time to secondary?

[daum]

Alright, so the bubbles have slowed down/stopped after about 4 days in my primary fermenter. I happened to just come across a full deluxe brewing kit, so now I have a carboy(5 gallons). Should I transfer the beer to the carboy using the auto siphon that came with the kit I found today? Also lastly, do I need to buy a bottling bucket or can I bottle it from the carboy to the bottles? Anything I should do during the transfer other than make sure everything is very sterile? Thanks!
Daum

 

[ajf]

Alright, so the bubbles have slowed down/stopped after about 4 days in my primary fermenter. I happened to just come across a full deluxe brewing kit, so now I have a carboy(5 gallons). Should I transfer the beer to the carboy using the auto siphon that came with the kit I found today? Also lastly, do I need to buy a bottling bucket or can I bottle it from the carboy to the bottles? Anything I should do during the transfer other than make sure everything is very sterile? Thanks!
Daum

The auto siphon is perfect for racking to secondary.
The bottling bucket makes things much easier. When you bottle, you need priming sugar. The normal way to add this is by dissolving the sugar by boiling it in water, adding it to the bottling bucket, and then racking the beer on top of it to disperse the sugar. If you added the sugar to the carboy, you would have to stir to disperse it. This would largely negate the advantages gained by using the secondary. Also, the spigot in the bottling bucket makes bottling much easier. (I fill 12 bottles, turn off the spigot, cap the filled bottles, and prepare the next batch of bottles, then repeat till done.)

-a.

 

[Barley-Davidson]

Bulk priming is definately easier with a bucket. Even if you don't have a spigot you can rack from your carboy into your fermenter (assuming you have an empty one) and bottle from there using siphon and a bottling wand. If you do this it would help to have a clamp on the siphon hose to stop the flow when you need to stop and cap.
The spigot does make it easier; they're cheap and can be added to any bucket.

 

[daum]

alright, most likely i'll have a primary open for when I need to do bottling, if not i'll buy a bottling bucket. Does the secondary have to be in a dark spot? I only ask because right now my primary is under my bed which is pretty dark but in no means pitch black. Any other suggestions before i use the siphon to transfer it over to the carboy?

Thanks,
Daum

 

[Barley-Davidson]

You want to avoid sunlight and flourencent light, but it doesn't need to be in total darkness.