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Do you age in the secondary or in the bottle?

Wildrover

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Since I'm bottling my big beers I was wondering if people went straight from primary to bottle after primary fermentation or if they let the beer sit in a secondary for an extended period of time before bottling? 

Also, if anyone ages the beer in a secondary before bottling, how long do you age it and do you re-pitch yeast to carbonate the beer?  If so, how much?  What kind of yeast is good for this? 

thanks in advance

WR
 
Wildrover,
            I no longer move my beer to a secondary. I wait a couple of weeks after the fermentation stops and then bottle or keg. I guess that I am letting my beer finish in the bottle. You don't have to worry about the yeast being active. The yeast starts up after you put in your corn sugar. No need to repitch unless your looking to use some special yeast for flavoring. If you have a big beer I would let it set in the cool of your basement for months. It's probably the hardest thing about brewing, waiting.
 
I still secondary most beers (not weizen/wit) for clarity sakes since I enter comps with most brews at least once each.  Secondary ranges from 1-3 weeks usually, and no additional yeast is needed.  Even though it might seem very clear, there's still lots of yeast in suspension and you can always purposefully suck up some into the bottling bucket. 
 
In most, but not all cases, I think that putting your beer in secondary is a waste of time, a waste of beer and detrimental to the quality of the beer. If you are pitching the right amount of healthy yeast there is no issue with leaving the beer in the primary for several weeks. There are a few cases where secondaries make sense.
 
stadelman said:
In most, but not all cases, I think that putting your beer in secondary is a waste of time, a waste of beer and detrimental to the quality of the beer. If you are pitching the right amount of healthy yeast there is no issue with leaving the beer in the primary for several weeks. There are a few cases where secondaries make sense.
I have to agree with that. Normal beers don't clear with a secondary, they clear with time. The yeast cake is not in a rush to destroy your beer. One guy had forgotten about a brew for "8 months" and it was good. (I wish I had such a fat pipeline as to forget about a carboy in the back of a closet). As for flavor... I can't say if bottle conditioning or a long secondary would have different results. I think each batch of beer is like a snowflake. No two are alike and yet they are still called "snow".
 
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