Staying above the Trub line when racking to secondary

I'm new at this and did my first brew last week. When racking over to the secondary how can I be sure to stay above the trub when siphoning it off? When I did this Sunday I notice in 2 areas I clearly hit bottom when transfering it over to the secondary. The beer was an American Pale Ale and was really dark. Or does this even matter? Thanks for the help

First question is: why did you secondary? Presumably the answer is you read instructions that told you to. As you will soon learn, unless you're dealing with long bulk conditioning or unusual dry-hopping you're probably better off not racking to a secondary at all. That having been said, if you do rack, you'll try to get all of the clear wort without any of the trub. Human nature being what it is, few of us will have the discipline to leave a bit of the clear beer behind, and we'll get a bit of the trub. Not a big deal at all. Don't worry. And search this forum for threads that WILL persuade you to rack your beer to secondary only rarely.

When you start seeing "stuff" come up, pull the tube up higher until it stops.

I just racked my Brewers Best APA from secondary to keg yesterday. The Brewers best recommends secondary fermentation for APA to clear the beer. I had quite a bit of fall-out during the secondary.

Pilgarlic, I have read many posts here but don;t recall many recomendations against secondary. I'm new to brewing, and was just following the instructions and recomendations from my LHBS.

I'm new to this also (only 2 batches under my belt) and have been thinking about using a secondary but decided against it. no particular reason, just decided against it. i'm even going to dry hop my current batch. from what i have been told I can just toss in my hops (pellets) and wait said amount of time and then rack to my bottling bucket. im not so much worried about super clear beer.

the reason alot of people dont use secondaries is because the yeast thats present in the primary fermenter clean up after themselves and will do it faster when there is a high yeast cell count. secondary is for big beers that need 6 months or more of aging or during dry hopping.

doulovebeef said:

the reason alot of people dont use secondaries is because the yeast thats present in the primary fermenter clean up after themselves and will do it faster when there is a high yeast cell count. secondary is for big beers that need 6 months of more of aging or during dry hopping.

Click to expand...

Or if you're adding something like fruit to your beer.
Just do yourself a favor and use a mesh bag Found that out the hard way.

Before I start to rack I place a small object. I'm talking very small, like maybe a half inch wide underneath my carboy/bucket so that all the vessel tilts ever so slightly toward me. Then I rack from the downside of the tilt. The trub doesn't flow like the beer does and I'm able to get most of my beer out without picking up the trub. Added bonus is I can clearly see when I'm getting toward the bottom and need to lower my siphon to keep sucking without lowering it too far where I pick up the trub. Practice and patience make this work better.

On my auto siphon the inlet is about half inch up from the bottom. I don't have any problems when I use my auto siphon.

aerod1 said:

On my auto siphon the inlet is about half inch up from the bottom. I don't have any problems when I use my auto siphon.

Click to expand...

My trub can be 2 - 3 inches deep so the above wouldn't work for me.

I've wondered if one could put the autosiphon up against the carboy on the outside before you start racking and mark the point at the top (with masking tape or something) where the siphon inlet would be just above the trub so it would be easy to know how far to submerge the siphon. Has anyone ever tried this?

Any time I rack I always take a little trub with it but not enough to be a problem. As soon as I've got the bucket tipped and I see trub in the cane I lift it out.

I was reading through Herr Kaiser's wiki page about whirlpooling and that might help you out.

'They say he's a righteous dude!'