NEIPA - Primary vs Secondary

Over The Cliff Brewing

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Hey folks,

I have tried brewing with fruit in a NEIPA but not using a secondary fermentation. The fruit does not come thru in the finished product. I know the hops used helps but not enough. This is where the age old question comes, Should a secondary be used or not. What do you guys do?
 
Hey folks,

I have tried brewing with fruit in a NEIPA but not using a secondary fermentation. The fruit does not come thru in the finished product. I know the hops used helps but not enough. This is where the age old question comes, Should a secondary be used or not. What do you guys do?
Sorry for the terminology pedant thing, but you did do a secondary fermentation, just not in a secondary fermenter.

A secondary fermentation is whenever you add a second source of fermentables after the first one. Some people will do this in a secondary fermenter, but you don't have to. At a home brew level, you'd move it to secondary because cleaning the fruit, or whatever, out of your primary fermenter would be a pain.

I'm guessing it's either not enough fruit or in the wrong form. What's your fruit source and dosage rate?

The other time people use the term secondary fermentation is again, nothing to do with secondary fermentation. It's when you want to give the beer time to clarify and you can't afford to tie up the primary vessel for that amount of time.

A similar, less common, reason is when you're aging the beer a really long time and you'd expect to have yeast cells dying and creating off flvaours. But with modern healthy yeast and home brew volumes we're probably talking a month, if not more, before you'd need to move to a secondary vessel.

Again sorry for the pedantic correction, but I thought it could help focus on why the move to a secondary vessel probably isn't the thing to focus on.
 
I appreciate the response. Next time I'll increase the amount of fruit. I havent used a separate secondary since my first two kits from Northern Brewer.
 
Yeah they just make it more annoying. I would say more fruit would be the way to go.
 

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