Need for secondary?

[brewinhard]

It's not really necessary for most beer styles. The beer will not suffer being on the yeast cake for 2, 3, or 4 weeks. Transferring to secondary allows for more chance of infection plus the extra cleanup. I gave it up years ago.
Good luck and welcome to the Madhouse!

And transferring to secondary is one other source of oxidation. I only secondary sour beers and fruit beers. And I'm lazy, so there's one less fermentor to clean.

+1 Master Dirk!

[mordantly]

i primary in ale pails, so 10-14 days tops to prevent oxygen permeability issues. lot of times i go straight to keg rather than carboy.

[spiderwrangler]

Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't. If I've got lots of stuff on the bottom, I'll rack to a smaller carboy to let stuff drop clearer. Usually do if I'm dry hopping or adding something else to the beer.

[brewrench]

You know its funny, all this time I have been racking to secondary. Last week I went to a buddies house for a brew sesh and come to find out he didn't secondary anything that didn't need extra sugar. I feel like a dumbass ! Well at least now I wont run out of the good stuff waiting for the other good stuff to finish

[Dirk McLargeHuge]

You know its funny, all this time I have been racking to secondary. Last week I went to a buddies house for a brew sesh and come to find out he didn't secondary anything that didn't need extra sugar. I feel like a dumbass ! Well at least now I wont run out of the good stuff waiting for the other good stuff to finish

You're still gonna run into people who absolutely insist you should transfer to to clarify your beer. It's best to just say, "Great idea! I'll do that next time!" and move on.

[mordantly]

i just put my og >32brix american barleywine in secondary to dryhop 4oz amarillo.

[beerhog]

i dont secondary anything except fruit beers and wild beers. i even let my lagers sit in the primary a -1.5c for up to six weeks at a time. only reason i secondary wild type beers is i primary in plastic and dont add brett until it hits the glass according to the theory thet brett yeast will permeate into plastic and fruit beers because even after racking some bits of fruit invariably end up crossing over.

[BrewerAdam]

I secondary (bright tank is really the correct term) some of my beers, but only for the fact that I bottle all my beer, and sometimes I need the primary fermenter that it is in. I only have 2 6.5 carboys so sometimes I am brewing faster than I am bottling so I need to transfer just to have a fermenter.

I know it is not the best reason, and I do agree with all of the many reasons why a homebrewer shouldn't do it, but I thought I would share my reasoning.