Whats up Guys,
So I am about 5 days into my primary fermentation, I used WLP002 and made a big yeast starter. My air lock has stopped like normal and this is about the time I would be dry hopping and racking into my secondary (i have only made ipa’s and pale ales). My question is because I dont need to dry hop, should I just let it ride in the primary? If so how long? Or should it go in the secondary so its not sitting on a huge bed of dead and or unactive yeast cells.
Thanks guys
I would let it ride minimum of two weeks, maybe longer. Wait until it is finished and don’t bother with secondary unless you are adding ingredients or aging for a long time. The tried and true method of telling if it is done is two identical gravity readings two or three days apart.
Honestly I wait three weeks most of the time just out of laziness or lack of clean kegs/bottles.
Racking to secondary is unnecessary unless you plan on keeping the beer in primary for a couple of MONTHS. In the first 6 weeks or so, there is zero risk of yeast autolysis unless you were to friggin cook it at 100 F or something stupid like that.
Let it ride for a little while, then keg or bottle. It’s all good.
+1 to leaving most of my beers in primary for 2-3 weeks. Laziness plus giving the yeast more than enough time they need for their fermentation party and cleaning up after themselves after.
oh haha ignore that, for some reason i thought this was a partial mash recipe. keep in mind that extract is only about 80% fermentable. what was your OG and what is the SG now?
if you don’t take a reading until you bottle how do you know your done before bottling? it might be fine 9 out of 10 times but that 10th time could be a big mess with exploding bottles. the only time I’ve had bottle bombs the beer had spent two or three months in primary. but it was stalled and hadn’t finished. I finally got impatient and bottled only to have fermentation start up again in the bottle.
you should get over your fear of opening the fermenter. nothing is going to jump in there and ruin the beer and you can’t know what’s going on in there without measuring.
to paraphrase Denny, if you can’t take a gravity reading without infecting your beer, perhaps you should take up knitting.
I too only measure at bottling or transferring to a keg. I let my beers ride for 4 weeks most of the time. If it’s not done then, something else is up and I’ll hold off if I’m afraid.
He said as he is about to bottle. I too do this, if the gravity reading is not where it should be the packaging does not happen. Now my odds have been - well 100% perfect since I quit taking readings until packaging a few years ago. Of course with a new yeast or big beers or something I want to make notes on I will certainly take a few readings. If I thought there was an issue, I would check it. Otherwise, I will be more than happy just waiting until packaging.
I let beers go for 3 or 4 weeks before kegging too, and usually do this as well. But if it’s a strain I haven’t used or am thoroughly familiar with, I’m more cautious. But I’ve used enough 1056 and a few others over the years to know where a given grist/mash temp should finish. If it’s not pretty much right there, I wait.
Yea I never said i don’t take readings, I just dont open it every week of my three weeks its fermenting. I open it up when I am about to bottle if its not there ( which has happened before due to little to cold in the ferm chamber then it stays in longer.) I have not seen much active lately, am goin on two weeks so its slowed alot. I might bump the temp up three or so degrees till Wednesday and then I cold crash it till Sat.