Will racking improve quality or just aesthetics of my beer?

[Cwrw666]

I also skim the craap as it forms on the surface of the wort as it comes up to boiling point..

That's fair enough as that's the hot break. I do it myself with beers that have low hop levels as the hot break gunge tends to block the filter in my boiler. But skimming your krausen off is kind of nonsensical with top fermenting beers. That's just yeast you're removing.

 

[bobukbrewer]

Top fermenting is a misnomer - they ferment from the bottom mainly - there will be some yeast cells in the foam on top, but imho, not many....

 

[jMac]

Well, whadya know? Turns out this is a thing and unsurprisingly Brülosophy have done an exBEERiment (there’s a shock):

http://brulosophy.com/2019/07/08/th...usen-during-fermentation-exbeeriment-results/

The result is interesting.

x

 

[DavidDetroit]

Never heard of skimming the krausen before. Interesting. I'm a huge fan of empirical data versus the theoretical. 40 years is the definition of practical experience.
I leave the beer alone for three weeks for a few reasons: 1. big beers. 2. consistency in the process. 3. Concern over contamination (which may be unwarranted). 4. Easy. 5. beers turn out well/great.
As soon as I read (years ago) that I could skip the secondary, I tried it, noticed no difference in clarity or quality and knew it was for me. This means I open the fermenter only once at bottling time (I'm not recommending others do this).

 

[ExpatBrewer]

I don't know anyone who racks to a secondary anymore - except when bulk priming, and I don't even think it's necessary then. Many years ago it used to be usual practice but these days it's generally considered an unnecessary risk, though having said that, I do remember when I used to do it many years ago noticing that the beer did seem to clear a little quicker after racking. However, I think most simply allow the wort to ferment to FG in the primary, leave it a few days and then get it packaged up ASAP. Apart from reducing the amount of yeast in the keg or bottles there's no good reason to have it sitting around for too long:

"…for an ale with a healthy yeast you really don't need or indeed want it to linger too long on the yeast cake."
"The length of time we had to leave the beer in contact with the yeast to mop up the last traces of diacetyl and pentanedione was not very long, we're talking a day or two… "
"… and once we were confident that we got those VDK's below our target then our philosophy was for goodness sake get it off the yeast."

- Dr Charles Bamforth, Professor of Brewing Science


Achieveing clear beer at cellar or rooms temperatures is not usually a problem but it's the formation of chill-haze at fridge temps that's a little more challenging to deal with. For this reason many brewers cold-crash their beers for several days (or more) once fermentation is complete. This helps significantly with final beer clarity - particularly when serving cold.

 

[Braufather]

This spent 3 weeks in a single fermenter then a week at 1c in a keg. No problem with clarity or flavour.

 

[foxy]

I have done both and still do, especially when dry hopping, one thing I do notice is transferring to secondary seems to give yeast a second wind and an extra couple of points can be had.

 

[Braufather]

i think dry hops may be the exception- i currently drop them in the fermenter in a cansiter. However, I may try a secondary to see if it improves the quality of the aroma