Sat Jan 12, 2013 11:24 pm
All of the above is good advice. Let the yeast clean up after itself. Old school advice is based on the fear of autolysis (rubbery flavors from letting the beer sit on dead yeast too long). This fear is overblown. It takes a couple of months for this to happen if you have a healthy yeast pitch. Let the beer sit for another week after you hit your "terminal gravity". The yeast is still active cleaning up the esters produced during the first part of fermentation. An extra week or two will allow for that to happen as well as let the beer clarify itself. You can skip what most folks call "secondary". All that is in most cases is a bright tank in which the beer clarifies itself, letting particulate matter drop out. Generally no additional fermentation takes place unless you are adding more fermentables.
