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.

BrewDay: First All Grain Batch

Just for the record, my first assault on All Grain Brewing...

Recipe derived from BierMuncher's recipe on Home Brew Talk, adjusted for a 5 gallon batch:

As far as a recipe:
(For 11 gallons)
8# 2-row
9# Flaked Wheat
2# White Wheat Malt

1.25 ounces of Sterlnig Hops at 60 minutes (I just use whatever clean bittering hop I can find since it plays such a minimal role)

6-7 ounces fresh orange zest - 10 minutes
2 ounces of freshly crushed (pulverized) coriander - 10 minutes
1-2 Tbsp of crushed black pepper - 10 minutes
4 chamomile tea bags - 10 minutes

Now I halfed that to get to a five gallon batch, and for the most part it went okay. Although while we are on the subject of batch size, my biggest complain was probably that I didn't actually get five gallons of beer.

Oh, and the extras:

Orange zest, chamomile, coriander seeds and a very small amount of pepper.

Mashing the grains is actually the most fun, and although it takes a lot of extra time I think it's worth it. It wasn't until the guy at the local home brew shop told me the shelf life on dry extract is, his words, "forever", that I realized how much room their is to grow in freshness. Besides, most of my extra batches were beginning to taste the same.

I didn't start the batch until 9pm on a Monday night, which was a very poor move. The problem was that I was just so damn excited to use the lauter tun I had just run all over town for and built that I couldn't help myself. I didn't finish until close to three in the morning, which was followed by four agonizing days of work. Such is the life, I guess.

Some other mistakes:

• I didn't think at all about using a protein rest, my mash was almost all wheat and anything over 30-50% really begs for one. My efficiency suffered as a result, but I still made beer.
• I don't have a scale. This has never been a problem, but the guy at the local home brew shop talked me into buying a ten pound bag of pre-crushed grains. I think I was able to get close by using the volume from the wheat and then adjusting accordingly.
• I didn't have a way of determining how much wort I got out of the first sparge batch, and therefore wasn't able to make an adjustment for the second one to get my target of 5.5-6 gallons of pre-boil wort. I ended up with 4 gallons of beer, about a gallon less than I should have had.
• I didn't realize my stove can't handle 5-6 gallons of water at a full boil, but did get lucky with the pot and was able to saddle it over two burners. Sometimes a lack of a plan works out.
• I didn't crush the coriander seeds, why didn't anyone tell me I had to?
  

The beer is still three weeks away from being ready. The nice thing about your first batch is you aren't worried if it doesn't turn out that great, although my hopes for a highly drinkable beer are still probably unreasonable high.

Chilla

So the wort chiller has arrived and is ready for dispatch.

Not the actual one, of course, but the closest I could find online

I had actually spent quite a bit of time researching how to build one, including watching this highly involved video:

There were immediately problems. That guys garage is bigger than my entire apartment. As you could probably then guess, I don't have half the tools he uses and nothing even approaching a method to solder. I made a trip to the hardware store anyway, following a print out of (I didn't realize this at the time) overly complex directions. This might not be ground breaking news, but the service at Home Depot kind of sucks and I retreated in shame without the proper supplies.

If only I had been able to look at one in real life. It's really quite simple: the tubing would be difficult to wrap, but besides that the hose clamps were a simple alternative the online directions didn't suggest.

Either way, I'm looking forward to using a lot less ice on brew day...now to figure out what I'm going to do with all the water.

The Batch Failures And Drunken Thoughts Of A Home Brewer

The title pretty much sums it up, I think.