It would seem to me that they are not clearing the beer in the primary.
I should point out that I use a “secondary” vessel or bright tank for every beer I brew, even 10 gallon batches. That secondary vessel just is either a `15.5 gallon sanky keg or two corny kegs. The difference is these secondary vessels are purged of o2. You can do the same thing with a carboy.
One would think that racking a beer near the end of fermentation that there would still be enough active yeast in solution to clean up the beer and finish whatever fermentation and clean up any oxygen that was brought over as well. And with low floccing yeasts that really should be the case. Only on high floccing yeasts like English strains where the yeast needs to be roused (in some cases) to fully attenuate should racking early actually cause a problem. However, empirical evidence has shown me that racking a beer, for some reason, often causes the yeast to drop out of suspension and I have no idea why this is. And we have all trouble shot questions on this forum about underattenuation that seemed to result from racking early.
IMO it is not a good idea to ever rack before fermentation is finished, but if you save the yeast you could repitch if you don’t reach your FG.
I’m not sure what the flavor of autolysis would be, but yeasty tasting beer tells me it hasn’t cleared enough.
The only time my beer tastes yeasty is if it hasn’t sufficiently cleared. Once clear, it tastes different (not yeasty).
I would suspect that the yeasty tasting beers are being packaged too soon, probably because someone is afraid that they’ll get autolysis if they wait longer for the beer to clear. Or else they’re not cold crashing before packaging.
Or if they bottle, let the bottles sit in the fridge for a minimum of a week before consuming. I’ve found this clears the beer exceptionally well.
I’ve cold crashed and then bottled. I’ve cold crashed, bottled with added extra yeast at bottling. I’ve foregone cold crashing and then bottled without adding bottling yeast. In all cases, if the bottles are left in the fridge for a week, the results are essentially the same: clear beer that does not taste yeasty in the slightest.
Oddly, I had brewed a Tripel for a 60 gallon wine barrel project at our club this past month and it pained me to rack it off at 1.012, when I knew it would likely finish a few points lower, if given time, but we had agreed on a date for the barrel fill and I had fully expected the beer to finish by a few days earlier - just goes to show you that the yeast tell you when they are done! There were enough really dry batches blended with it that even if it doesn’t finish further, the batch will be fine. Years ago, I would have racked it to secondary and waited to take a hydrometer reading a week or so after that - and probably lamented that it had not finished!
I was for a long time in the primary-to-packaging, autolysis risk is overblown camp, but then I read this by Pete Wolf. Short answer: the yeast in the ‘cake’ isn’t really doing the work anyway, its the yeast thats suspended in the wort…and autolysis is a risk, even on a homebrew scale. Plus the amount of undesirable stuff in the cake, racking may make more sense than we think. Racking off of or dropping sediment from a conical shouldn’t slow down the fermentation all that much if at all according to him.
And this is why you are there to tell them they are wrong. You must do this over and over. They need to stop spreading lies.
I’ve tasted autolysis a few times. One particular beer I had was where my friend kept his beer in the primary for 6 months, in a garage during the summer. It was very meaty tasting. No bueno. Naturally, he thought it was good and couldn’t tell that it wasn’t the way it was supposed to be.