Rookie mistake

[morepowa]

Very angry right now , I stirred up the beer while racking it to the secondary carboy. I feel so guilty about the additional sediment that i am waiting for it to settle in the carboy and then i am going to rerack. can i get away with only a few hours or should i leave it for a whole day.

[BrewerJ]

Depends what yeast something like 002 will settle in a few hours but most of the others will need a day.

Hold on though, why did you rack in the first place. If you are going to age it in the secondary just leave the beer with the sediment until you are ready to keg or bottle. There is no need to do an extra racking and expose your tasty brew to oxygen.

[morepowa]

funny i just realized i will need to rerack into a bottling bucket anyway so what is the point. I sealed it up in the secondary and didn't wait. this is only my second batch but its a fruit ale that exploded on me last time so now i am using a blow off tube. outcome TBD

[BeerPal]

Your only real rookie mistake was believing that you needed to go to a secondary. More and more brewers (maybe most brewers) are skipping a secondary fermentation altogether and simply doing a longer primary. The misconception that a secondary fermentation is necessary stems from a time when homebrewing equipment wasn't as sophisticated as it is now and the yeasts available to homebrewers were definitely lower quality.

Anyway, that's my $.02.

[BrewerJ]

Agree 90% of beers do not need a secondary. I think he said he is brewing a fruit ale and if he is using real fruit then he probably needs a secondary.

[BDawg]

If you are adding the fruit to the secondary (which is what you should do), I'd say it's probably pretty good that you kicked some up on the way over, so that there are a few more yeast cells to process the fruit. Yeast operate better when they have more buddies around, and once the fruit starts fermenting, you'll get another krausen and lots of sediment anyways. At that point, you may consider going to a tertiary.

HTH-

[morepowa]

well all is well, the fermentation is going great lots of air bubbles coming through the blow off tube. alteast I actually had the right idea to stir up the primary to get more of the yeast. I may consider going to a tertiary but I will see what it looks like when it's done.

[BDawg]

Don't go nuts. A little is ok, but not too much.