will be in use for the next two months due to Belgian beers fermenting. I want to make a dark cherry stout next and do not want to wait two months to make it. I have never tried just using the primary. Has any one had problems with off tastes? Plastic tastes? Cloudy beer?
Are the Belgians done fermenting and just bulk aging? You could always just bottle them and age them in the bottle before drinking. An option.
Or you could ferment your stout and just let it ride in the primary for a while. Many people don’t secondary anymore. Would you be using a bucket? I ask because you mention plastic tastes? If it’s a good food grade bucket that has a solid air tight seal I would think you’d be ok.
A plastic bucket is what I was planning .
After one month in the primary and now in the secondary for almost a week the Belgians still have some mild fermentation going on.
Never. I use plastic buckets and don’t rack to a secondary fermentor for anything that doesn’t need aging. My beer generally comes out clearer than that of my friends who do rack. Even for the stuff that’s sat in the bucket for months due to laziness, I haven’t had any problems with off flavors.
^^^^^^ +1
Thanks all. I think I will give it a shot.
Fighting this battle myself as I split a 5 gal. batch and had planned on using carboy secondaries (as I’ve done w/every batch in my rookie campaign so far). Problem is, my primaries (food grade buckets scored from local bakery) don’t seem to be airtight and now I’m thinking I’m definitely going to have to rack to the secondaries. I’ve decided to brew this recipe again, only next time I’ll use the carboys as primaries and skip the whole racking idea. A couple more weeks in an airtight vessel seems better to me than this mess I got going on now… Good luck, happy brewing!
