Help!

[twistr25]

Could be a wine thief.

This is a bottling wand. It attaches via hose to the spigot, and has a spring on the valve to create a better seal. Most thieves tend to leak, and many won't fit inside a bottle. I'm assuming the one they gave you does, at least I hope so.

Logistically, I think it would be very difficult to bottle using a thief, and could create a big mess, with beer dripping everywhere. Plus, it's much harder to avoid the trub, which is probably why they said to rack to secondary. Not to mention the fact that the further down you get, the more draws it will take to fill one bottle. The time, mess, and headache you will save with a bottling bucket is well worth the small cost. I just don't want to see you getting fed up with bottling by making it harder than it needs to be.

Learn something new every day

 

[TheZymurgist]

Everything on here seems like sound advice! I'm sure the people at the store make good beer kits, but everything they told me was from the instructions. That being said, it's primarily a wine store so I doubt that they are avid beer brewers. I appreciate the advice that can ultimately make a home brew taste even better! After a bit of research, it seems like secondary fermentation is unnecessary unless planning to add fruit etc. I will tweak my set up a bit and make sure my next batch is done right in the carboy. I will look into a bucket with a spigot for bottling purposes.

Also, it's a bottling wand... I'm sure the guy said wine thief..... Anyways, I digress... My friday has officially been freed up as I no longer need to move to a secondary! Thanks!

As a side note, I think there are a number of people here that attach their bottling wand to the end of their auto siphon, which allows them to bottle directly from the fermenter. They swear by it, but it seems like more trouble than it's worth to me, seeing as how bottling buckets are so cheap. You also run into the issue of disturbing the trub in the fermenter when adding priming sugar. I would guess that most of them either use carbonation drops, or secondary before bottling.