Question about racking to secondary

Hello all. Tomorrow night I am going to rack to my secondary. My primary is also my bottling bucket so it also has a spigot.

The guy at my lhbs told me that I can just use the spigot to rack to my carboy. That just seems a bit odd to me though. Won't that encourage the krausen to come out through the spigot as well?

Or does the spigot work slowly enough, and is far enough from the bottom of the bucket, that the krausen will stay put?

Krausen floats at the top of the beer. The trub is all of the yeast and sediment at the bottom. I'm assuming this is what you are talking about. The spigot is about an inch off the bottom of the bucket. Just pour off the first cup or so into another vessel (a measuring cup or bowl) to clear the yeast out of the spigot. The rest will drain just fine. You will get a little sediment, but it will settle out in the secondary.

DOH! I've got to work on my terminology. I knew that the krausen typically sinks after some time. I kind of forgot about trub.

Thanks for the answer.

One more question. Is there any way of sanitizing the spigot before transfer? Q-tip with no-rinse on it perhaps?

You could try a Q-tip, but I would hope that you sanitized it initially, so you should be OK. Besides, if you let it run and flush itself for a few seconds, that should do the trick. Once the ber has fermented and the alcohol is present, it's hard to contaminate, IMHO.

I did sanitize it initially. I was just worried about some trace bacteria that may have found its way on there in the past week. I'll do the Q-tip and flush trick.

Can ya tell I'm anxious?