Some experiments . . .
Well sometimes you learn that you should follow the wisdom that has been offered from others. I brewed an English Bitter which is one of my favorite beers for summertime drinking. It was partly being lazy, partly being busy, and partly being curious.
I let the beer ferment for about 15 days in the plastic bucket and did not put it into a secondary after a week. Typically it goes into a glass carboy to finish fermenting and to separate a lot of the solids.
The result was a decent beer but is one that I would not want to share with others, at least not without explanation. It has some of the sharp hop off flavors that are often tasted with the dregs at the bottom of a bottle of IPA.
Going forward, every beer I brew will be with the use of a secondary to allow this to fall out. What I am curious about now is whether I can get the beer out of the keg and go into the carboy for a few days.
So far so good. You might know that in kegging the tube that draws the liquid goes all the way to the bottom of the keg. I was hoping that the sediment would settle out and be drawn from the early pours. So far that seems to have happened. The off flavors are fading and the beer is getting more enjoyable. Hopefully that will continue.