Brew #1 Brew #2 and Secondary Fermentation

Checked the gravity today for Brew #2 and its down to 1.014. Compared to yesterday 1.021. So its on the way to its target of 1.011. This would make it an ideal time to move to secondary.

Why move to secondary at all?

Reasons for moving to secondary are less for taste than they are for beer clarity. However a secondary is a good place to dry hop, should the recipe require it. Also beer should not sit too long on the yeast cake as this can lead to bad flavors but that happens if you leave over 2 to 3 weeks in the primary.

One way of determining when to move a batch to secondary is if the gravity has spend more than 3 days at the same gravity reading. John Palmer says that the beer should be racked to secondary when primary has almost finished. He isn't clear on when exactly but says that this can be anywhere between 2 to 6 days from pitching the yeast. Others seem to think that primary should be completely finished. To me it makes sense that if there is still some yeast and ferment-able sugars kicking around then, then the secondary will have some potential to expel any top layer of O2 with the CO2 that will be released, which should protect the beer from staling.

John Palmer says that a meaningful secondary can only take place if left for 2 weeks.

I have been thinking to move every batch to secondary but as I have just learned that the secondary is mostly about clearing and not so much about avoiding off flavours, I don't think this is a fight that I want to take on right now. It may delay actually tasting which is required to determine if our current workflow is up to scratch. Any ambition for clearing and dry hopping would also include fining which I definitely don't want to take on right now.

The simplest method is to leave the beer in the primary until its finished + a week. Then siphon into a bottling container where priming sugar is added for carbonation and then bottles are filled. There is a complication that mini kegs require half the priming sugar which may mean that we add priming sugar directly to each vessel before filling. Since most of the batches will be heading for kegs, (3 kegs + about 8 bottles) I think it will be fine to move these directly from primary then we can assess the situation to see if bottling the remainder directly from primary would introduce too much trub to be worth while. I think that we are well equipped for bottling from primary, as I have checked and the Little Bottler bottling tube will fit directly to the Brupaks 30L fermenter and the Young's 25 litre fermenter.

I have just talked myself into keeping Brew #2 in place for an extra week. On Brew Day #3, we will keg up Brew #1 into kegs and bottles and put in the chest freezer. Then Fridge #2 can be used for the primary. This will mean using either the 25 litre (bottling fermenter) or the other carboy as a primary ferment-er. This will be dependent on which vessel we can get an appropriate airlock onto.

How does this change the process? Well I have been working to the assumption that the primary fermentation would be the same for every batch. But in theory it is not the fermenter that determines the flavor but the ingredients. So I am thinking we should be fine to do a primary in different fermenters in different fridges. And we can leave primary fermenters 2 weeks before racking to keg and bottle and see where we get to.

The 25 litre Young's fermenter was fitted with the Little Bottler tap and fermenting lid with space for a standard airlock. If this is too tall we may need to rig something up with some silicone tube and a plastic bottle full of Starsan.