When doing secondary

[Brewing1976]

Is temperature control extremely important like it is for primary fermenting?

 

[Tobor_8thMan]

You don't want too hot or cold (at least initially). Normal basement temps are fine. About 1 week before packaging chill as cold as possible to drop yeast and clear up.

 

[jrgtr42]

It is important, though not as critical as for primary. Assuming you're brewing ales, you want to keep the temps where they're comfortable for you. For primary, you want them generally in the mid 60-s. For secondary, a little higher or a little lower isn't bad. You don't want it down to freezing or up at 100 degrees. Lagers are a different story. you want those cold.
As car as secondary itself, unless you're bulk aging like sours, fruits or wood, secondary is pretty much useless anyway. Lots of potential cons for not much pros.

 

[Tobor_8thMan]

I always secondary. No cons as far as I'm concerned. Helps clear my homebrew, gets beer off yeast, allows me to repitch yeast, etc.

 

[Dgallo]

Really depends on the beer and if you plan on cleaning it up in the secondary or the primary. If you taste any VDK Or Acetaldehyde keep the secondary at 70-72 so that the yeast clean up the beer. If you don’t need to clean up any off flavors then anywhere is the 60s is fine

I don’t use secondary’s, they are just asking to oxidize my beers since I primarily brew hoppy styles. The only time I’ve used one recently is with an RIS so I could age it off the yeast. I’m letting it rest in the low 60s.

 

[IslandLizard]

Secondaries are not needed for most beers. Like 99.9 - 99.999% of all beers brewed.

Especially in unskilled hands secondaries can and will create problems, such as oxidation, infections, under-attenuation, etc., while there's nothing to solve.

Leave the beer in the 'primary' until ready to package.

 

[day_trippr]

^agreed^

Oxidation from racking alone should put folks off this antiquated practice...

Cheers!

 

[Dgallo]

I would only use one for imperial stouts over or barlywines over 10

 

[Jag75]

I used to do secondaries all the time . Well sort of , I have a fast ferment that has the collection ball . So I just dump that I dont rack . However when using carboys I did rack into a clean one. Of recent i dont rack anymore . I never had an issue with racking before , taking my time purging and all that. Last handful of beers in the carboy sat for 3 to 4 weeks and absolutely no off flavors . So it's easier to me to just let it sit. Unless of course I'm adding fruit to a secondary this would be the only time I rack to a clean fermenter.

 

[Brewing1976]

I did secondary cause I had to add hops

 

[Dgallo]

I’ll primarily brew hoppy beers and I can tell you from experience, you want to dryhop in your primary fermenter and not rack them. All beers are susceptible to oxidaztion but especially hoppy beers due to their increased level polyphenols from the hops

 

[Brewing1976]

I’ll primarily brew hoppy beers and I can tell you from experience, you want to dryhop in your primary fermenter and not rack them. All beers are susceptible to oxidaztion but especially hoppy beers due to their increased level polyphenols from the hops

Damn wish I knew that. I’ll remember that for next time thank you