transferring to secondary question

I am going to transfer a Belgium Strong Ale to secondary today. However the sludge at the bottom of the primary appears to be above the spigot on the bottom of my primary. Should I still use the spigot to transfer to the secondary? It is a plastic primary vessel and my secondary is a glass one. Thanks for your advice.

It has been in the Primary for 3 weeks. The beer has gone from a 1.082 to 1.014 gravity readings.

You should really siphon it out from the top.

Above the spigot? That's a honking lot of sludge. I see two options. (1) Use the spigot, suck some sludge through, and rack it again when it all settles in a few days. (2) Use a racking cane or siphon tube and carefully siphon off the sludge. This will be more tedious, but if you're successful you will not need to rack a second time. If it were me, I would use option (1), less tedious.

Good luck!

tgrem1968 said:

I am going to transfer a Belgium Strong Ale to secondary today.

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Don't
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f163/secondary-not-john-palmer-jamil-zainasheff-weigh-176837/

Read through that link in post above and loved the wealth of info in it, thanks for that and the other replies.

I transferred to the secondary via spigot not worrying about how much sludge and such came out. Not too much hoping that the process ransferred a lot of the yeast that has fallen to the bottom. Transferred to secondary where it will sit for about 4 weeks then bottle. Now I can make another batch.

Had a wee sip of this beer and it already tasted pretty incredibly good. But then I would probably enjoy fermented poop that I made too.:cross:

Just before posting I noticed that there is activity in the airlock.

Also, to piggy back on the thread link above, I did notice that the sludge that came through settled very quickly on the bottom as mentioned in that thread.

Quick suggestion: Buy another bucket to use as a primary fermenter. The bucket with spigot is your bottling bucket, and you will really want it empty when you get ready to bottle your beer.

Slurm said:

Quick suggestion: Buy another bucket to use as a primary fermenter. The bucket with spigot is your bottling bucket, and you will really want it empty when you get ready to bottle your beer.

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Or better yet, switch to glass carboys and get rid of the spigots all together...at least for fermentation. Those spigots are convenient for bottling, but they sure do have lots of nooks, crannies, threads and holes for **** to hide in and form bacteria.

Or skip the dangerous glass carboys (when they shatter, they EXPLODE) Heavy even EMPTY. Go for Better Bottles. Get a ported one and you can add their racking adapter. it has a pivotable spigot so you can aim it down when you pour the cooled wort in, let it ferment, then when ready to transfer turn it up so its outside the trub area.