Second Fermentation

My primary fermentation peaked at 36 hours. My starting gravity was 1.042 and was at 1.014 within 3 days. I've decided to rack it to a second fermenter to get it away from the spent yeast sludge and to filter it away from the hop residue. It was obvious that not much more fermentation was going on. I plan to let it ferment in the secondary for a couple of days to settle before bottling. I am not adding any ingredients or flavorings in this second fermentation.

I have never done a second fermentation before. I was wondering, for the bottling step, must I rack it over to another (third) bucket before priming or can I prime it in the second fermenter? I only have a spigot on the second fermenter that it is currently in and I don't want to rack it back over to the first bucket which doesn't have a spigot. It seems the bottling is a lot easier with the spigot.

Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks!

sounds like a good ferment to me!
you'll want to rack from secondary to a bottling bucket, so you can mix in the priming sugar simple syrup as it fills. remeber, slow stirs so not to introduce O2 to the finished beer. i used to ad it in 3rds, as the bottling bucket filled. makes for good even mix throughout the batch.

make sense?

Sounds like the bottling bucket was used as a secondary?

You would need to get the priming agent well distributed, and to do that in the secondary you would need to stir more, maybe getting more air into it than you want.

I would want to move it to the primary and then back to the bottling bucket on top of the priming agent.

Yeah, the bottling bucket was used as the secondary because when I started, I wasn't expecting to use a secondary fermentation. I only have two buckets. I will defintely invest in another spigot. That way either can serve as a bottling bucket.

I guess I will have to rack it back overto the primary bucket (without the spigot). Then rack it back over to the bottling bucket while introducing the primer.

I was just trying to avoid the flip-flop and maybe gently swirl the primer in the secondary that its in now. I guess that is too risky. Thanks!