I have a Belgian in the primary for 3 weeks now. I always rack to a secondary, but i was thinking of leaving in the primary for 1 week and than bottle.Is 4 weeks to long sitting on the yeast? Will the beer clear up as well with out the secondary?
OK. I’ve generally been in the camp of always using a secondary.
But the last 3 batches I’ve kept them in primary for 2 weeks for batch 1(I wanted to harvest the yeast to use in batch3), 3 weeks for batch2 and 4 weeks for batch3. Cold crashed and gelatin for 24-48 hours before bottling. Wicked clear, all 3 batches.
And No, 4 weeks is not too long.
Not saying I won’t ever do secondaries again, but I’m not so rigid about always doing it.
Look at me- I’m flexible! :cheers:
What’s really going to clear your beer up is cold crashing and gelatin like mentioned before. Autolysis (dead yeast cells releasing off flavors when the beer sits too long) takes months to occur… in some cases you’d be getting closer to a year. Racking to a secondary became a trend, and people picked up the habit without question because it was another excuse to fiddle with their beer (aka up the odds of infecting it). There are very few reasons why you would need to do a secondary. Just give the beer its extra time in the primary and carry on as usual. Hope that helps :cheers:
i have tried almost everything to get my clear beers have found no success. I’ve tried secondaries, irish moss, geltatin, and cold crashing.
It all helps a bit, but nothing will get me truly clear beer.
Hoppenheimer said it well.
[quote=“Chris-P”]i have tried almost everything to get my clear beers have found no success. I’ve tried secondaries, irish moss, geltatin, and cold crashing.
It all helps a bit, but nothing will get me truly clear beer.[/quote]
Clarity-Ferm has proven to work insanely well, and you get relatively gluten free beer as a bonus. Problem is it’s about $17 for a five pack of them… so as long as the economy of the brew isn’t a problem I highly recommend it. But, let’s face it, whatever illusions we all had about saving money going into this hobby went right out the damned when we discovered it was a passion.
I also agree with Hoppenheimer…
[quote=“Chris-P”]i have tried almost everything to get my clear beers have found no success. I’ve tried secondaries, irish moss, geltatin, and cold crashing.
It all helps a bit, but nothing will get me truly clear beer.[/quote]
If you don’t get clear beer with gelatine and/or cold crashing you are doing something wrong. Make sure at least 50ppm Ca is in the beer and pH is in proper range. Might be as simple as acidifying sparge. Also remember most clarifiers need to be prepped. IM needs to rehydrated and gelatine needs proofed and mixed into cold beer.
[quote=“zwiller”]I also agree with Hoppenheimer…
[quote=“Chris-P”]i have tried almost everything to get my clear beers have found no success. I’ve tried secondaries, irish moss, geltatin, and cold crashing.
It all helps a bit, but nothing will get me truly clear beer.[/quote]
If you don’t get clear beer with gelatine and/or cold crashing you are doing something wrong. Make sure at least 50ppm Ca is in the beer and pH is in proper range. Might be as simple as acidifying sparge. Also remember most clarifiers need to be prepped. IM needs to rehydrated and gelatine needs proofed and mixed into cold beer.[/quote]
I’ve often wondered about that, because I always have clear beer without even trying. I’ve never used gelatin or anything, I even have crystal clear beer with no-chill/BIAB and only using primary for 2 weeks. I guess I have awesome water.
I agree that autolysis is a non-issue. Where I think a secondary comes into play, is to limit oxygen exposure/oxidation. To optimize this you want to transfer to secondary towards the end of fermentation but before its completely done. You also need to transfer a good amount of the yeast cake to ensure things finish properly. Also you want to transfer to a carboy of a size that the beer fills it with little head space left over.
No secondary is not needed, there is not enough info for what your making so I would say no to 1 week in the primary, you may not have byproducts cleaned up in a week.
I rarely secondary anything anymore except sours and have no issues with clarity on beers that should be clear with no fining just whirfloc.
