Long primary?

I know that most of us agree that there is no real need to rush to get your beer out of primary. The autolysis boogeyman seldom bothers homebrewers, and then, only with really mistreated yeast. However, I thought that I'd share a piece of anecdotal evidence to support this.

Back on MLK day (January 21st), I brewed a Belgian golden strong. I intended to leave it in primary for four weeks, then bulk age it in secondary for another month or so.

The thing is, I tend to get busy, and with baseball season starting - and three boys playing in three different leagues - life just got nuts for me. I ended up leaving the beer in primary for nine weeks total, followed by two weeks in secondary. I fermented a little cold to start with (59-62 degrees), then got it to the md sixties for the next several days, then heated it all the way to 79 degrees at the very end. The beer sat at about 62 degrees for most of the time once fermentation was done.

Last night, I bottled. I ended up with almost 50 bottles worth of beer... but only 48 scrubbed and sanitized bottles, so I pulled a nice glass from the bucket.

The beer was obviously warm and flat, and I could certainly taste the priming sugar, but that was it in terms of "tastes that did not belong". I had some great pear flavors from the yeast; a nice, dry finish, and nothing else. No meaty flavors. No soy sauce flavors. No off flavors at all.

I'm sure that doesn't surprise any of the vets around here, but in my experience at least, 9 weeks on the cake was just fine.

So does that mean you figured out how to rack it to a bottling bucket without kicking up all the compacted yeast? Wasn't that your impetus for going back to secondaries after your first try and extended primaries?

To be fair, I've only had that issue once with racking the trub... but I'll admit, I'm a tad gunshy now. I'm still racking everything to secondary.

I could truthfully claim that I needed my primary for another batch, but I went ahead and secondaried for two weeks instead of bottling right away from the primary. I do like having just that tiny film at the bottom of the secondary; it's almost impossible to screw up and pull that little bit into the bottling bucket, whereas you do have to be more careful when racking from primary. I figure that if I screw up again, secondary gives me a safety net for leaving the junk behind.

Revvy, I've editing my bottling process - I'm not using the long hose anymore. I have a short hose that I attach my wand to; makes it a lot easier to deal with. I had this entire batch bottled and capped in a half hour, and that was with my five year old's "help" adding close to ten minutes to the process.

Now, if I can just get somebody to clean up for me, I'll have it made.

Taste should be the guiding factor in whether you secondary or not. Sitting on the yeast for a longer time does influence the flavor of the beer. Many folks prefer the sometimes subtle flavor notes picked up during the extra time on the yeast.

What I find a bit amazing is that people tend to think of settled yeast as being "inert" when it comes to adding flavors. We all can appreciate that the longer we dry hop, the more the hops get extracted and the flavor changes. Same for coffee grounds or cocoa nibs, or oak chips, etc. We all know that the flavor is changing with time from these additions. Somehow though people seem to think that yeast are immune to this. Granted the flavors can be subtle at times, particularly in full flavored brews. Yes your beer will be fine from extra time on the yeast, but it will be different from one that was racked to a secondary.

If you are happy with the flavors in your beers, then keep doing what you are doing. If you are curious, try a batch both ways, ideally brewing the 2nd batch as close as possible to the first batch so you can rule out age affects.

Oh, and the other thing is to not forget that the more your brew, the better you get. You may have had an earlier batch that you didn't like and now your beers are better. It might not be that before you were doing X, and now that you do Y, and the beer is better. This is sometimes true, but take the time to honestly ask yourself if it might just be the result of more practice improving your brewing skills

Good points, pjj2ba, but there is one real difference between racking off the yeast cake and racking off of strawberries, cocoa nibs, etc.

When you rack off of the cocoa nibs, the beer is no longer exposed to them. When you rack off of the yeast, there is still a ton of live yeast in suspension.

homebrewdad said:

Good points, pjj2ba, but there is one real difference between racking off the yeast cake and racking off of strawberries, cocoa nibs, etc.

When you rack off of the cocoa nibs, the beer is no longer exposed to them. When you rack off of the yeast, there is still a ton of live yeast in suspension.

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This is very true, which is why you don't have to leave the beer on the yeast cake as some folks now believe.

It is still much less exposure though than leaving it on the cake. Plus the yeast in suspension are still metabolically active, while the settled yeast are not, so their influences are somewhat different

Seems like a good post to ask this question. I recently racked to a secondary and the beer changed color dramatically. From a golden color to a deep brown. Is this typical?

xurgee said:

Seems like a good post to ask this question. I recently racked to a secondary and the beer changed color dramatically. From a golden color to a deep brown. Is this typical?

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Color change is pretty normal in the fermenter as yeast fall out of suspension. Sometimes, it's very striking - one portion may be one color, with a clear line where all the beer below it is another.

Can't say exactly with your beer without knowing recipe, how long before you racked, was gravity stable, etc.

Thank you. I was wavering on racking in the first place and beer smith had the color estimated more toward the lighter side, where it was before racking. So I was worried I messed it up.