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I am a long time wine maker and just started my first batch of beer, Festa's Pale Ale. I just racked from bucket to carboy and in the wine making process, I am used to filling the carboy up to 23L. My instructions did not say to do this for the beer and I am just double checking.

Thanks in advance!

Just transfer what's in your primary no need to top up. If you haven't transfered yet. Just leave it in the primary.

Thanks!

While you would like to minimize the headspace in the carboy during secondary, there's no need to fill up with additional non-beer liquid at this time. The yeast still in suspension will consume some more fermentables, and create a bit more CO2 (and ethanol), pushing out the air, replacing it with the inert CO2.

As Keith alluded to above, you'll find that many homebrewers actually do only a long primary fermentation step (in either a bucket or carboy), and then bottle or keg their beer. Less transfer/equipment equals less chance of contamination. The downside is that your beer is sitting on dead yeast, however this doesn't tend to become an issue unless you leave your beer for months in the primary.

The warnings about transferring the beer to secondary after 3 or 5 days (whatever the instructions from FestaBrew/NG state) are misleading. You will NOT have infected beer if you transfer later than that, if you cleaned and sanitized your gear properly (which you should be doing anyway!). Many of us do a primary ferment for a couple of weeks, then use a bottling bucket to rack off of the yeast trub into and add bottling sugar, and then immediately to bottles. Those that keg often skip even that step, as force carbonation requires no extra sugar.

Any more questions, please ask!

What if you don't have a bung setup for your primary fermenter? Wouldn't you risk oxidization if you went over 5 days?

If you're using a bucket and fermentation has mostly stopped, you can snap the lid down all the way (some buckets have lids that can be snapped down the whole time). If you see the lid starting to bulge, you can just crack one side a tiny bit to let the gas escape. There's a blanket of co2 inside the fermenter due to off-gasing from fermentation..it's protecting your beer from oxidization.

Mobius wrote:What if you don't have a bung setup for your primary fermenter? Wouldn't you risk oxidization if you went over 5 days?

Your more likley to oxidize in the transfer. 5 days in a bucket may not finnish fermentation, depending on temp. Use a carboy or make sure the gravity is stopped falling.

Sandy