McGlothan
Well-Known Member
I bottled my first batch of beer a coupe of nights ago. I brewed the ninkasi tricerahops double ipa. I did a lot of research in books, online, and help from local brew store. Everything went extremely well until it came to siphoning from primary to secondary, and secondary to bottling bucket. The siphon would introduce air causing siphon to stop. I put a zip tie around tube to help and seemed to cure the problem at the time (having already stirred up yeast bed by pumping siphon so many times so close to the yeast). I left about a half an inch of beer in primary fermenter above the line of yeast. Then, when siphoning from secondary to bottling bucket, I put a zip tie around tube to ensure no air entry. Siphon was worse this second time and never got a steady siphon. I had to pump the beer continuously again stirring up the smaller yeast bed in secondary and clouding up the bottom 1/5 of carboy. I left about two inches in bottom of secondary fermenter to avoid sucking up a lot of yeast. Im sure I lost a good bit of beer due to stirring up the yeast during transfer. I ended up with 42 bottles of beer. Now the questions, are siphons this hard to keep flowing? and are 42 beers (12 oz) a decent harvest for a five gallon batch? And, how do I NOT lose beer during transferring between stages. It was annoying to keep leaving beer behind on each step because of repeated pumping stirring the yeast up. Thanks for the insight as I am new to this