siphoning blues

so it seems i loose a lot of beer everytime i siphon from primary to secondary and then secondary to bottling.. im trying to avoid sucking up the little yeasties and crap at the bottom of the vessels .....but in doing so i lose about half an inch (times surface area = volume) of liquid. thats quite a lot of beer. i estimated i would have about 45-50 beers but ended up with 37. i feel cheated....

1) am i worrying to much about avoiding the crap at the bottom?

2) is there any siphoning techniques that allow for maximum beer and minimum sludge? like angling the vessel?

thanks muy mucho

Yeah, you may be a little too worried about it. Do you have one of the red tips on your racking cane/autosiphon? That helps suck the beer from above the tip, and not the trub off the bottom. In fact, if you've got a highly flocculant yeast, you can set the tip on the trub and it won't suck any up. Tilting the carboy towards the end and siphoning from the side also helps. If you do get a little transferred to the secondary, don't sweat it. It'll settle out there. You want to be a little more careful when racking to the bottling bucket, but again, whatever little bit you do get will settle in the bottles/keg. I'm careful when I pour from bottles and the sediment pours out in first pint from a keg.

One last tip - if you siphon slower (shorter drop between vessels) then you won't suck up as much stuff.

Here's a link to the racking cane tip I was talking about. http://www.austinhomebrew.com/product_info.php?cPath=178_59_551&products_id=969

Cheers