Victory!..Is Ours!

We just got done bottling our first All Grain brew and in all honestly I think we had success. Especially through our concerns on possible poor sanitation, brewing technique, and transfer to secondary and have yeast "floaties" transferred. For awhile we thought it was signs of infection, but soon found out through reassurance that it was only a minor "F-opps" up on transfering into secondary. We did have minor difficulties with our auto siphon, it would work then stop flowing, we found out that it had to be the height between carboys. We tried small samples before bottling and it tastes, smells great.

Way to go DudeBrew! What was the brew? What are your plans for secondary?

We did have minor difficulties with our auto siphon, it would work then stop flowing, we found out that it had to be the height between carboys.

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If you haven't read the Treatise on Siphoning (or a title similar to that) in one of the appendices in The Complete Joy of Homebrewing you might want to.

In a nutshell...the rate of flow from a siphon is dependant ONLY on the height difference between the top level of the tank and the 'hole in the tank' (which is the OUTLET of your siphon). It doesn't matter where the INPUT end of your siphon is (as long as it's below the surface)...it can be at the very top or bottom of the liquid in the carboy and it will not affect the flow rate...ONLY the difference between level in the carboy and the OUTLET end of the siphon determine the flow rate. It doesn't matter if the siphon goes up and out of the liquid to get over the rim of the tank/carboy because there is an equal distance back down once the siphon is outside the carboy...they cancel out...it's only the distance from the level to the outlet end of the siphon.

It was a Pale Ale, We used a glass carboy for secondary and transferred it using an auto siphon. I still honestly think the transfer level wasn't good enough, net time we will space it out more. When we bottled we had to have a good distance between the two and it flowed great.