The duration of a secondary fermentation or conditioning phase can vary from as little as a week to over 6 months. Actual time will vary and you should let your taste buds and nose determine when a beer is ready for bottling. During extended secondaries, you should make sure your airlock does not dry out.
It is a good idea to check your gravity throughout fermentation, as it will continue to drop until it is completed. Once you notice that gravity has stopped dropping, you know secondary fermentation is complete and you can move to bottling.
Secondary fermentation begins when things start to slow down; the yeast has eaten all the sugar and is beginning to die. With the bulk of the alcohol produced during the primary stage, it also inhibits the yeast's ability to reproduce. Secondary fermentation lasts between one to two weeks and is a much slower process.
This is usually around day 5, or when the wine hydrometer reads 1.030 to 1.020 on the specific gravity scale. This is when to move wine to a secondary fermenter when everything runs normal. However, there are times when the fermentation is still foaming too much to go into a secondary fermenter, such as a carboy.
It gets the beer off spent yeast sediment.
Most homebrewers don't ferment their beer long enough to cause any noticeably problems, but for those who choose to do a longer fermentation, racking the beer into a secondary fermenter or carboy is highly recommended.
Make sure you are burping your bottles daily after 2 days so you don't get a booch explosion. Burping your bottle just means opening and closing the top of your secondary fermentation bottle. -Make sure your secondary fermentation is at room temp (68 degrees or above).
As A Side Note: It is important to note that an air-lock should always be used after the must has gone into its secondary fermentation. This is in agreement with most.
Among most homebrewing enthusiast it is generally considered ill-advised to leave your beer for more than 4 weeks in primary or secondary fermentation. This 4-week mark is a safety net to make sure your beer doesn't oxidate and gets ruined, however, there are types of beer you can leave for longer.
Secondary fermentation is the process of taking your “finished” beer from your fermentation bucket, and transferring it to another container, usually a glass carboy, for a period of aging typically ranging from two days to several months.
2. No additions to the secondary vessel except to thoroughly clean and sanitize. You could add a little sugar or dissolved extract when you rack to secondary to give the yeast something to do with any aeration that occurs in the beer during racking to secondary so you don't oxidize the beer.
Depending on the type of wine desired, this fermentation process may take just a couple weeks. In general, the longer that fermentation goes on, the more sugar is converted into alcohol, resulting in a less sweet (or “drier”) and more alcoholic beverage.
Generally speaking, wine can't ferment for too long. The worse that can happen is a “miscommunication” between the sugar and the yeast due to either using the wrong type of yeast or fermenting under the wrong temperature. Even if this happens, you can still salvage most if not all wines.
Sugar can be added to encourage the secondary fermentation, as well as in the "dosage" of bottle-fermented sparkling wines, when a mixture of sugar and wine is added to the bottle after the yeast sediment is removed.
During the secondary fermentation stage, most of the sugars have been consumed and the alcohol by volume (ABV) increases. With the majority of the sugar consumed, the rate of fermentation decreases while the alcohol content continues to increase.
Secondary Fermentation
After you've racked from primary to secondary there will be a headspace of around 1.25 quarts in volume, but that's okay because the wine will still be fermenting and outgassing CO2, which will protect it from oxygen.
Understanding the Phases of Fermentation
This multiplication happens very quickly, but not a lot of alcohol is produced. Oxygen is needed during this phase by the yeast for it to work.
Just give it more time to make sure the fermentation is complete. You could add a standard dose of potassium or sodium metabisulfite to the wine, but I don't think it is necessary. In reality, the fermentation may actually be done even though you are still seeing some bubbling.
Simply move the fermenter to an area that is room temperature, or 68-70 °F. In most cases, too low a temperature is the cause of a stuck fermentation, and bringing the temp up is enough to get it going again. Open up the fermenter, and rouse the yeast by stirring it with a sanitized spoon.
The cask is ready to serve after the secondary fermentation is finished and the beer has been clarified by the finings.
The quick answer to this question is no – fermented foods are generally not sources of probiotics. Despite the popular assertion to the contrary, very few fermented foods contain microbes that fit the criteria to be called probiotic.
YES! You most definitely can bulk ferment sourdough too long. If you leave the dough to ferment for too long, it will become "over fermented". Over fermented dough will lose its structure and become a soupy, sloppy mess that you will not be able to shape.
When does fermentation stop? Fermentation will stop once all the grape sugars are consumed by the yeast. However, fermentation can be interrupted and cease if the temperature rises above 35°C, or if there is a lack of nutrients for the yeasts to stay alive (aside from sugar).
SECONDARY FERMENTATION TEMPERATURES:
Ales: Same as primary fermentation (higher temperatures will increase diacetyl reduction rates) Lagers: 40-60 °F (4-15 °C). Some brewers allow the beer to increase in temperature to speed the diacetyl reduction.
Once your wine has successfully fermented there is never any reason to add more yeast to the wine. The wine yeast you originally added at the beginning multiplies during the fermentation. If the fermentation went as it should, there should be about 100 to 150 times the amount of wine yeast you added, originally.
You could add it now, or later if you do a secondary. As long as you boil (and cool) the water first, there should be no worries as long as you add the water carefully and minimize splashing.