I just brewed a heavy coffee stout and it spent 6 days in primary. I transferred it to secondary (I might stop using secondary completely, but that’s another issue) and it sat another 5 days. I am about to leave on vacation tomorrow, so I kegged it today. 11 days of primary/secondary is about half of what I would prefer. Currently I have it under normal pressure in the fridge to cold crash.
I’m torn as to what to do…
Leave it in the fridge and just pour off the first couple pints when it carbonates in a couple weeks?
Pull it out of the fridge now and transfer to a new keg when I get home?
Leave it in and still transfer to a new keg when I get home?
I am new to kegging and I had some poor planning knowing I was going on this vacation.
Wow, stop moving this beer around! I would leave as is and dump the first pint if it’s got sediment in it. You want to disturb the beer as little as possible to avoid oxidation. In the future, I would primary for 2 weeks and then keg. Forget the secondary. Hope you’re purging your air in the keg with CO2 as well.
I have been reading more about people skipping the secondary and am thinking about doing that with my next brew. I did purge the keg 4-5 times.
I just go 3 weeks primary, then keg or bottle. If I keg, I just go straight from the primary to the keg - by then a great deal of the yeast/trub has settled out and the beer is pretty clean and clear. I will still get a cloudy glass or two the first couple, but that is it.
+1 on “quit moving the beer around.” I am a firm believer in touching your beer as few times as possible after you turn the flame off on the boil. The more you siphon, check gravity, transfer, etc…the more you will introduce oxygen and other contaminants.
