Thread: Home Brew Kits
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Old 03-11-2015, 12:49 PM   #47
Canehdianman
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Join Date: Sep 2011
Location: Calgary
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Flash Walken View Post
Secondary helps with the clarity of the beer.

When I do Lagers or lighter Ales, I always do a secondary. If you're cleaning your stuff properly, there's no more risk, and after the primary has done it's job, there isn't a lot of room for infection with alcohol already present.

I also dry hop in a secondary. It's more work, but if I wanted easy swill I'd just buy it.

Easier to bottle from a secondary because you can get more beer out of it if you aren't worrying about a big yeast cake on the bottom.

First picture is a commercial Lager:
Spoiler!


Second picture is my homebrew lager
Spoiler!

I don't use finings in my beer to help clarify it either.

It's really difficult to get that kind of clarity without transferring to secondary.
I'm not saying you are wrong, but in my experiments (and others I've read online) the secondary doesn't do anything for clarity. If that's how you brew though, then by all means keep it up.

I do sometimes dry-hop in a secondary, but most of the time I just add it to the keg (in a big tea infuser ball).

We always add irish moss to our brews, and cold crash them after kegging. This has always resulted in crystal clear beers. Nowadays we also are trying out Clarity Ferm, which is another clarifying agent (and reduces gluten to non-measurable levels), so if anything, it is clearer than before. All without a secondary.
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