When Racking - How much do you leave behind ?

**Mutilated1** · 08-29-2007, 06:18 PM

When you rack your beer out of the primary and into the secondary, or when you rack it from the secondary into the bottling bucket - Do you leave some of the beer behind so as not to suck up the trub on the bottom ?

I was going to bottle my Honey Ale one night this week, and previously when I racked the beer I tilted the bucket to make sure I sucked up as much of the liquid as possible. I was just wondering if it might not be a better idea just to leave the last 1/2 inch maybe 1 inch of beer behind so as to better avoid picking up the gunk.

What are your thoughts on this ? Good Idea ? Bad Idea ?

Just wondering how much beer you leave behind when you rack from one container to the next...

CBBaron · 08-29-2007, 06:27 PM

I hate to waste beer so I try to rack as much as possible at each point. If I was going to do a primary only fermentation I would be a little more careful but if you are using a secondary I feel any trub I pick up from the primary is going to settle back out. When racking from the secondary there isn't much trub to worry about.

Craig

Drunkensatyr · 08-29-2007, 06:33 PM

Get a small chunk of 2x4 and lean the carboy on it. Let it sit for a few hours, then you can get the most beer with the least trub.

ohiobrewtus · 08-29-2007, 06:33 PM

I also try to get as much as I possibly can, but it varies. If I've pitched on the same cake multiple times then there's so much trub on the bottom that I have no choice but to leave more beer in primary than I want to but for the most part I siphon until I start seeing trub coming my autosiphon.

**DeathBrewer** · 08-29-2007, 07:21 PM

a little trub in my bottling bucket is not a huge deal to me. the keg would be another story...wouldn't want too much gunk in there.

i may start tilting my carboy a day ahead of time, then rack from the other side, just to help get a little more with less gunk...seems like a good idea

drhart · 08-30-2007, 04:30 PM

My experience has been that if I just do the 2x4 trick a few minutes before racking, I generally can get nearly all but a centimeter of beer off the trub with very little kick-up. This is assuming I am very careful with moving the fermentor around and tilting it very slowly. Same for the secondary and the keg. Aside from a SNPA clone, I really haven't had any issues with floaties in the glass.

Good luck!

homebrewer_99 · 08-30-2007, 04:35 PM

I top off to 5.25 gals so I always rack/bottle/keg 5 gals of untrubbed beer.

mummasan · 08-31-2007, 07:05 AM

I tilt the carboy and siphon as much as I can. There is always some extra beer that is left behind. At first it has hard to leave it...I felt like I was wasting it. But now, eh, I can always make more.