Racking from primary to secondary?

[Slid]

US 05 is my go-to yeast. I will use a new sachet for a straightforward pale ale and then use the trub to fill about 6 x 250ml bottles which go in the fridge until they are used for subsequent brews.

This second generation yeast does not flocculate well and the beers I rack after 2 weeks in primary are usually quite cloudy and often have round lumps of yeast that stick in the bottling tap on the fermenter.

I am paranoid about over ingesting brewers yeast following a gout attack a couple of years ago, so clear beer is a hobby horse of mine.

Therefore I am in the habit of racking all brews to secondary after 2 weeks and leaving to settle and continue the fermentation process in bulk for another week until bottling.

Can't say for sure whether it makes a difference or not, but I have read a lot of the Brulosophy articles and they do make me wonder if anything much beyond cleaning and sanitising is worth wasting too much thinking time over. Nothing much seems to make a whole lot of difference under controlled conditions and much of individual practice seems to be through a combination of superstition and inertia. Especially mine :lol:.

 

[samnorfolk]

So would i be right in thinking if i wanted to dry hop then I should be racking

 

[IainM]

So would i be right in thinking if i wanted to dry hop then I should be racking

I don't bother and I still get clear beer.

 

[samnorfolk]

Do you chuck the hops straight in?

 

[samnorfolk]

My brew has been fermenting for 6 days and just took reading and it is reading 1013 and looking pretty clear. Airlock still bubbling every so often. How long should i leave it before dry hopping it?

 

[chewie]

Lol, a lot of suckers about :whistle:

 

[terrym]

My brew has been fermenting for 6 days and just took reading and it is reading 1013 and looking pretty clear. Airlock still bubbling every so often. How long should i leave it before dry hopping it?

Wot I usually do.......
First don't add hops when the airlock is still bubbling or a lot of the hop volatile oils be lost so....
Leave it for 8/9 days, or until airlock more or less stops bubbling whichever is longer
Rack off.
Leave it two more days.
Add hops.
Four days at fermenting temperature.
2/3 days in the coolest place you have.
Package
If you want to know more about dry hopping try this
A Newbies Guide to Dry Hopping Your Beer - The HomeBrew Forum
I now chuck the hops straight in but use one of these over the end of the siphon tube (mine came from a Festival kit)
3 x Home Brew Nylon Straining Bag With Pull Cord Beer Hop Wine Making Spice Herb | eBay

 

[dad_of_jon]

Ive got my currently in a 25 litre fermenter and would rack it into another 25 litre fermenter. How do i do this without oxidising the beer

don't splash the beer when transferring it. I use an auto-siphon and purge my bb with co2 (a bike tyre pump) before transferring. (the co2 bit might be me being a bit OCD)

 

[IainM]

Do you chuck the hops straight in?

Yup, pellets.

 

[samnorfolk]

Yup, pellets.

Ok so im gonna try leaving primary for another week, then chuck in 100g of mosaic, leave for 5 days

 

[Ale]

Just seen this thread as I was looking for one on the benefits of secondary fermentation. I use a different method to syphon. I have a syphon with a tap on the end. I open the tap, put the syphon so it is completely submerged (except the tap) in the beer ensuring their are no air bubbles and then close the tap. lift the syphon out keeping the end in the beer and put the tap end in the second FV and then open the tap. It will hold the beer in the tube and syphon as usual without the need to suck or expense of an auto syphon. It would even work sticking your (clean) thumb over the end of a tube if you get a good seal. I think it was Gunge who said he got an infection in every brew when he used to suck the syphon (oo er misses).

 

[pms67]

Ok so im gonna try leaving primary for another week, then chuck in 100g of mosaic, leave for 5 days

Excellent choice of hop,very pungent,I love the Mosaic beer from M&S (think its Adnams brewery)

 

[Dale Kirkwood]

Great thread folks

We've bought a speidel conical fermenter and we're wondering about when it comes to bottling. We were under the assumption we could bottle straight from it but I see a few people mentioning above about using a bottling bucket. Any advice? Or know of anyone on here who uses a speidel concical fermenter I could speak to?

Cheers

 

[Keruso]

I'm a newbie but I found using a secondary did let Oxygen in which affected the quality (badly) It seems racking into secondary (another plastic FV bucket) means you have a lot of air in the bucket, which was true in my case. I found quite a few people who do favour using a secondary actually rack into a demijohn which by its bottle like design leaves almost no space for air to uptake. So I haven't bothered with a secondary, After two weeks in primary, I cold crash for 24 hours and then rack into a clean bottling bucket, then after adding priming sugar it's straight into the bottle. Been making DIPA's this way without any problems.

 

[Dale Kirkwood]

I'm a newbie but I found using a secondary did let Oxygen in which affected the quality (badly) It seems racking into secondary (another plastic FV bucket) means you have a lot of air in the bucket, which was true in my case. I found quite a few people who do favour using a secondary actually rack into a demijohn which by its bottle like design leaves almost no space for air to uptake. So I haven't bothered with a secondary, After two weeks in primary, I cold crash for 24 hours and then rack into a clean bottling bucket, then after adding priming sugar it's straight into the bottle. Been making DIPA's this way without any problems.

cheers. Out of interest what sort of primary fermenter do you use?

 

[peebee]

… We've bought a speidel conical fermenter and we're wondering about when it comes to bottling. We were under the assumption we could bottle straight from it but I see a few people mentioning above about using a bottling bucket. Any advice? Or know of anyone on here who uses a speidel concical fermenter I could speak to?

In the days when I did use to bottle (well before aching joints were an issue for me) "bottling buckets" were a method not even thought of. Using a bottling bucket will have some advantages, you wont forget to prime a bottle, wont double dose a bottle with priming (potentially dangerous), wont have undissolved sugar sitting at bottom of bottle ('cos you might prime with a solution or syrup, and sugar will be dissolved nice and uniform in a bucket), and won't disturb the sediment and get too much muck in the bottles. But if your bottling technique can avoid these problems (especially the first two) there's no reason not to bottle from the fermenter and it saves time and potential oxidation risk

 

[Dale Kirkwood]

OK thanks. We have always bottled and carbed using the carb tablets so I never thought about the priming sugar, syrup etc. That makes more sense why the bottling bucket would be used.

Do you know what the craft breweries do at this stage? Is it the same idea of going from fermenter to another vessel before bottling?

 

[peebee]

… I think we can put too much emphasis on oxidation.

Okay, slapped wrist ('cos I mentioned it). Getting carried "in the flow". But there are people who will just splash their beer about and create a serious oxidation problem if you don't throw in the scare story! Just in case such a person reads this I'll stick to the scare story.

@Dale Kirkwood well you've got a video to answer your question now! I believe the Speidel conical fermenters have "racking arms"? It makes sense to use the racking arm to bottle beer rather an the dump valve he's using in the video; I've no idea how the guy in the video avoids filling his bottles with sludge using the dump valve? I'd also bottle with a tube that goes to the bottom of the bottle so you are not splashing the beer and risking ox... (careful!).

 

[Bigcol49]

Hi @peebee
I've deleted my earlier reply.

 

[Hoppyland]

Personally, I would never consider bottling from a primary fermenter, whatever it was. My reason is that I have a dislike of cloudy beer, and (more important for me) I don't like a load of deposit in the bottles that make it very difficult to pour. Plus, if some of this deposit is yeast/trub from the primary, then I reckon it will not just alter the appearance of the beer, but also the taste.
What I do is to rack off from the primary fermenter, and let the beer settle for a few weeks (with gelatin finings if you like - and especially if you use hop pellets).
In most cases, I actually do this twice. I ferment in a bin, under airlock, until fermentation has almost finished, then rack into a second airlocked bin. At this time I dry-hop. After a period, maybe 5-7 days, I rack off into a 20l plastic carboy. The beer sits there for maybe 2-4 weeks, sometimes longer, when I bottle or keg it. (Kegging is a totally new thing for me this year - but as I get horribly close to 70 then I can see the advantages!)
For me, you have to balance the advantage of having settled, nearly-mature beer going into your bottles, which can give you a super product, against the disadvantages. If you have to transfer the beer more than once, then obviously its a lot more work - but worse is that you risk introducing air every time you do it. For me, air (or more properly oxygen) is the biggest source of poor homebrew, once the obvious problem of infection is overcome by good practice.
But - and I presume that your conical fermenter is stainless steel and very expensive (at least by my standards!) - you should be able to afford a 6kg CO2 cylinder, and thereby purge all of your headspaces with CO2 and be pretty well immune from oxidative spoilage if you transfer carefully (without gurgling or splashing!!)