Pail with bottling spigot, taking samples?

[Barny]

I thought I read here that one shouldn't use the spigot on a bottling/fermenting pail to take samples for gravity tests. Is that true? If so, why not? Would the reading somehow be compromised? Proximity to the trub? Or is there some risk of contamination to the beer? If so, how?

It seems far less invasive to me than yanking the top of the pail open.

 

[unionrdr]

All my fermenters have spigots on them, same as used on bottling buckets. I strain my wort into the FV, so by bottling day the trub is compacted down to 3/8-1/2" at the bottom of primary. I usually don't get any or little trub/yeast in the hydrometer tube. This can't effect the gravity reading, as they're not dissolved into the beer. I do take the center piece out of the airlock though. If not, it'll suck back while taking the sample. Then close the spigot & re-assemble the airlock. Works fine for me.

 

[brewbush]

All my fermenters have spigots on them, same as used on bottling buckets. I strain my wort into the FV, so by bottling day the trub is compacted down to 3/8-1/2" at the bottom of primary. I usually don't get any or little trub/yeast in the hydrometer tube. This can't effect the gravity reading, as they're not dissolved into the beer. I do take the center piece out of the airlock though. If not, it'll suck back while taking the sample. Then close the spigot & re-assemble the airlock. Works fine for me.

I learned that the hard way, twice! Trying to dump trub from a conical and not thinking about the blowoff tube in the bucket of starsan.

Starsan flavored lager is not all that bad :cross:

 

[MindenMan]

I have the same basic setup as uniondr with my buckets/fermenters, and I also strain my wort going into the fermenter. For strainers, I use two 5 gallon bucket paint strainers on top of each other in a half round metal strainer. What I call silt, are the really fine particles, and only a small amount of them make it into the fermenter. Everything else get caught in the strainers. After using the paint strainers, my loss of wort into the fermenter is at most 1/2 cup, if not less. I used to lose almost a gallon out of each batch into my FV, and another 1/2 gallon going into the bottling bucket. Twenty extra minutes on brew day, for me at least, is worth not losing a gallon or so with the trub.

 

[feinbera]

As others have mentioned, your biggest concern is airlock suck-back; disassemble your 3-piece or use one of the S-shaped ones, and you should be fine.

Yes, you'll introduce oxygen – but a lot less than you'll introduce popping the top off and waggling your thief or turkey baster around, stirring fresh air into your mythical CO2 blanket.

What I do is open the spigot only part way and fill a sample jar slowly. The first ounce or so of the first sample comes out pretty chunky; I usually just dump that and start over. If you're really OCD (read: me), you can cold-crash the sample for a couple hours in a different vessel, let it warm back up to near your hydrometer's calibrated temperature, then decant into your sample tube off the mini-cake.

 

[Barny]

Thanks all! Just took a sample, Zombie Dust clone, smells fantastic.