Broke racking cane? :(

On my first batch i broke about an inch off the racking cane trying to get the siphon hose off for clean-up. It was stuck so i just pulled. What to do next time?

Try heating the cane with hot water to ease it off. I did that with an autosiphon cane and the next time I used hot water. Works just fine.

I find that pushing the tubing off the cane with my thumbnail, rather than trying to pull it off, works best. Pulling off the tubing is sort of like a one-sided Chinese finger puzzle. It only took me 2 broken racking canes and one autosiphon to figure this out, too!

Get a stainless one, the plastic ones will keep breaking sooner or later. Morebeer has 3/8 and 1/2 inch canes in stainless.

Yes, SS canes are a good suggestion. I actually use one now. I also use silicone tubing with it, so that the entire thing can be chucked in the oven for a half hour to heat sanitize it. Plastic canes and tubing work fine, but plastic canes are prone to breaking (as you have seen) and vinyl tubing becomes difficult to keep sanitized after a while. SS and silicone will last for years and years, and is actually cheaper in the long run.

All this is sound advice; I broke my racking cane 3 years ago but have continued to use it: just a little electricians tape to seal the tubing to the end.

I broke the racking cane in my auto-siphon yesterday. I was able to keep the hose on the broken end and make it work.

I feel your pain

If they made a stainless autosiphon I would buy one. Lately I have been using the rubber carboy caps and the 3/8 stainless racking cane to fill my kegs from the carboy using CO2 to pressurize the carboy (closed system). The racking cane has tubing and a black corny connector which connects to the keg being filled. I also put a grey corny CO2 connector on the keg with tubing going to an overflow container so it will let the air out and also let me know when the keg is full. It is slower transfer but totally sanitary. Everything that touches the beer has been sanitized thouroughly with Starsan.

It's funny how we all do the same things. I have broken two myself trying to pull the hose off. Now I just cut it off and then cut the small piece off the cane end.

WBC said:

Get a stainless one, the plastic ones will keep breaking sooner or later. Morebeer has 3/8 and 1/2 inch canes in stainless.

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what he said... one time investment.

make a bottle filler