Bottling

I am about to bottle my first brew, a hefe and am looking for a couple pointers. First of all, any tips on transfering to bottling bucket from primary to avoid transfer of yeast/hop residue as best as possible. And secondly, I was hoping to use honey for priming instead of sugar and I was wondering if anyone had experience with this or any tips on how to do it/whether or not to do it. Thanks to all in advance.

If you don't have one, get an autosiphon! Nothing better for racking. To avoid transferring "stuff" try not to shake the carboy up too much and if you do, let it settle so you can get the end of the siphon right down to the yeast cake without sucking up a bunch. And if you do, don't worry too much cause it will all settle once in the bottle.

Sanitize, sanitize, and when not sure, sanitize some more!!

Have never used honey so cannot help!

Good luck

Thanks for the info!

If you have the room cold crash it at 35-38 degrees for 3 days if ya can, hardens the yeast cake and drops everything from the top to the bottom and makes a clearer beer. Siphon smart, start high and finish low and avoid the cake at the bottom. Tilt the carboy away from your counter edge, prop it with a book to get every little bit of beer ya can without disturbing the cake. Make sure your hose stays at the bottom of the bottling bucket to avoid bubbles...Make sure everything that touches the beer is sanitized, even the caps...Cheers

If you're a beginner, I'd recommend against priming with honey. The efficiency of honey varies from brand to brand and type to type, so you'd need to dissolve it in water and take a hydrometer reading to see just how much carbonating power yours has. It can be complicated, and unpasteurized honeys can also cause off flavors. Best of luck.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f35/bottling-tips-homebrewer-94812/

I can't believe I beat Revvy!

I just recently did a honeyweizen and primed with honey. And while its true that honey varies, it isn't so much that id advise against it. I recommend 7 ounces of honey BOILED lightly in 12 ounces of water and cooled. As far as keeping funk out of the bottling bucket, if you have any of those hop sacks, and you rubberband one (everything sanitized) onto whatever your syphoning with, it will keep a lot of stuff out

For a hefeweizen, you WANT to get some of the yeast into the bottles. It's part of the style.

Its pretty much unavoidable to get yeast into the finished beer unless you lager it for like 6 weeks, because most hefe strains are top fermenting and you practically need to chisel them loose to even get the cake to drop to the bottom of the fermenter