Wee change of process - thoughts please

[RobWalker]

I was reading some stuff from Stone the other day that said if you're going to dry hop, do it when the beer is clear. That way you get a cleaner flavour and more flavour from the hops.

With that said, I'd personally chuck gelatine in straight after fermentation ends, let it clear, and then secondary to dry hop. Or do it in the keg, which is what I like to do - you can purge the oxygen out so no risk of contamination, and then just take the hop bag out after a week letting the gas out, then regas or reprime...

Struggling to find out what difference it makes if you leave the beer in the primary or keg it for the "cleaning up" phase. Priming in a keg pushes a tonne of gas out anyway...

 

[graysalchemy]

Hmmm, it seems there's no real hard and fast rules about this, which has been mentioned before. I mainly decided to have a go at doing it this way because it's how GW recommends it in his book.

I have lost 3 55L beers to infection and all of them were left in the fv for 2-3 weeks after fermentation ended (4-5 from brewday). I bottle usually at the 2 week mark from brew day, especially in the autumn. The only beer I left any longer was an 8.5% barley wine which I left for 2 months unfortunately it caused more problems as all the yeast fell out and there wasn't enough to carbonate properly. The elderberry stout again 8.5% was left just over three weeks.

 

[The Goatreich]

I'm not planning on leaving them in the FV, but rack off to a secondary for a couple or three weeks to condition, and then bottle. If it makes no difference then I'll likely go back to bottling after two weeks in the FV and then leaving the beer condition in the bottle.

 

[pittsy]

just a note , 3 to 4 weeks was conditioning in bottles with 2 weeks of 20c etc and not 3 to 4 weeks in fv no no

 

[critch]

secondries? pointless apart from casking and bottling imho! 2 million pints in and thats what ive done,ive repeatedly won peoples choice at the nwaf, won 20 other best of festival or class in the last few years and on the whole, get good reviews on rate beer


you dont need to secondry apart from cask but if doing it makes you feel better when brewing, go for it!

imo your opening yourself up for a world of pain one day but hey- ho........

 

[kev]

So what's your process Critch?

Primary & dry hop then straight to keg?

K

 

[The Goatreich]

secondries? pointless apart from casking and bottling imho! 2 million pints in and thats what ive done,ive repeatedly won peoples choice at the nwaf, won 20 other best of festival or class in the last few years and on the whole, get good reviews on rate beer


you dont need to secondry apart from cask but if doing it makes you feel better when brewing, go for it!

imo your opening yourself up for a world of pain one day but hey- ho........

Can't argue with 2 million winning pints! When you say it's worth it for bottling, how long do you personally leave it in the secondary for?

 

[orlando]

Is it not a case of what the words mean.

If we are talking about secondary fermentation i.e. transferring the beer before it has completely finished fermenting then I would say there isn't any need to do this, in fact Chris White & Jamil Zainasheff argue strongly against it. If we are talking about racking to a secondary for conditioning, before priming then kegging/bottling, then I do think this is a good idea as this is a period when you can crash cool to remove as much yeast as possible, once you have conditioned for long enough, you can then get away without fining.

My experience reflects others in that darker and/or stronger beers do improve with proper conditioning.

Edit: That should be longer not "proper"

 

[kev]

Ah ok then. I think everyone's definition of secondary os slightly different.

The above post makes sense to me and answers my question

K