Rack To A Secondary?

One of the first major issues I ran into after getting the ground rules straight was what to about all the waiting. Brew day is a lot of work, but after things get sealed up, how else can I help?

Like most innocent questions, there is a long and drown out debate about the merits getting involved during the magic of fermentation, i.e. racking to a secondary.

Some people are driven by simplifying processes; I am not one of those people. I don't mind complex, prefer it even, but only if it creates a tangible improvement.

My first few batches I got in the way as often as possible. After one week I would rack to a secondary, at the time simply another 6 gallon plastic bucket. Two weeks later I would move the beer back into the fermenter/bottling bucket.

Moving to a second 6 gallon plastic bucket was probably an unwise move, even if you subscribe to the idea that racking to a secondary does in fact improve flavor. There is too much headroom and too much chance of oxidation occurring; this in addition to the risk of exposing the beer during racking.

The five gallon glass carboy, pictured above, came as a gift and damnit I wanted to use it. Even after knowing deep down I probably wasn't seeing a material improvement by racking my simple extract beer, I often did it anyway.

That's not to say there aren't times when it was a good move.

• My Coffee Stout obviously required some way to get the coffee into the beer. I cold brewed fresh beans for 24 hours in the fridge, added to the secondary, and gently swirled the beer out of the primary and into the secondary to get a good distribution.
• I've brewed an Apricot Ale and Apricot Wheat, both requiring a rack to a secondary in order to add the flavoring*.
• I've sometimes lacked the planning required to brew, ferment, clear and bottle two batches at a time. With only two buckets and one carboy, I've sometimes needed to move a batch out of a primary into a secondary in order to get a bottling bucket.
  
• More practically, I do think that it's a good idea to rack beer to a secondary if you aren't going to be bottling within three weeks of pitching the yeast. Letting the beer sit on the trub will create off flavors and there is no reason to let five gallons of perfectly good beer become compromised because I've had other things to do on Sunday afternoons.
  

*That being said, I'm not a big fan of the flavoring available at your local home brew shop. There is no indication what the hell it actually is and, after using it twice now, seems a lot like drinking the fountain lemonade at Subway that claims to "contain 0% juice" instead of just, like, lemonade.

Most of my beers are not high OG beers (usually no higher than 1.042) and, therefore, I've decided that moving to a secondary is only going to be done when the process demands it like in situations bulleted above.