4 day primary fermentation

[gibbiem]

Beersmith says do 4 days primary and then rack to secondary. Does anyone do this or just leave it in the first FV and add dry hops to that?

[killer]

That's a can of worms question.
When I started brewing I fermented for 1 week (3 days stable FG) then transferred to secondary.
After a few brews and more reading I saw that some people were just leaving the beer in primary for longer - so I tried that and that worked well too.

Then I got really into serious dry-hopping and did that as well in primary - and the beer was fine - The only problem is racking off - you have a whole load of yeast and a whole load of hop matter (sometimes pureed) - I drop the temp to 5°C and use a teaball on the end of my hosing when transferring to a bottling bucket. I suspect that whatever you do, you will make nice beer.

[Kev888]

There have been quite a few people asking this over the years. The main reason usually given for moving to a secondary fermenter is to prevent the beer being affected by yeast undergoing autolysis, another reason can be to move it to a better sealed vessel once the vigorous fermentation is over. Probably the main arguments against doing so are that it takes time/effort and theres some risk to the beer 'if' not done properly, from infection or post-fermentation aeration.

My own feeling is that I probably should rack to a secondary fermenter, but I'm lazy and for me it doesn't seem worth it; I routinely leave it in the primary fermenter for two weeks, sometimes three or four if I'm dry hopping, and have never had any off flavours or aromas that I would suspect arose from autolysis. That said, I do use good healthy yeast at the correct pitching rate, and oxygenate the wort well before pitching, and the FV is temperature controlled, so the conditions are pretty good; it may be that its more of a concern in poorer/warmer conditions.

Cheers
Kev

[gibbiem]

Cheers for the input. Think I'll give secondary a miss then

[gibbiem]

Just checked gravity after 4 days and it's down to 1010 already from 1050, will it go much lower after another week? My last beer was really dry as the gravity went too low. This one is using US-05 and sitting between 15-20c in the shed

[killer]

80% Apparent Attenuation is about right for S05. Though I've personally recorded between 75 and 83%. The FG will also depend on your mash temperature (what did you mash at ?) and to a certain extent the grain bill. It probably won't drop much more. I'd leave it alone and recheck in 2 days....

[legion]

Unless your doing a long fermentation the yeast book recomends only doing primary as it allows the yeast to clean up the fermentation byproducts more effectively.

I've only done secondary for a kolsch

[gibbiem]

80% Apparent Attenuation is about right for S05. Though I've personally recorded between 75 and 83%. The FG will also depend on your mash temperature (what did you mash at ?) and to a certain extent the grain bill. It probably won't drop much more. I'd leave it alone and recheck in 2 days....

Nice one, cheers. Yeah dry hop is due Friday so will check it again then.

[gibbiem]

Unless your doing a long fermentation the yeast book recomends only doing primary as it allows the yeast to clean up the fermentation byproducts more effectively.

I've only done secondary for a kolsch

Nice one, makes sense really. So if you were lagering you would add to secondary? Think I'll leave it, dry hop in the same fv and leave it another week

[50quidsoundboy]

Unless your doing a long fermentation the yeast book recomends only doing primary as it allows the yeast to clean up the fermentation byproducts more effectively.

this is why i stick to longer primary fermentation too. i rushed a couple of best bitters last summer and ended up with diacetyl bombs as a result - i could blame the Ringwood yeast but really it was my fault - now i enjoy the peace of mind i get from giving the yeast plenty of time to do its job.

[dcq1974]

I generally follow that of micro and larger breweries (Fullers springs to mind) which is Ferment for 5 - 7 (down to around 5% fermentables remaining) then chill for 24 - 48 hours before adding to pressure barrels, casks and cornies with aux finings and then isinglass 24 hours later. I then finally bring these (secondary) fermenters up to cellar temperature (12 - 15 degrees C) for at least 7 days.
Crack open then serve unless it's a strong ale then I leave for as long as possible.

If I dry hop - i do this also in the primary after the initial fermentation explosion has occured (48 hours in) and always achieve a really nice dry hop aroma.

What I will say is that my own conclusions are all down the yeast health and pinch rates (generally use WLP002). Any off notes I have found are always down to yeast and very very rarely anything else.....

[gibbiem]

I generally follow that of micro and larger breweries (Fullers springs to mind) which is Ferment for 5 - 7 (down to around 5% fermentables remaining) then chill for 24 - 48 hours before adding to pressure barrels, casks and cornies with aux finings and then isinglass 24 hours later. I then finally bring these (secondary) fermenters up to cellar temperature (12 - 15 degrees C) for at least 7 days.
Crack open then serve unless it's a strong ale then I leave for as long as possible.

If I dry hop - i do this also in the primary after the initial fermentation explosion has occured (48 hours in) and always achieve a really nice dry hop aroma.

What I will say is that my own conclusions are all down the yeast health and pinch rates (generally use WLP002). Any off notes I have found are always down to yeast and very very rarely anything else.....

How do you know what you are down to 5% fermentables? also would this apply to bottling too?

[50quidsoundboy]

Fuller's Ferment for 5 - 7 (down to around 5% fermentables remaining) then chill for 24 - 48 hours before adding to pressure barrels, casks and cornies with aux finings and then isinglass 24 hours later. I then finally bring these (secondary) fermenters up to cellar temperature (12 - 15 degrees C) for at least 7 days.

i guess this works because there is sufficient yeast in a cask for diacetyl and acetaldehyde to be cleaned up during this secondary cool fermentation period - and if you tried to apply this approach to bottle conditioning, your beer would be undrinkable (correct me if i'm wrong) and you'd get under-attenuated butter bombs?

[Cazamodo]

I generally follow that of micro and larger breweries (Fullers springs to mind) which is Ferment for 5 - 7 (down to around 5% fermentables remaining) then chill for 24 - 48 hours before adding to pressure barrels, casks and cornies with aux finings and then isinglass 24 hours later. I then finally bring these (secondary) fermenters up to cellar temperature (12 - 15 degrees C) for at least 7 days.
Crack open then serve unless it's a strong ale then I leave for as long as possible.

If I dry hop - i do this also in the primary after the initial fermentation explosion has occured (48 hours in) and always achieve a really nice dry hop aroma.

What I will say is that my own conclusions are all down the yeast health and pinch rates (generally use WLP002). Any off notes I have found are always down to yeast and very very rarely anything else.....

This is exactly what I do. We have fermentation/conditioning tanks but usually ferment out in 4-6 days, and chill for 48-72 hours, then rack straight into a cask.

[Cazamodo]

Fuller's Ferment for 5 - 7 (down to around 5% fermentables remaining) then chill for 24 - 48 hours before adding to pressure barrels, casks and cornies with aux finings and then isinglass 24 hours later. I then finally bring these (secondary) fermenters up to cellar temperature (12 - 15 degrees C) for at least 7 days.

i guess this works because there is sufficient yeast in a cask for diacetyl and acetaldehyde to be cleaned up during this secondary cool fermentation period - and if you tried to apply this approach to bottle conditioning, your beer would be undrinkable (correct me if i'm wrong) and you'd get under-attenuated butter bombs?

I have also let fermentation run complete in the FV, and then primed in the cask and had no issues with off flavours.
I also bottle and have bottle conditioned beers aswell as ones filled with a CPBF and have not had any issues. Again with bottles I fermenet completely out and prime, wheras with the cask I try to rack 2 gravity points off the FG.