Hey everyone ! I made my 6th batch last weekend. I ferment in a plastic bucket. Usually I go for around 2-3 weeks. This time I decided ill go to secondary after 10 days for further 10 days and then cold crash. I did this just for the sake to have less yeast at bottom of secondary when going to bottling bucket and therefore leaving less yeast in bottles. To get to my question, i used the bottling bucket as primary, planned to use bucket with no tap as secondary and then going back to bottling bucket for bottling. However, 10 days in with stable final gravity of 1.007 for the last 3 days, there is still a layer of krausen, fallen but still a good layer. Can i rack to secondary with krausen ? Id leave it in the bucket but have no other bottling bucket to use then.
Racking to secondary with krausen
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If you sanitize the spigot and a length of tubing the krausen should stay on top. With my fav yeast(2565) that happens all the time, what i do is move it to the transfer location giving a slight swirl and then it sinks in a few days.
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You really risk oxidation and infection going back and forth between vessels; the recommendation is to transfer as few times as possible.
Im not sure I understand. You mean leave it in primary, swirl, wait few days for it to drop and then move to secondary ?
Ill go back to avoiding secondary after this batch unless im adding fruit or something. However I need to move this batch as otherwise ill have no bottling bucket. Just not sure will the krausen affect anything since gravity is now stable. Also based on a few experiments oxidation is pretty hard to do with low hop brews so Im not really worried about that as Im pretty careful siphoningto avoid any splashing etc.
I don't have a spigot so I use a racking cane. You can just move it using a tube and the spigot, and close the valve when crud starts to flow.
The spigot is low enough so do you think I should leave the sediment out first into a seperate bucket ?
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Into every 5 gallon batch a little sediment must flow. Or something like that. It really won’t matter that much.
Even with a racking cane I get some trub in the beginning but I pull it at the end so only a small amount gets into the keg or bottling bucket. If you're worried about it put a 3'4" shim under the spigot so it tilts backwards so less will transfer.
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