First Time using secordary - hints and tips?

[leigh1919]

Hi guys -

After a moderatley successfull bottling operation, Im going to secondary ferment my wherry kit this weekend, after a fortnight in primary. Gravity has stopped at 1010 - is this ok? I only ask because it seems quite low to me.

The beer smells really good, by the way.

I am planning to use spraymalt to prime the sv - anyone got any other tips or hints as to what I could experiment with at this stage? quantities, mixtures, other sugars etc?

thanks!

[MightyMouth]

1010 is fine, I would use plain sugar to prime as its cheaper and you won't taste the difference. I too wanted to experiment when first I started but every time I did it turned out worse than it would have otherwise so I advise against it until you know you can make consistently good brews.

[prodigal2]

leigh

are you still going to bottle? or will you be serving from a keg?
What you can do with a kit in a secondry, is dry hop, if you look into some of Crowncaps posts in the kit section, and dry hopping.

[stevezx7r]

If your bottling your beer, you could transfer straight to bottles as it's been in the primary for 14 days. Use ordinary table sugar to prime. As long as the beer is bright it shouldn't take much yeast with it - just enough to carbonate/mature.

If your kegging your beer, transfer to the keg and either prime with table sugar or force carb the barrel.

Dry hopping is a must for me if I make a kit up. The hop flavour and aroma from kits is the most notable thing missing, for me anyway, but then I like my beer hoppy

If you do dry hop, find out what hop was originally used to make the kit and get some fresh leaf hops of the same sort. Sterilise a mesh bag and put the amount you want in then drop that into the keg. You will get some bits of hop floating around but given time they'll settle.

[leigh1919]

hi -

yeah, i will then be bottling after doing the secondary for a few weeks - i'm just experimenting at the mo, you see. I found priming the bottles a little hassly and wanted to see if priming the whole batch in secondary made a diff.

thanks for the ideas/help guys - legends, the lot of you.

[ashbyp]

you don't generlly prime in secondary. you prime in the serving vessel be that a bottle or a keg/cask.

secondary is used for clearing a beer, lagering or just maturing before transfering to bottle or keg/cask. if you do plan to use a secondary then the beer will be very clear when you transfer so expect it to take longer to carbonate in the bottles - at least a month.

I'm wondering if what you are actually thinking about is bulk priming in a bottling bucket? this is where you transfer the beer from primary to another bucket and at the same time adding the priming suger to the bottling bucket, and then immediately trasnfering from bottling bucket to bottle? This can make it easier to get consistent carboination in all bottles rather than spooning suger into each bottle individually../

[leigh1919]

Thanks guys -