Makeshift Racking

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Xenel

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Jul 8, 2011
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Ottowa
I am currently in a very "interesting" situation. To make a long story short, my mead needs racking and I don't have a proper hose or one of them newfangled canes!:confused: There aren't even any homebrew stores near me. I had some surgical tubing lying around, I tried siphoning with that, and it gave a horrible foul taste and smell to it, even after sanitizing the tube. I was thinking I'd just pour it into the secondary using a funnel with a bunch of coffee filters, then I remembered, I don't drink coffee. I don't want to go buy 500 of those filters just for this. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
 
Are there any hardware stores in your part of the world? I use clear heat resistant PVC tubing and it works great. No after taste.
 
Is there a reason that the mead "needs" to be moved asap that it can't wait a week for an online order? I have found meads that I put off racking for months longer than I thought I should and there were no issues.
On another note, I highly recomend the "auto-syphon", it is one of the things I refuse to go without ever since I got it.
 
There is a guy who posted a method of making an auto siphon came on here. Having hard time finding it atm on phone. Use clamp (cheap at hw store), T splitter, and since you don't have a cane you can make one either out of copper tubing (not sure if safe?) or just use a length of hose that is food safe. You can put one together for 4-10 bucks depending on the diameter you want. I needed one in a pinch and had all the tubing and some leftover copper and it worked great til my replacement auto siphon came in. For the copper cane you can bend small J into bottom to avoid trub. Careful how you sanitize tho. I boiled mine.
 
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f11/flyguys-t-siphon-3-replacement-autosiphon-25774/

Found link once I had a real computer to search for it on. ;) You'll note he doesn't use a cane for his which makes it ridiculously cheap. Personally if I was going to do it again I'd still go with the copper tube but it helps that I have like 8ft of it left. It looks like I'm going to finish with about 7lb (+/- 1lb) of leaf hops so I'm seriously considering going back to it anyway and attaching a screen to the end.
 
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