Taking Samples with Spigot

[pyrobrew]

I'm just wondering if it's safe to take samples from my primary by using the spigot that is attached to it?

I will sanitize the spigot before and after taking the samples but my main concern in oxygen exposure.

If for example a take about 300-400ml using the spigot will I expose my beer to oxygen and comprise it?

Thanks!

 

[Doomsday]

Dont overthink this.

That ammount of oxygen is meaningless...

 

[Trail]

Oh, man, two things. One: Doomsday is 100% correct. Just use the spigot. You'll be fine. When you bottle your beer will come into contact with hundreds or thousands of times as much air as it will from twisting the spigot, and it'll be fine. Your beer touching air is fine, spraying it or foaming the beer is not.

Two: You are probably brewing in your bottling bucket. That's, you know, fine - your beer won't suffer. But it's obnoxious to clean, and sediment may force you to rack the beer into another container before cleaning your bucket and racking back before you bottle. If you used loose leaf hops, this is likely.

I know the GOLD kit comes with a bucket that looks like a bottling bucket but has a grommet in the lid. It's weird.

 

[pyrobrew]

Dont overthink this.

That ammount of oxygen is meaningless...

Thanks and yeah, you nailed it, I think I was just getting over cautious.

 

[Draken]

Watch out for suck back on the air lock.

 

[geeyoupee]

Oh, man, two things. One: Doomsday is 100% correct. Just use the spigot. You'll be fine. When you bottle your beer will come into contact with hundreds or thousands of times as much air as it will from twisting the spigot, and it'll be fine. Your beer touching air is fine, spraying it or foaming the beer is not.

Two: You are probably brewing in your bottling bucket. That's, you know, fine - your beer won't suffer. But it's obnoxious to clean, and sediment may force you to rack the beer into another container before cleaning your bucket and racking back before you bottle. If you used loose leaf hops, this is likely.

I know the GOLD kit comes with a bucket that looks like a bottling bucket but has a grommet in the lid. It's weird.

If you are brewing using a bottling bucket, could you just use the auto siphon the beer to a cheap 5 gal #1 bucket and then auto siphon that into the bottle?

My question is if using a spigot is that much easier than using an auto siphon.

 

[Balto]

I know the GOLD kit comes with a bucket that looks like a bottling bucket but has a grommet in the lid. It's weird.

That's what I use for a primary, I have 4 of them.

Watch out for suck back on the air lock.

Remove the airlock when taking a sample.

My question is if using a spigot is that much easier than using an auto siphon.

It's way easier, just sanitize the tubing or your hydrometer test jar and draw off the bucket.

 

[geeyoupee]

Sorry for the confusion, I mean to ask if using the spigot is easier to bottle beers than using the auto siphon.

I wanted to use a cheap home depot bucket as a bottling bucket.

 

[Balto]

Sorry for the confusion, I mean to ask if using the spigot is easier to bottle beers than using the auto siphon.

I wanted to use a cheap home depot bucket as a bottling bucket.

Yup that's easier too!
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f35/bottling-tips-homebrewer-94812/

 

[Trail]

Sorry for the confusion, I mean to ask if using the spigot is easier to bottle beers than using the auto siphon.

I wanted to use a cheap home depot bucket as a bottling bucket.

Bottling with the autosiphon isn't impossible. It isn't even hard. If you have a bottling wand, you basically want to just jam it into one end of your tubing. If you don't have a bottling wand, you're going to need to pinch your tube off really hard between bottles, and you'll need to do chores like moving boxes of bottles or rearranging your workspace one-handed, which sucks.

I've done it both ways, and with the bottling wand off my bottling bucket's spigot is the best by far. Using a siphon means you have to be super careful not to pull the tube out of the bucket, and it makes getting the last bottle's worth of beer harder.

 

[Bithead]

If you take a sample from your primary using the spigot won't you get a sample of yeast and trub?

 

[zeg]

On mine, the port for the spigot is well above the trub line.

My only concern about this is the very slight chance of infection from the spigot. Sanitizing the bucket for fermenting will only sanitize the parts of the spigot interior that are in contact with the wort/beer while the spigot is closed. When you rotate it open, you'll expose a different part of the plastic in the spigot.

You'll want to be sure you completely clean and sanitize all the parts of the spigot. Mine can be disassembled to avoid any uncleaned crevices, although this will increase the wear on it a bit.

I'm new to this, and have no evidence that this is a real concern, but I'd think that the crevices in a spigot would be a fairly likely place for things to grow between uses if you're not careful to clean them out. It'd still be unlikely to infect the batch since most of the wort/beer that hit the spigot would then make its way out into your sample, but I personally prefer to err on the side of caution.

 

[malevolent]

I'm just wondering if it's safe to take samples from my primary by using the spigot that is attached to it?

I will sanitize the spigot before and after taking the samples but my main concern in oxygen exposure.

If for example a take about 300-400ml using the spigot will I expose my beer to oxygen and comprise it?

Thanks!

Make sure you pull the airlock first. You shouldn't need to sanitize the spigot, because any beer you pull out for a sample you should just toss. At least that is what I do.

 

[kingmatt]

On mine, the port for the spigot is well above the trub line.

My only concern about this is the very slight chance of infection from the spigot. Sanitizing the bucket for fermenting will only sanitize the parts of the spigot interior that are in contact with the wort/beer while the spigot is closed. When you rotate it open, you'll expose a different part of the plastic in the spigot.

You'll want to be sure you completely clean and sanitize all the parts of the spigot. Mine can be disassembled to avoid any uncleaned crevices, although this will increase the wear on it a bit.

I'm new to this, and have no evidence that this is a real concern, but I'd think that the crevices in a spigot would be a fairly likely place for things to grow between uses if you're not careful to clean them out. It'd still be unlikely to infect the batch since most of the wort/beer that hit the spigot would then make its way out into your sample, but I personally prefer to err on the side of caution.

What kind of bottling bucket do you use? I have the standard "ale pail" bucket and that spigot is far too low to pull a sample without it being all yeast/trub. Placing a spigot any higher would seem counterproductive to the bottling process IMO...

 

[zeg]

It's an ale pail with a hole a couple inches above the bottom. The very bottom of the spigot might be near or very slightly below the top of the trub when all of it is settled out. It's fine for bottling but you will either want to tilt the bucket at the end or, preferably, set up a dip tube so you can suck to well below the level of the spigot hole.

Even if it's slightly below the trub level, unless your trub is really loose, I don't think you'll get *all* trub. I don't recall exactly, but I may have gotten a little burst of trub when I drew out the sample, quickly followed by clear wort/beer. The wort/beer is so much less viscous than the trub that it quickly fills in the void after the immediate area around the spigot inlet is clear. I draw my sample into a measuring cup, then transfer it to the hydrometer tube, so I just let any yeast or trub settle before pouring it over. Thus, I don't even recall whether there was much trub in the sample, it wouldn't have been a problem. I just know for sure it wasn't enough to be memorable.

 

[unionrdr]

I have spigots on both my fermenters that are higher off the bottom than the one I built into my bottling bucket. I don't get any trub in my hydrometer samples. Besides,after straining everything into the Fv,I only wind up with about 5/16" of trub anyway. Save for what dusting may've settled into the spigot's inside end. I always clean them with PBW & some dedicated aquarium lift tube brushes,including the seals,lock lug,& mounting hole area. then sanitize & reassemble.
So they're sanitary to start with if you do this every time. Anyway,I spray some starsan up into the spout before pouring the sample into the hydrometer tube.

 

[zeg]

union, that's what I did too with respect to the spigot. I also put a plastic bag over the spigot while it was fermenting just to keep crud from getting in while it sat around (between the cats and the kids, there's plenty to worry about in that regard!)