Best Way to start a siphon

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mew

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What is the best way to start a siphon without an autosiphon? Would it be sanitary to attach another tube (tube 1) to the end of the siphon tube (tube 2) and start it by sucking, but then remove the tube you sucked on (tube 1)?
 
yeah that may work, but this would be easier:

the way that i learned is to fill up the tubing with water.. all the way up.. then attach it to the racking cane, and the put the other end in a cup or something. Make sure its below the carboy. Then let the water rush out, and it will create suction for you, when the beer starts coming, put your (sanitized) finger over the end of the tube, and release it in your next container.

But seriously, buy an autosiphon if you are going to be doing this alot.. they are 10 bucks and worth 50.

good luck!
 
Thanks! That sounds like a sound method. I'm trying to do my brewing as cheaply as possible, so I'm skirting around the auto-siphon for now. I've procured free buckets from resturaunts and glass containers from recycling facilities. I had to buy a spigate for $4.00 that I installed to a modified bucket, and I bought a racking cane and some other misc. small items. Anyway, that's why I was going without the auto-siphon. Cheap brewing is quite the challenge. It's fun!
 
haha, i agree... it's just a pain when you lose the siphon, and have to start it all over again. There are some items that you buy and say "good lord, i would have paid twice this for this product" - this is one of them.
 
Again, I second that the auto-siphon is the way to go, but either way mentioned above will work. The problem with doing things to cheap way is that if you screw up a batch with $30 of ingredients in it b/c you were too cheap to buy a $10 autosiphon, then the saving money idea just flew out the door.

Most importantly make sure your siphon equipment is sanitized. I've even heard of people using sanitized water in the cane for method #2 mentioned above. Otherwise you are running unsanitized water through the tubing directly before the brew. 90% of the time it shouldn't be a problem (and you aren't putting the water in with the beer), but the other 10% you might get something screwy going on (some bacteria left behind in the tubing washed in with the beer)?

I guess you can never be too safe. Neither method above is safe as a sanitized autosiphon.
 
I agree that going cheap can be dangerous, and I still might get the auto-siphon, but it's been an adventure. I might try to rig up something myself...

Thanks for the replies.
 
I second Walker. Carboy caps all the way. Multi-taskers all the way (thanks Alton Brown):p
 
I'm afraid that blowing into the carboy cap will infect the beer with mouth-germs. It seems dangerous. Has anyone tried this who can vouch for its viability?
 
I consider my autosiphon my most important piece of equipment that I own. I broke one once and was so irritated with having to resort to the thumb and water method that I turned around and bought two so that I would have a spare.

I would think the carboy cap would be equally as easy. I own a few carboy caps. My problem is that I have ten or so carboys of different shapes and sizes. My caps do not fit a single one of them. I am not sure if their color is an indication of their size, but mine are all orange.
 
No need for that fancy autosiphon thingy. Just start the siphon with the mouth on the turkey baster that you use for sampling anyway. Once it gets flowing remove the turkey baster and put the hose into the carboy or bucket.

Kai
 
mew said:
I'm afraid that blowing into the carboy cap will infect the beer with mouth-germs. It seems dangerous. Has anyone tried this who can vouch for its viability?
You're not really blowing, just more like creating pressure. Yes, some breath does go in, but once the siphon gets going, non sanitized air is going in as well. I think I can safely say that the likelyhood is very small. I'd be more worried about the sanitation of the vessel the beer is getting transferred into than the air. The beer is already fermented at this point anyways. Plus, if you are really worried about blowing, you can rig it to suck air from the receiving vessel to create the siphon. Walker has some pics of this somewhere.
 
Ok, I racked to my secondary fermenter yesterday, and they sipphoning could not have gone more wrong.

First, when I started my siphon (using the carboy cap method) Air bubbles started to appear where the racking cane and the tubing came in contact. Whatever, no big deal, I pushed the tube down on the cane and that lessened the airbubbles slightly. Yet then even more air started getting in (i forget how) and my siphon stopped. I tried using the carboy method again, but it didn't work, so I unplugged the cap and used my mouth to get the siphon going again, and just threw it back in the carboy. I know that a fairly large amount of air got into the carboy, and I was wondering if there was something I could do about it, thanks.
 
mew said:
I'm afraid that blowing into the carboy cap will infect the beer with mouth-germs. It seems dangerous. Has anyone tried this who can vouch for its viability?

Read that whole thread... a couple of guys have improvements on my original post that don't require your mouth to touch anything.

One way is to use a pump of some sort (bicycle, vacuum wine sealer, turkey baster) to create the pressure or vacuum needed to get the thing flowing. I'm using an old air-mattress hand pump these days. I did a lot of batches using my mouth and never had an infected batch, so it's pretty safe IMHO.

Or, if you have kegging gear, you can use your CO2 tank to apply the pressure.... which is ideal since you not only avoid the mouth contact, but you also keep air out of the wntire process.
 
I'll give you a hint:
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