Pale Ale Update and Racking to a Secondary Fermenter

Hello again, beer lovers!

So due to some unfortunate computer issues, I was unable to post the updates I wanted to all week on the fermentation process of our Orange Peel Pale Ale. Instead, I've got a few pictures of what happened this week and some information on racking our beer to a secondary fermenter.

This was taken about 24 hours after the brewing finished. Notice the thick layer of krausen on top of the beer and how uniformly cloudy the beer is. The beer is cloudy because there is a ton of yeast floating in suspension, absorbing sugars and processing them into carbon dioxide and alcohol. The krausen on top is composed of proteins from the malts, insoluble acids and oils, hop resins, and yeast cells. At this point, the airlock was bubbling vigorously, twice a second or so.

We had a mini heat wave here in the Bay Area early this week with temperatures getting into the high low 90s on Wednesday. As a result, our house was a bit warmer than we would have liked and I think the fermentation finished faster than usual. So by Thursday afternoon, there was very little action in the airlock. A hydrometer reading yesterday confirmed that it was time to rack to the secondary fermenter.

This was taken this morning, right before we began racking. The krausen has fallen completely, its components settling out on the bottom along with dead yeast cells and anything else that was suspended in the beer. This layer is visible at the bottom of the carboy as the whitish-grey junk and is referred to as 'trub'. Once the vigorous primary fermentation is complete, continued contact with the trub can impart undesirable flavors to the beer so may brewers move the beer off of the trub and into a secondary fermenter by siphoning. This process is called 'racking'.

Here is the larger primary fermenter, filled with beer, and the smaller (5-gallon) secondary fermenter. Using the auto-siphon, we transfer the beer from the primary to the secondary, avoiding sucking up any of the solids at the bottom of the carboy.

Beer Starts to Flow

Our Orange Peel Pale Ale, like most California pale ales, wants to have a crisp, hoppy aroma when when you crack a bottle open. This is accomplished by adding some hops into the secondary fermenter. This is called 'dry-hopping' because the hops have not been boiled. Hops have natural anti-bacterial properties so there is no worry of infecting the beer through this addition. The nylon mesh bag was sterilized prior to use, however. Inside, we put 1/2 oz. Cascade hop pellets. The beer will absorb many of the delicate alpha acids that contain that wonderful aroma over the next 10-12 days before bottling.

We filled the secondary fermenter almost the way up, leaving very little head room for oxygen to damage the beer. This is the best we've done yet at getting the volume in the primary to match the volume of the secondary. This has probably been our most successful brew, apart from the uncontrollably warm weather during the primary fermentation.

The beer will sit for 10-12 days, allowing for the yeast to clean up some of its early-fermentation by-products and for more suspended particulate matter to settle out.

Thanks for reading and cheers!