Racked Out

I racked the beer to a 5 gallon glass carboy for secondary fermentation.  I went back and forth on this.  Some time on homebrewtalk.com revealed that many home brewers have moved away from two-stage fermentation.  The basic idea is this: after primary fermentation has finished, there is a layer of sediment (called trub) that settles to the bottom of the fermenter.  Conventional thinking was that letting the beer stay in contact with the trub for too long would result in off-flavors, and cloudy beer.  So, by transferring (racking) the beer into a second container, you get it off the trub, and get a clearer beer.  The thing is, many brewers now say that letting the beer stay in contact with the trub for a few weeks may actually help the flavor, and that clarity isn't really adversely affected by it.

Well, I decided to go ahead and do it for a few reasons.  For one, I thought it would be good practice for how to siphon, etc.  Secondly, I was just plain anxious to see (and taste!) my new beer!  But primarily I thought it would be helpful when it comes to priming and bottling.  Priming the beer involves the addition of sugars right before bottling, allowing some fermentation to occur inside the bottles (referred to as "bottle conditioning") and resulting in carbonation of the beer.  In order to do this, my options were to a.) add the priming sugar directly to the primary fermenter, potentially stirring up the trub into the beer, b.) adding the priming sugar to the carboy, requiring a funnel, or c.) rack the beer into the carboy for secondary fermentation, and then rack it back into the bucket with the priming sugar.

But really, I just wanted to taste my beer.  :-)  And I have to say, it's pretty good!  I should be able to bottle it next week.  Another couple weeks in the bottles and I'll have my first finished beer!