2nd FV or not??

[Technotrucker]

I've read over the years conflicting views about dropping a brew at the end of it's first week into a 2nd FV. Some say yes it clears better, some say no, what do you guys think?

[PureGuiness]

If by dropping you literally mean dropping it into a second FV then definitely not. Some breweries use a double drop fermentation which involves dropping the fermenting wort into a second fermentor after maybe a day. The idea being that it adds additional oxygen into the wort and aids fermentation, waking the yeast up and providing a cleaner ferment. There are obvious risks to doing this - especially in a home brew setup and if you get the timing wrong you can end up with getting air into the brew at the wrong stage of the yeasts work cycle.

I think however you mean can racking a beer off the trub and into a secondary FV help and provide benefits? The benefits and risks of this tend to split opinion. If you want to leave the beer in an FV for an extended amount of time or want to dry hop in the FV then the benefit of racking it off into a second FV is that it removes it from the trub, reducing the risk of the beer going bad. Also you will have less yeast in the second FV and having the ability to leave it longer at a lower temperature to drop some of the yeast can also be beneficial.

The flip side is that the more you move the beer from one vessel to another, the greater risk of introducing air in which can then ruin it.

I tend to rack off to a secondary if I am planning on dry hopping or if I am bottling the beer, otherwise I tend to just use a single fermentor.

[Scooby]

I've done both over the years and can't say I ever noticed any difference in the clarity of the final beer.

I wouldn't transfer to a second vessel now, I prefer to leave it for a few weeks, add dry hops for 7 days and chill to 3C or so for the last
2 days. I do however transfer beers I want to bottle to a cornie for about a month to condition.

[Technotrucker]

PureGuiness....By drop I did mean the 2nd part of your post. I've done it in the past but never asked anyone what they think. Thanks for your reply.

Scooby...

I do however transfer beers I want to bottle to a cornie for about a month to condition.

by this then you put the brew (when it's finished in the FV) in a cornie for a month then bottle from the cornie, Q here now.. how do you get around the problem of getting air into your brew that your bottling from the keg? don't you loose the co2 that's built up in the brew?

[Scooby]

Once in the cornie I leave it with no pressure at 3c in a fridge for about 3 weeks. I then pressurise to about 5-6psi.
The beer takes about 1 week to carbonate. I then use a Blichmann beer Gun to bottle, this can purge the bottle
and fill froth free beer with minimal loss of carbonation (especially if you chill the bottles, I don't) plus you can fill
the ullage in the bottle with Co2.

The beer is then bright, haze free and can be stored more or less anywhere. After a bit of trial and error I find that
5-6psi at 3c gives the right amount of carbonation for me when served at 10-13c

[Valley Commando]

Not. Makes no difference IMO.

[adeybambam]

Not

[gnutz2]

I say get a 2nd fermenting vessel and then you can make twice as much beer

Never let yourself fall into that false sense of security that you have enough beer

[Capped]

Never let yourself fall into that false sense of security that you have enough beer

Been there,done that,with the inevitable descent into a hellish world of torment and anguish. Mooching up and down the aisles of the supermarket beer section for something to tide you over is a bad,bad place to be. Never again.

[Rukh]

[quote="Technotrucker"]I've read over the years conflicting views about dropping a brew at the end of it's first week into a 2nd FV. Some say yes it clears better, some say no, what do you guys think?[/quote]

Having recently read the yeast book by Chris White and Jamil Z, their advice is that transferring to secondary will not make your beer clear any quicker.

[Technotrucker]

the yeast book by Chris White and Jamil Z,

This is one of the books that I've been looking at on Amazon, I'd like to get the Kindle one but at this time they don't do it.

[orlando]

I too have used both methods and concur with the majority, no real benefit, more hazard. I recently did it when I wanted to harvest yeast before dry hopping. It introduced the problem of a significantly reduced fermentation due I suppose to significantly reducing the amount of yeast in the brew. That is not necessarily a problem if you are not looking to brew again. However, I only have the capacity to accommodate one FV in my fridge/fermenter so can't/won't brew until it's free. Which of course puts me into running out of beer territory . So no secondary for me, there just isn't enough gain. I would try it though as I think it's important you run the experiment and see for yourself. Harvesting yeast is a satisfying experience, particularly given liquid yeast prices are now more than the entire cost of my other ingredients .
If I want to do this regularly and dry hop it looks like a conical fermenter with the ability to drop the yeast out before dry hopping.

[Bribie]

I don't know where this idea of "secondary fermentation" comes from. It's fairly well entrenched because you always hear the likes of " six days in PRIMARY...." etc.
When it's done it's done. However I do rack into another vessel so I can do evil things to the beer such as dropping the yeast and fixing any chill haze problems.
All this is done at near freezing so there's no "secondary" happening, nor can there be at those temperatures.

On the point of oxygenation, I have a gas line with a tap that I stick into the second vessel and give it a good flush, probably superfluous as there's not a lot of chemical reactions happening around freezing.

What I do end up with is a vessel from which I can bottle or fill a cornie with almost bright beer, thus giving me clear beer from the first glass.

I use one of these, fitted with a tap, for my cold conditioning vessel.

[Bribie]

Me again, just as an illustration, about 20 minutes ago I kegged an Irish Red that was only a couple of days in the "conditioning tank" at -1° C and already it dropped almost bright. This is what the beer INTO the keg looks like, so obviously apart from a very small amount of sediment that will inevitably drop in the keg (Cornie) I'll be getting crystal clear beer from the first pint, once it's carbonated, so this method maximises your expensive keg space.



Note on photo: two Sacred Ibis on the fence, probably the most brainless birds in the world but nice to look at
We are overrun with them in suburban Australia... want a couple?

[orlando]

The problem for most of us though is we are not set up for -1c conditioning or using corny's so the issue remains do you need to use a secondary. No!