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I am still in the brewing from kits phase and increasing my adventurousness little by little. The pain in the ass part for me was always syphoning the primary after about a week into the secondary -- mainly because I was making IPAs and wanted to make sure they were clear and often dry hopped. Then I had to go from secondary to bottle and you can imagine trying to get full dry hops out of a carboy -- brutal. Anyway, I've been reading here and on other forums that a lot of people don't even bother with the secondary part. Unless they're dry hopping there seems to be a consensus that you can just leave it in the primary for 2-3 weeks and go straight to bottle. Does that also included stouts? What about adding the bottling sugar?

I pretty much never use a secondary any more, dry hops or not. If I'm bottling, I just transfer to a bucket where I'll bulk prime and the bottle from there.

We virtually never transfer to a secondary, and ferment everything directly in the carboy. We use a hop spider in the kettle (thus reducing trub to the primary), and add dry hops with a mesh bag (sanitize, then fill with hops and stuff it down the neck of the carboy). The challenge is getting it back out, but it's doable. Then it's straight to the keg. Sometimes fined with gelatin for clarity, and sometimes not.

I'm curious about this too. Specifically with regards to clarity.

I tried skipping secondary for the first time with my last batch (FB ESB) and the results were not impressive but it was also my first time using dry hops so with little experience, I'm left wondering which change caused my cloudy beer. Based on some comments here, maybe it was the hops?

How long do you guys usually leave it in the keg before drinking? I'm usually into it after carbing for a couple of days but I have had to let this one sit for about 3 weeks so far and it still isn't clear but it is improving. At first it looked like orange juice with unstirred baileys but now it just looks cloudy. I don't expect my unfiltered ESB to be crystal clear but up until now I would be embarrassed to serve it even though it tastes fine

Sorry redundant post...any way to delete?

Thirsty wrote:I'm curious about this too. Specifically with regards to clarity.

I tried skipping secondary for the first time with my last batch (FB ESB) and the results were not impressive but it was also my first time using dry hops so with little experience, I'm left wondering which change caused my cloudy beer. Based on some comments here, maybe it was the hops?

How long do you guys usually leave it in the keg before drinking? I'm usually into it after carbing for a couple of days but I have had to let this one sit for about 3 weeks so far and it still isn't clear but it is improving. At first it looked like orange juice with unstirred baileys but now it just looks cloudy. I don't expect my unfiltered ESB to be crystal clear but up until now I would be embarrassed to serve it even though it tastes fine

I secondary most of the time...not all. If I'm using my fastferments I usually go straight to bottle, keg or bulk prime. The change in the ESB is the yeast. I did my first with the provided Nottingham and hit a final gravity of 1012 with crystal clear beer - good flocculation and attenuation. On the second ESB, I used the Danstar ESB provided yeast and only hit 1016. The beer was cloudy and is in the process of cold crashing on my front deck with gelatin findings. It should come crystal clear before kegging and it looks like previous observations about it being a poor attenuator are correct. Final alcohol will be around 4.5% ABV compared to a previous 5.2%. - still within style and range. The taste will tell - sample was nice - but until I gas it, it's still up in the air whether I use the ESB yeast again.

Back to secondary: Sometimes it's hard to get a beer perfectly clear in primary. Going to a keg or bottling means it can clear in bottles and so a secondary isn't really needed. I just hate cleaning carboys, so using them for secondary "brite" tanks works best for me. My beer is superclear and I rarely plate filter anything anymore.

As for kegging, I'm all about quick returns. I used to carbstone condition my kegs for several days but rarely do. Now I just crank up my psi to 40 lbs. for 24 hrs., then down to 8-10 lbs. perfectly drinkable after a day or two but improves ALWAYS as the keg nears its end.

Thanks for the info. I'm just getting back into things after many years so I have only used the newer London ESB yeast that comes with the kits. I have a few more of the kits so I'll want to try something different for the next one