Transferring for Bulk Priming

Hello all - short time reader, first time poster!

Started homebrewing in september 2008, have had mixed fortunes thus far, I either have very polite friends, or am going mostly right!

Bought myself a Coopers beginners pack with 25L barrel with a tap about an inch above the bottom. The first few brews I've done I have bottled directly from the fermenting barrel into the bottles, using Coopers carbonation drops, and everything has gone well.

I'm now trying to recreate some decent British Bitter's that were the mainstay of my pub consumption back home in the UK (now living in Australia), and have found that the standard 2 drops to a longneck (750ml), 1 to a stubbie, are far too carbonated. Hence the move into bulk priming to hopefully achieve a more authentic end product. I've also moved from plastic bottles to glass, my collection of which vary from 330 - 500ml in volume. Not easily compatible with carbo drops either.

There is a lot of talk on this, and other sites, that siphoning from the primary to the secondary / bottling bucket is the way to go.

Question 1 - is this because the learned majority brew in carbouys with no tap?

Question 2 - is there any issue with emptying from my primary to secondary / bottling bucket via the tap (and an inexhaustible supply of sterile lines)? I have always put the first 6 bottles aside (for my exclusive consumption) in the past because they are naturally more sedimentary, but I am presuming this will be less of an issue with the use of a bottling bucket.

Question 3 - a link to a trustworthy table for estimating priming volumes for various styles would be greatly appreciated - any suggestions?

And in return - Wadsworth 6X is a beautiful bitter, I suggest you all hunt down a recipe for it and get brewing. I'll let you know if I find a decent recipe!


Cheers!

How to Brew - By John Palmer - Priming Solutions

I'm not sure if you've ever used a nomograph, but they're pretty easy to use. Just line up your serving temperature with the number of volumes of CO2 that you're looking for (for that particular style), and bring that line out to the right. Where ever it intersects is how much corn sugar you'll need to use.

I think a lot of people (myself included) use the bottling bucket for three reasons:
1) I don't ferment in a bucket with a spigot
2) I can rack the beer off of the yeast cake before bottling
3) If you put the priming sugar in the bottling bucket before you transfer your beer there, you don't have to stir in the sugar (it mixes itself)

I'm one of those people who gets all of my info on the internet, but I still went out and bought Palmer's book (How to Brew). He's got some of the stuff on the web for free though (the link that I gave you).

How to Brew - By John Palmer - Priming and Bottling

There's his whole chapter on bottling.
Good luck!

Tried the bulk priming for the first time today with the Badger Best - we'll see how it goes. Transferred to secondary a couple of weeks ago, and then into bottling bucket today with the cane sugar.

Wow that secondary really clears the beer up something! Looking forwards to aesthetically pleasing ale from now on (that's a beer that looks good, rather than makes things look good btw!!)

How to Brew - great!