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Purpose Of Secondary Fermentation?
Hey All,
I am in the process of making my first home brew, though I have assisted on a few. After a week of primary fermentation I transferred the beer to a glass carboy for secondary fermentation. In all of my previous experiences, we never had done this before. We had only done primary. I know why primary fermentation and bottle fermentation is done, those are obvious. What does the secondary accomplish?
Regards!!!
Hi albert,
As I understand it, the two main advantages/reasons for secondary are additional clarifying, and prevention of some possible off flavors.
I don't know how much 2ndary helps clarity, but I can tell ya that my girlfriend’s IPA we racked out of Secondary and into Corny last night was VERY clear!
And on off-flavors... it's possible for yeast to begin eating dead yeast cells (autolysis) if they run out of fermentable sugars in the beer. This process can lead to a lot of off-flavors, and can be prevented by moving the beer off the trub after primary is complete.
Some people have told me that 2ndary is pointless if you're not doing fermentation for more than 2-3 weeks, as autolysis cannot occur anyway for 3-4 weeks or so.
Personally, I use pellet hops and pour all of the hop material, and cold break right into the primary fermenter. My though is since I add that much "junk" to the primary, I should get my beer of the trub as soon as possible.
During secondary fermentation, the yeast is still doing its thing, slowly fermenting the remaining more complex sugars like maltotriose, reducing some fermentation byproducts, and falling out of suspension. Ideally you let this occur without a huge yeast cake and protein trub at the bottom of the fermenter.
If you are only worried about autolysis, moving to secondary for 2-3 weeks is pointless.
However, there is protein trub in there as well, which can release unpleasant material back into your wort, so with any beer with a gravity over 1.050 I use a secondary to eliminate this risk. Also, I use this as a time to add a bit of corn sugar to assess the yeast's health, check the gravity, possibly harvest the yeast, and give it a taste.
If you are uncomfortable with sanitation and transfer methods, a secondary may be more risk than reward at this point.
Thanks!!
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