Strange autosiphon occurrence

[william_shakes_beer]

I have been brewing about 4 years. Early in my career I bought an auto siphon and have not given it any thought, beyond sanitizing it before each use.

Last week, Something strange happened. I filled my bucket with sanitizer, clipped the auto siphon the edge of the bucket and plopped in the hoses. Pumped is a couple times. Nothing, Wasn't drawing up a column of solution. Crap. Spread a bit of keg lube on the black seal disk and tried it again. Nada. Double crap. Got in the car and drove to the home brew store. CLOSED FOR PRIVATE EVENT triple crap. Oh well, guess I'm going ghetto and doing the mouth-to-hose thing this time. Go home, put my fermenter on top of the keezer. Put the keg on the floor. Clip the auto siphon to the bucket, place the hose in the keg. Without thinking , I pump the autosiphon again. Works fine. Am I mad? is my autosiphon haunted? did the sanitizer bath swell the autosiphon enough to seal it up one more time? (yes, there's a new one in my near future. 4 years old it owes me nothing)

 

[laredo7mm]

There is a little piece of plastic in the end of the larger tube that acts like a one way valve. When the siphon is empty, shake it up and down and you can hear it rattle. I have actually had mine come out before and i had to fiddle with it and some magnets on the end of a steel rod to get it seated back into place. I would bet that it was stuck in the open position and the starsan soak freed it to allow it to work properly again.

 

[ImNoExpert]

Yeah, maybe it was't cleaned very well last time and some residual beer got it stuck open. Then a soak in starsan eventually dissolved the sticky beer.

 

[brewcat]

There is a little piece of plastic in the end of the larger tube that acts like a one way valve. When the siphon is empty, shake it up and down and you can hear it rattle. I have actually had mine come out before and i had to fiddle with it and some magnets on the end of a steel rod to get it seated back into place. I would bet that it was stuck in the open position and the starsan soak freed it to allow it to work properly again.

I used scotch tape. The tape then stuck to the plastic and was there for years before I finally got it off.

 

[william_shakes_beer]

Yeah, maybe it was't cleaned very well last time and some residual beer got it stuck open. Then a soak in starsan eventually dissolved the sticky beer.

I beg your pardon. Are you accusing me of poor sanitization practices? I'll have you know that my kitchen floor is clean enough to eat off of. My dog does it all the time

 

[ImNoExpert]

I beg your pardon. Are you accusing me of poor sanitization practices? I'll have you know that my kitchen floor is clean enough to eat off of. My dog does it all the time

It happens to the best of us sometimes. When I used to bottle, I frequently had to do a good soak for the bottling wand because I wouldn't take it apart and rinse it properly every time after the previous batch.