Ok folks, so I have read quite a few things regarding transferring to secondary or not, and we have decided to transfer to secondary. Our beer appears to still be fermenting and we are debating on whether or not to transfer to secondary now or wait longer until it completely settles. What we are wondering is, if we transfer now and are taking our beer off the yeast bed will it no longer be fermenting in the secondary container, or will the yeast within the liquid continue to cause the beer to ferment in Secondary?
Thanks a lot folks! Hopefully you can help us from causing a disaster.
Whatever yeast is still in suspension will continue to ferment, but likely at a slower pace according to what I have read here. The remaining yeast may also not be up to the task of cleaning up after itself. Unless you feel like cleaning a second fermenter or are racking onto fruit, dry hops, secondary yeast, etc, using a secondary is not nearly as necessary as once thought. The few times I have secondaried, I did have attenuation problems and/or off tastes and flavors. Those were also before I had good temp control as well, so read on to hear what everyone else has to say. This is a pretty hot topic on here.
Most here would recommend that you not transfer to secondary at all unless you are racking onto fruit or dry hops or aging for months.
But if you do transfer to secondary do wait until the primary fermentation is done. If you think that may be the case check the gravity now and then in two days. If its not moving its done (assuming it was going well to start with). You don’t want to rack too early off the yeast cake because that can slow or stop your fermentation and result in off flavors.
You should wait until it is finished fermenting and the yeast has had a few days to clean up some of the less desirable by-products of fermentation before you rack out of primary.
Thank you very much folks! I think that’s given us the info we need.
We’ll be measuring our og today and then again in a couple days.
Time to go back to a pressure washer and craft brews.
As of now we are planning on going to secondary. At that point we are going to do another round of dry hops.
I was only looking for some advice on when to transfer.
Today our gravity reads at 1.014 our og was 1.069 so that would put us just shy of 7%. Not too upset about that for my first.
Might have also taken some drinks out of the measuring tube. Tastes pretty damn good for my first brew ever if you ask me! But then again I’m biased.