[I apologize, being new here, if this has been endlessly addressed in these forums!]
I’ve just transferred my beer to a third fermentation carboy to help with removing an extra-heavy dry-hop application ;), running it through a sterilized cheesecloth on transfer. I’m not a regular brewer and am wondering if I may have screwed myself by removing the solids, maybe losing too much of my yeast when I did that :-. Do I need to add more yeast when I bottle or will there be enough left in the beer. Secondary fermentation ran for one week and three days after one week of primary. Almost all solids were filtered out on the third transfer. Thanks for any info!
I boiled the cheesecloth a little to sanitize, then stuffed it into the mouth of the carboy on transfer. I know, it sounds risky, and probably is! I won’t do it again, but had a HUGE amount of hops left in the carboy after a dry hopping with extra hops to emulate Pliny the Elder and figured I’d try it. Came out clean, but the amount of air that got into the beer was huge… :-[
I can see a case where you might want to have a seocndary for dry hopping (though, in reality you can dry hop in the primary.) Hard for me to come up with a reason for a trimary fermenter in almost any case. And no way should you be straining your beer through cheese cloth. That is a very good way to oxidize your beer.
Next time, just let the beer sit in the primary or secondary and carefully transfer the beer off once the hops have settled - or simply use a hop sock. And save the cheese cloth for … well … cheese, I guess.
I really appreciate all the great info you all are providing. I knew the cloth was risky, and we’ll see if I blew it, but the beer won’t have much time to sit around once it’s bottled, so that may help a bit.
After some good info from blatz, I may try to hunt down a used SS conical and upgrade my process.
Pellet hops usually settle out for me. If I use whole hops I have a plastic screen that fits over the bottom of the racking cane that came with a wine kit (to filter grape skins). I have heard of others using a piece of SS or copper scrubie on the end of the cane. I will try this when my plastic screen wears out.
Shouldn’t be any problem drinking it fast! It IS a Pliny wanna-be, with HUGE hops, so it’ll live through a little suffering, but any deterioration is bad!
