Hi there,

I've brewed a few batchees of beer (< 5), and have always gone directly from the primary fermentater (bucket w/ airlock) to the bottles. I generally keep the beer in the fermenter for about 10 - 14 days, long after all signs of fermentation have ceased. My batches have all been good, but I do tend to get a lot of sediment in the bottles. (Moving to a keg for the next batch though, so sedimentation should be much less of an issue.)

I'm starting to worry that I'm missing a crucial step in the brewing process, but I don't really understand what secondary fermentation is or why you need to do it. Any info would be much appreciated.

Some folks use secondary vessels while the beer is still fermenting to take their beer off of the trub once fermentation slows enough for it to settle out. Some folks use a secondary after fermentation is completely through to remove the beer off the trub and allow all of the yeast to settle out. Some folks (like me) leave their beer in primary long after fermentation is completed, giving it plenty of time to settle and clear up before racking to a keg.
I would say that the use of a secondary is pretty optional. If you're missing a step, I would say it's cold crashing or using finings to clear your beer before bottling. If you don't want a ton of settlement, make sure your beer is pretty clear before bottling. Here's some info on using finings.
finings-t601.html

I'm actually moving away from bottles and into kegging with this batch. So it sounds like I'm OK if I rack to the keg a week or so after fermentation stops, optionally adding something like gelatin or isinglass at that stage.

Cold crashing – is that when you jam the beer into the fridge for a week or two before priming? Could I put the keg in the fridge for a week before add any CO2, or would I risk oxidizing or contaminating the beer that way?

ps: sorry if this is getting off-topic!

Don't add gelatin or isinglass to the keg. You'll add that to your fermentation vessel after fermentation stops, and it'll help drop out yeast and trub. Then you rack to a bottling bucket. You don't want this stuff clogging your keg's dip tube. I used finings when bottling, so that I didn't end up with a bunch of crud at the bottom of my beer bottles. I don't find it necessary now that I keg. Cold crashing works as good if not better, and since you're kegging, it's really easy.

As for cold crashing, feel free to carb your beer before jamming it into the fridge. Carbonation won't have any effect on the yeast settlement. Just pop it into the fridge and let it rest for a couple days. When you start serving, you'll have a couple mugs of very yeasty/murky stuff, and then the clear beer will start flowing. The bonus to cold crashing like this is that you not only are dropping out yeast, but you are also dropping out the proteins responsible for chill haze. They'll eventually settle out too, so long as you don't warm the keg back up. Then, when you're blowing out the yeast, the chill haze proteins go along for the ride. It ends up making a very clear beer.

Awesome. Sounds great. And thanks for saving me from junking up my diptubes!

Really looking forward to kegging and cold-crashing this batch. Seems like there are all kinds of benefits to kegging beyond saving time and effort.