Straining bag around Autosiphon

I'm going to be bottling soon and was curious if it is advisable to place a straining bag around the bottom of my autosiphon (similar to a sock) to keep the crud from transferring to the bottles...

I think it would just plug up the autosiphon. I have always had good luck just being careful to hold it above the crud, or place it gently and once the little bit around it is sucked up, it runs clear.

I sometimes throw the bag around the end. Just soak it in your sanitizer (as well as a rubber band). Put the end of the siphon in the bag and rubbernad it. Won't get everything, But if you dryhopped , it really helps.

Do you mean using the autosiphon to transfer to a bottling bucket, or are you using the autosiphon to bottle directly from your fermenter?

I tried doing it that way and I couldn't get the flow going. When I put the 1 gal. paint strainer bag on the end of the outlet hose in the bottle bucket, it worked much better. I catch everything especially all of the little particles from the dry hopping when using leaf hops.
I also just keep the end of the auto siphon just under the level of the beer and follow it down to just above the trub. No problem. Also, my beers have been setting still for almost a month and most everything is tightly packed at the bottom. I'm still careful when I get to the bottom and gently set something under one side of the bucket to prop it up an inch to get as much beer as possible without stirring up the trub.

Thanks for all the responses. I will be transferring it from the Secondary to the Bottling Bucket. I have the usual trub at the bottom, and some crud floating at the top, that I don't want making it's way into the final bottles. I will more than likely be a one man team doing this so I was trying to think of an easy way to handle the transfer with something to act as a filter, as I doubt I can hold it suspended in the perfect spot the entire time. Again, I appreciate all of your help.

In my experience (I tried this with some loose leaf hops that I neglected to put in a hop bag) 2 things happen. First the it gets clogged regularly, and second it forces co2 from solution and causes co2 bubbles in your syphon line further slowing things down. If you have loose hops or something you're trying to strain around, try weighing down a paint strainer bag with some sterilized marbles or something then syphon from inside that. If it's just trub, it's advised to just be cautious.

I have had mixed success with using a bag on the autosiphon - sometimes it works, sometimes it clogs (beer dry-hopped with pellets). For my last brew, which was also dry hopped with pellets, I used a jumbo grain bag inside the bottling bucket. I sanitized the bag in boiling water for a few minutes, then set it inside the bucket, folded the excess over the top of the bucket and secured it with a bungee cord around the outside of the bucket. Then I racked with the autosiphon, with the end of the tube from the autosiphon lying in the bottom of the grain bag in the bucket. After racking, I just lifted the bag out of the bucket and set it in an empty bucket next to the bottling bucket. This worked beautifully - the bag picked up quite a bit of hop pellet residue, leaving none in the bottling bucket. I was concerned that the priming solution might not get mixed well due to the bag in the bucket, so I added it after removing the bag - just poured it in gently to avoid splashing and stirred very gently to mix without oxygenating the beer.

It really depends on the size of the mesh. I used a coarse mesh in the past and it worked good, but fine particulate matter would obviously get through. Recently I started using a very fine mesh (similar to a paint strainer bag) and it works GREAT for keeping my yeast cakes clean for reuse. The downside is that cold break has a nasty tendency to quickly cling to the entire bag (my hops pellets are mostly contained inside large tea infusers) and the siphon then cannot do it's job. But that is of course racking from the kettle to the primary. I have never had a problem using this method from primary to secondary or secondary to ... "final packaging."

i tried it once and lost a little bit of beer at the bottom when i lost the siphon force. the bag has a dendency to clog up and i don't put one over the top of it anymore. just try and be careful when transferring.

I really like that idea of putting the straining bag over the top of the bottling bucket and letting the beer filter through it. Seems like if I do it on the autosiphon, it has a good chance to clog. Thanks everyone!

maffewl said:

I really like that idea of putting the straining bag over the top of the bottling bucket and letting the beer filter through it. Seems like if I do it on the autosiphon, it has a good chance to clog. Thanks everyone!

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You just need a big enough bag to reach all the way to the bottom of the bucket so that you don't get beer dripping through the bag and getting oxygenated. I got my jumbo bag from AHS:

http://www.austinhomebrew.com/product_info.php?cPath=178_33_403&products_id=1058

It's coarse, so it doesn't filter the really tiny sediment, but does great on hop pellet residue. The amount of sediment that does get through is negligible, IMO.