Paint strainer bag

[MB331]

For the second consecutive time I attached the strainer bag to the siphon when transferring from primary to secondary. I left about 2 inches of the bag below the end of the siphon. Both times I got an extraordinary amount of bubbles and an occasional stoppage of flow. Anybody know what I am doing wrong? Should I leave more of the bag exposed to the wort?
This never happened when I siphoned without the bag attached to the siphon and was wondering should the bag be attached the the tube suspended in the secondary.

 

[rhys333]

I had a similar thing happen racking from primary when I wanted to strain out dry-hopping gunk. Part of the bag was above liquid level, and it sucked air down and into the auto-syphon. End result was an oxidized beer that also sucked. My solution was to bag the dry hops from then on. Works great and I have no need to mess around with strainer bags on the syphon.

 

[wilserbrewer]

My opinion, let gravity settle the gunk rather than trying to attach a strainer to the syphon. If a little makes it to secondary, just leave it there when you rack. Careful racking is all you need IMO. If one bottle has a tiny hop particle in it, that means it's real beer
RDWHWHB

 

[khillian]

I could never get this technique to work. Bags can work but limit surface area and extraction, you can compensate with double dry hopping. I wound up switching back to buckets with spigots for primary, for most pales/IPAs I use 2-3oz of loose pellets for my dry hop added on day 7/8. I then rack to the keg around day 12/13 using the spigot and tilt/turn off the spigot when the still floating hops hits the spigot level. I have been having incredible aroma and no oxidation issues.

 

[Yooper]

I tried this a couple of times, but the bag clogged the siphon more than any hops ever would, and I couldn't do it.

I just rack from the fermenter now, with no bag, and it works out great.

 

[WI_Wino]

I used the dry hop sack from wilserbrewer around my autosiphon this past weekend when racking a pale ale with three ounces of dry hop pellets to bottling bucket. Worked great, no bubbles, didn't slow down the transfer, and no gunk got through. The voile material is finer mesh than the paint strainer bags I have bought from Home Depot.

 

[grevengrevs]

As someone else said, I have used hop bags when dry hopping and a hop spider during the boil to reduce some of the hop sludge. It's worked well so far.

 

[OleGoatBrewing]

I use the bags as a spider hop catcher and they work great at containing a lot of gunk. I was surprised to see they can "hold" a lot of wort/fluid because you would think they would be a good strainer. Agree with the above posters...let gravity do the work.

 

[Psylocide]

If you really wanted to strain it out, couldn't you put the strainer bag over the end of your siphon tube in the bottling bucket and let the beer flow through on the way out?

Seems like a lot less hassle, but same straining capability. I don't think I'd mess with it, but I would rather do it that way then mess around with a clogged siphon inside the fermenter.