To rack or not to rack, when bottling the home brew is the question,.

[Ralph]

I have a question about racking off beer to mature in a secondary fermenter as I have seen this talked about a bit in various forums/books. I am currently BIAB and fermenting mostly ales at the moment (APA, AAA, Irish Red, Bitter) in the standard food grade HDPE, fermenters or 20 L cubes. The initial part of the ferment where the airlock bubbles away furiously is usually be done in 3 to 4 days. From what I have read it would appear that leaving the beer on the trub for up to 2 weeks should not really have any detrimental effect on the beer flavour. Is this correct?

 

I have seen talk of racking beer to a secondary fermenter and leaving for another couple of weeks to mature. I was just wondering if this would actually achieve much if I am just going to bottle the beer anyway?? Adding priming sugars to the beer in the bottle means there will be another fermentation going on in the bottle, which should be left for a few weeks to mature anyway. 

 

Transferring the beer to secondary (which will introduce oxygen) and then leaving the beer sitting in a HDPE secondary which is oxygen permeable would seem to expose my beer to a lot more oxidation than simply bottling from the primary after 2 weeks. Is there any reason I should be racking to secondary if I am just going to bottle? Is the maturation that goes on in a bottle that different to the maturation that would be happening in a secondary fermenter?

 

 

[Dougal]

Very few people secondary nowadays for the reasons you've described. Even the likes of John Palmer who used to preach it have recanted.

 

From what I understand, the main reason for secondary was avoiding yeast autolysis flavours, because brewing yeast used to be a lot less viable than it is today. Now, it seems to be generally accepted that with a correct sized pitch of healthy cells, it's actually better to leave it on the yeast for the whole fermentation to clean up fermentation byproducts like diacetyl and sulphur, usually with some kind of warming at the end to promote the cleaning up.

The (kind of) exception is lagering, but lagering isn't secondary fermentation. It's a period of cool storage to clear the beer and drop out proteins and tannins. Your concern about oxidation is why people use glass or stainless for lagering in preference to plastic if they can.

If you're bottling I'd just give it 2-3 weeks primary then bottle and allow maturation to happen in the container.

(If you wanted to play with secondary, then I think you rack when 2/3 of the final attenuation is reached (which interestingly is the same time to top-crop yeast). If you took beer away from the yeast sooner there could be a chance of it not finishing low enough. IMHO it's not worth it for the risks of another transfer.)  

[Dougal]

Is the maturation that goes on in a bottle that different to the maturation that would be happening in a secondary fermenter?

Basically, no. I've done split batches with mates who secondary and there's no discernable difference in the final beer...

[Ralph]

Thanks for your replies Dougal. That confirms what I was intending to do and I have no plans on lagers at the moment.

 

Great to have someone who has done split batches to test out the secondary fermentation theory!!

[Chris]

Ralph thanks heaps for asking this question, I have always worked under the assumption that having a secondary fermenter was just part of the process. Funny how over the years you pick up habits and they become so ingrained you never seem to question them.

 

I'm going back to one-stage fermenting now!

[Tim Stewart]

Wow great thread, I have always done secondary fermenting execpt once and the beer still turned out really good ,Maybe its time to change my habbit. I have done two identical brews in the last 10 days, one I just put in the secondary the other which I did on Monday I'll leave to ferment out and I'll try to spot the difference  

[Dougal]

Glad to save you some time. In my experience, crash chilling and racking to a bottling bucket has more useful effect than a secondary. Maybe not in terms of maturation, but certainly for clearing the beer and reducing sediment in the bottle.

[newbilong]

Three reasons for racking to a secondary.  Maybe there are more.   

1. Your beer will be more than two weeks in fermenter before you bottle.
2. You don’t have enough primary fermenters to hold all the beer you intend to brew.
3. You want some maturation characteristics in your beer and you can control this better in the secondary than in bottles.

I regularly use a secondary.  For 20 litre batches, the white food-grade pails work fine.  You want to keep headspace to a minimum and bleed out oxygen, either through a fermentation lock or by venting the pail slightly after a day or so in secondary.

 

Racking the extra time does increase risk of unwanted oxidisation or infection but this is manageable through good technique.  In my view, oxidisation is more or less of an issue depending on the type of beer you make and particularly its hop characteristics.

 

 

[Dougal]

Good call. Especially if you're short on fermenters (which luckily I'm not).

I'd also add

4. When you're adding a lot of of dry hops and you want to re-pitch. That way you can harvest the yeast while it's fresh without having to wash out heaps of hop material. 

 

I'm interested though- are you suggesting that there might be oxidation happening after 2 weeks in primary?

[newbilong]

Good point about the dry hopping.

 

There's always oxidation happening, but i was referring to the added risk of oxidation during transfer.  Easy to manage that by minimising splashing, using gravity, keeping hose ends under the level of beer and the usual techniques.

[Chris]

Newbilong, can you expand on the following please, I didn't understand.

1. Your beer will be more than two weeks in fermenter before you bottle.

Usually I would leave in Primary for 2-5 days (I only brew ale) and Secondary for min 2 wks. What is the reasoning behind having a 2 week max on the primary?

1. You want some maturation characteristics in your beer and you can control this better in the secondary than in bottles.

How would you describe these maturation characteristics and why would they be better controled in the secondary? I usually batch prime my bottles after the above fermentation schedule, then leave them for a few days in the warm then a month or so in a cooler spot.

 

[Dougal]

I wonder if point 3 is referring to aging on oak, re-fermentation with Brett, and adding fruit? Those would all be pretty valid reasons to secondary.

[Chris]

Ah OK, must admit I had never heard of Brett and haven't tried adding oak or fruit. Something I will look into (don't want to hijack the thread!)