Brewing Master

Question:

I am still new to home brewing, so I have lots of questions. WHY should we siphon beer into a secondary fermenter?  Is it beacuse the old yeast at the bottom of the carboy will give the beer a bad flavor? If that is the reason, then WHY do we bottle up beer and let old yeast sit at the bottom of the bottle for weeks or months? This sounds like a nonsense rule, like "We do this on Tuesdays, but if you are left-handed and it is Friday, then don’t do it."

Response:

WHY should we siphon beer into a secondary fermenter?  Is it beacuse the old yeast at the bottom of the carboy will give the beer a bad flavor?

No. It is all the other stuuf mixed with the yeast that causes trouble. By the time the primary fermentation had slowed, most of the proteins and fatty acids (trub) in your brew will have fallen to the bottom, and will be mixed in with the yeast sludge.  You really don’t want this trub in your finished beer.  It can cause onion-like flavors, chill haze, darken the color of the beer, make the head break down more quickly and accelerate staling of your bottled brew. The primary-secondary-bottle process removes as much of the trub as possible, while still passing enough suspended yeast on to keep the fermentation going.  If you’re bottle conditioning at the right temperature you will end up with yeast in the bottle, but this won’t produce off flavors. If it did, Chimay would be out of business – beer was conditioned in yeasty barrels and bottles long before modern filtered beer became popular. On the other hand, a bit of trub will speed up fermentation – but I’d rather ferment slower using well oxygenated wort than risk the problems listed above. cheers. — Mark Russell remove "-birdname" spam avoider

Response:

Both of the previous two posts regarding racking to a secondary note that it is only the trub that causes off flavors and not the yeast. Note that when yeast run out of things to eat, they’ll eat each other (autolysis) creating off flavors. So extended fermentations are suseptable to autolysis off flavors. By racking to a secondary, you remove the trub and the yeast, minimizing off flavors. If you were to leave your beer in the secondary for an extremely long time, I would recommend racking to a tertiary fermenter. Although I don’t know what time frame would be best to racking to the tertiary fermenter. Lagers are fine in a secondary for two months but that is at a much lower temp than ales. Anybody care to note a general time frame for racking to a tertiary? I don’t do meads or BW’s. Do you people rack on a regular basis during these long fermentations? Burp, -dan – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – WHY should we siphon beer into a secondary fermenter?  Is it beacuse the old yeast at the bottom of the carboy will give the beer a bad flavor? No. It is all the other stuuf mixed with the yeast that causes trouble. By the time the primary fermentation had slowed, most of the proteins and fatty acids (trub) in your brew will have fallen to the bottom, and will be mixed in with the yeast sludge.  You really don’t want this trub in your finished beer.  It can cause onion-like flavors, chill haze, darken the color of the beer, make the head break down more quickly and accelerate staling of your bottled brew. The primary-secondary-bottle process removes as much of the trub as possible, while still passing enough suspended yeast on to keep the fermentation going.  If you’re bottle conditioning at the right temperature you will end up with yeast in the bottle, but this won’t produce off flavors. If it did, Chimay would be out of business – beer was conditioned in yeasty barrels and bottles long before modern filtered beer became popular. On the other hand, a bit of trub will speed up fermentation – but I’d rather ferment slower using well oxygenated wort than risk the problems listed above. cheers. — Mark Russell remove "-birdname" spam avoider

Response:

Anybody care to note a general time frame for racking to a tertiary? I don’t do meads or BW’s. Do you people rack on a regular basis during these long fermentations?

It varies most of my ales get racked into a tertiary after 14-21 days in secondary, (read that as when I have time to do it). My tertiarys are pressure barrels (read plastic kegs), and they can stay in there for at least 6 months. Must say that my Imperial stout which was started in December took 7 days in primary, 14 days in secondary and had dropped from 1.103 to 1.027, (I love that Wyeast 1084). It is still sitting in the tertiary, has it fermented any more? who knows it may have dropped a couple of points. But the reason for doing it is to minimise the amount of yeast in contact with the beer for an extended time! I will be bottling shortly (when I’ve got some 250ml bottles, damn I hate French Bier D Alsace, but its cheap and comes in small bottles). When this beer wen into the cask I accidently (:-) had a sample cant wait for bottling day, Or the millenium either it should be really good then — Wassail Tony Barnsley (Blackpool Lancashire UK )

Response:

I siphon from the primary straight to the bottling bucket and then either bottle or keg. I’ve racked to a secondary only twice and both times ended up with bad beer. The other eleven batches I used only the primary and had great beer. I wish I knew why that is.                    Gordy in the U.P.

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