Video: Sanitary siphoning without an autosiphon

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I've seen a lot of posts about broken autosiphons and frustration when attempting to manually start a siphon. So, here's a short video I put together this morning:

 
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I did the water trick before I got an autosiphon. Its a real pain to get the tube full of water, and even more of a pain if you accidently lose the siphon. I like the turkey baster idea though.
 
So that's what you sound like. I always pictured your voice deep and russian sounding. :D

Great video, especially the tip about the turkey baster. I'm wondering if all turkey baster have a narrow enough tip to fit inside (1 of two in my place doesn't) , but I was looking at some other things in my kitchen that could work and I came upon this;

flavor_injector.jpg


One of these flavor injectors will work, either with the needle attached or with just the "screw tip" on the plastic injector body.
 
Nice job Yuri, exactly what I do w/ a dollar store turkey baster and star san...never really bought into the "auto siphon" concept myself, too many moving parts.

You gotta fill the cane and tubing w/ sanitzer anyhow. Just fill it and use it. I'm always amazed at how many are "siphon" challenged.
 
I'd like to invite anyone with autosiphon problems to just send them to me. I'm not knocking the workarounds but the A/S is awesome and multifunctional. It doesn't require ditching the first bit of runoff. You can use it to pump yeast slurry into your ball jar in a sanitary manner.

I have used the baster start when racking out of the big barrel though since there's no autosiphon long enough for that.

I like the video though. Everyone should know how to start a sanitary siphon. One other trick you can use if you are not using a racking can is to push an extra foot or so of tubing into the donor vessel, put your thumb over the end, then pull out the tubing until there's liquid in the output hose.
 
Great post Yuri! This will definitely help noobs like myself with the mysteries of siphoning :). The beginner tips on this forum are absolutely top notch. I have 4 successful batches that prove it.
 
I like the Turkey baster ideal some ideals are so simple the just kinda fly right over my head. I think thats why this forum rocks :rockin: Thanks for the ideal i just broke another racking cane Friday when I did my first AG batch.
 
I'd like to invite anyone with autosiphon problems to just send them to me. I'm not knocking the workarounds but the A/S is awesome and multifunctional. It doesn't require ditching the first bit of runoff. You can use it to pump yeast slurry into your ball jar in a sanitary manner.

I have used the baster start when racking out of the big barrel though since there's no autosiphon long enough for that.

I like the video though. Everyone should know how to start a sanitary siphon. One other trick you can use if you are not using a racking can is to push an extra foot or so of tubing into the donor vessel, put your thumb over the end, then pull out the tubing until there's liquid in the output hose.

I'm there with you- I got the autosiphon in my original kit from Midwest, and never looked back. It works just fine. I've never experienced any of the problems I've read about on the forums. A few items:

1. The Fermtech autosiphon I have uses a 5/16" diameter hose. It won't suck in any air.

2. When not in use, storing the inner cane and seal portion separately from the outer tube may prevent the seal from leaking. At least this is what I do, and so far, it works.

3. I don't really think that the autosiphon is designed to siphon hot liquids from boil pots into other vessels, as some people appear to be doing. My take on them is that they're only for use cold, when racking or etc.

In any event, if my autosiphon broke tomorrow, I'd just order a new one.
 
Rico-- I'm with you. And I like to use my autosiphon as a wine thief for snagging samples.
 
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