Secondary Fermentor size

Good Morning All,

    So I'd like to purchase another carboy in order to keep a brew constantly going. If I buy a 6ga carboy that I could use for brewing, could I also use my original 6 ga carboy for secondary fermenting? My concern is the additional air in the 6ga vs. the 5ga. Is it detrimental to the beer to have that extra gallon of oxygen in there? My thought is, why purchase a 5ga which limits its functionality to secondary fermenting alone, when I could buy a 6ga which I can use for either?

Buy the larger.  Note that for the last few years the trend has been to leave the wort in the primary for three, four, or more weeks and go from there straight to bottling or kegging.  The use of a 'secondary' is diminishing.  So if you buy a 6 gal container to use as another primary you will be good to go.

I would agree, buy the bigger one. I use a 6.5 all the time for a secondary with no ill effects.

Cheers
Preston

I have been looking looking around for this kind of information.

Yeah, the guy at the homebrew store told me to use a 5gal for the secondary because of the extra air.  In my short time involved in this hobby (about a week) I have learned that everybody does it differently, and there is some amount of trial and error to perfect your brew.

The tips are all great and are to be considered however until you get in there and experiment with the batch to perfect you own style / process the tips are good reading / guide posts to consider.  Thanks to all of you for sharing your experiences with all of us new guys.  It is a help.

I have recently quit using a secondary and my beer has improved. Less work better beer seems like a win win  ;D

Was just wandering, How long u guys let your Wort stay in the fermentor after it has finshed fermenting, on the average i mean?

I live and brew in germany, and what we do is if it like a lager it is finshed fermenting after about 7-10 days at around 8-9c, then we bottle it and store at around 5c for 4-5 weeks then finshed.

Also i might add that a lot of us ferment open not closed, and i might add that i have never had a brew go bad in my 3 years of brewing

ECarroll said:

Was just wandering, How long u guys let your Wort stay in the fermentor after it has finished fermenting, on the average i mean?

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I've left it in a sealed glass fermenter for over a year without problems. At the minimum, I leave it in a week or so after fermentation seems to be finished just to be sure fermentation is done. I don't usually take hydrometer readings, but if you do, you can bottle after you have 3 successive days of no hydrometer reading changes, assuming that you're close to  your expected target final gravity reading.

With an open fermenter, I would bottle it within a week after it's finished.

Donald