secondary fermentation necessary?

[marco491]

I tacked this question on to someone else's thread but it got lost, so sorry if you've seen it before.

What are the benefits of secondary fermentation? Is it just CO2? Do you get much more alcohol by adding all that sugar?

I have an Admiral's Reserve in the FV but a couple of cornies now chomping at the bit to up the gas a bit. Instinctively I feel that if I can give it perhaps an extra week in the FV and in the process avoid dumping loads of refined sugar in my ale, surely that's a good thing?

But for a relative novice it seems like a big step to miss out... It's in the "official instructions" after all, and I still get nervous departing from the script!

Ancillary question: finings? I have heard mixed things about these. Is gelatine a better option?

Thanks in advance!

 

[Runwell-Steve]

You don't add sugar prior to secondary fermentation.

Secondary fermentation occurs straight after primary fermentation, you don't have to do anything to make this happen. Some people rack to another bucket to remove the beer from the trub, most don't bother.

Where you talk about adding sugar, I presume you mean the stage you add about 100g and keg (this is known as priming) the purpose of that is purely to carbonate the beer in the keg or bottle, it makes very little difference to the alcohol content, about 0.1%. If you are racking to cornies you don't need to do this stage as you can force carbonate in the corny.

as for finnings, I never bother with them, but I don't mind if my beer is not crystal bright.

 

[marco491]

Ok, thanks - as it's the second thing I do I naively thought priming was the "secondary" fermentation

So I guess the kit instructions are just for someone bottling or racking to a non-Corny keg.

To quote Manuel from Fawlty Towers: "I learn, I learn" :)

 

[Sean_Mc]

Secondary fermentation is often meant when the beer is transferred off the trub to another vessel and primed with sugar to produce co2 in a sealed vessel.

Basically there's only really one fermentation, then when you bottle or pressure barrel the yeasties are woken up by the introduction of more sugar, this secondary yeast action produces co2 and carbonation, but it offers little to the increase of ABV.

With cornies skip the priming and add gas :thumb:

 

[Kev888]

Yes, people are often not clear what they mean when referring to secondary fermentation. Some use it to mean priming (in the bottle or sealed keg to produce CO2), some use it to mean essentially the latter stages of the main fermentation (when the yeast are acting differently), and some use it to mean they've merely transferred to a secondary fermenting vessel (which doesn't really affect the actual stage of fermenting).

If its priming you're interested in then yes, if you are force carbonating a corny from a CO2 cylinder there is no need to prime it; priming is an alternative (traditional) way of causing the CO2, through an extra bit of fermentation. Priming lends itself particularly to pressure barrels (which can't take as much force/pressure as cornies) and bottles (which are tricky to inject with pressure); you 'can' prime cornies, but their lids are really sealed by pressure so with some of them (some seal better than others) it can be tricky to keep them closed enough initially to let that pressure build up from a gradual priming fermentation (a sudden blast from a CO2 cylinder is easier).

Cheers
kev

 

[evanvine]

I think one or two of us get confused with the terminology.
The confusion comes when racking from one fermenter to another.
The first fermenter gets called the "primary" and the second the "secondary", it is still the same ferment!
A true secondary ferment occurs after you have decided the ferment has finished (same sg for 3 days etc) and have kegged/bottled.
I mainly keg with a few bottles for comparison of brews.
On more than one occaison my beer in the keg ( you can't tell with bottles) has gone into Secondary ferment.
This manifests it's self by an increase in pressure and the beer going cloudy due to the ferment causing circulating currents.
This phase can last 2 or more weeks.
I personally think it makes for a better beer.

PS. I don't prime my keg!