Racking to secondary "Bad"?

[Nosybear]

@Nosybear
The ABV is currently at about 10.5% based on the OG, and current SG. Would the alcohol at this percentage make it fairly bullet proof as far as potential for infection? I'm just thinking about @AGbrewer 's original question about racking to a secondary. Sounds like this brew would be difficult to oxidize.

It's not difficult at all to oxidize it but at that alcohol level, oxidation can do beneficial things for the beer. It should be proof against most infections as well. Be careful with it - I use spigots on all my fermentors and buckets to avoid using an auto-siphon, flush the receiving bucket with CO2, in other words, take all the normal precautions and you should be fine. Secondary has an unnecessarily bad rap, kind of like table sugar, likely because of some failures blamed on it. Be careful, don't splash, flush your vessels and secondary is a tool in your toolbox to be used when needed.

 

[Bubba Wade]

There was a theory years ago that you needed to move the beer to a secondary for a couple of reasons:

1. Lots of people were fermenting in LDPE plastic buckets. In theory these buckets were permeable to oxygen. However, in practice, the bucket wall was too thick and the bucket was under a slightly positive pressure from the fermentation CO2. Oxygen had a hard time getting in.

2. There was another theory that letting beer sit on trub for more than a few days caused off flavors. We now know that the trub has some nice nutrients for the yeast and after a few days, gets covered up with a layer of yeast slurry.

There are some good reasons to move to a secondary. Lagers and high gravity ales benefit from some extended quiet time. And sometimes you need to free up some space in the primary.

I do a modified secondary/conditioning step in my keg. After two weeks in primary, it goes to the keg for natural carbonation and aging. Two weeks for lighter beers, longer for big beers. Another benefit of this method is that when the yeast become active from the priming sugar, they are excellent oxygen scavengers.

Anyway, I think I have just beat a dead horse a bit more.

 

[Craigerrr]

There was a theory years ago that you needed to move the beer to a secondary for a couple of reasons:

1. Lots of people were fermenting in LDPE plastic buckets. In theory these buckets were permeable to oxygen. However, in practice, the bucket wall was too thick and the bucket was under a slightly positive pressure from the fermentation CO2. Oxygen had a hard time getting in.

2. There was another theory that letting beer sit on trub for more than a few days caused off flavors. We now know that the trub has some nice nutrients for the yeast and after a few days, gets covered up with a layer of yeast slurry.

There are some good reasons to move to a secondary. Lagers and high gravity ales benefit from some extended quiet time. And sometimes you need to free up some space in the primary.

I do a modified secondary/conditioning step in my keg. After two weeks in primary, it goes to the keg for natural carbonation and aging. Two weeks for lighter beers, longer for big beers. Another benefit of this method is that when the yeast become active from the priming sugar, they are excellent oxygen scavengers.

Anyway, I think I have just beat a dead horse a bit more.

 

[Donoroto]

Oxidization and Infection are two different animals. You can have one without the other, or both.

 

[AGbrewer]

@Nosybear
The ABV is currently at about 10.5% based on the OG, and current SG. Would the alcohol at this percentage make it fairly bullet proof as far as potential for infection? I'm just thinking about @AGbrewer 's original question about racking to a secondary. Sounds like this brew would be difficult to oxidize.

Infection, probably not, oxidation, it's still possible.