Never say never: the auto-siphon
Will Trice
It's been 13 years since I've read this newsgroup and ten or eleven
since I've brewed. That is, until recently.
I swore off brewing after making a string of crappy batches, but for
some reason I retained most of my equipment. Recently a neighbor wanted
to try homebrewing so he volunteered me and my equipment. He bought a
one and a half year old American pale ale kit from a friend and then
held on to it for another 6 months until we got around to actually
brewing it. So we had a 2 year old set of ingredients from an extract
kit that had been stored such that it was exposed to many a freeze/thaw
cycle as well as 90+ degree heat. The only modification I made was to
use a liquid yeast rather than the dry yeast that came with the kit.
So I set out with low hopes for this thing, but it was an excuse for
some male grunting and beer drinking, not to mention the open flame of
my burner <grunt, grunt>. At bottling time, I kept only eight 16oz.
bottles for my efforts and let my neighbor take the rest. Lo and
behold, this beer was REALLY good. It was a crappy pale ale, but it was
a good beer. The hops obviously didn't fare well in storage.
So now I'm hooked again, dammit. I swore I would never brew again (but
for some reason I kept the bulk of my equipment and even my wife has
called one of rooms in the basement our "brewery room" for the last
several years).
OK, if you've made it this far, here's the first of my two-part query to
this august group:
I have been unable to locate my tall racking cane (or perhaps I broke it
ten years ago and I just don't remember). So I went out and bought a
Fermtech auto-siphon to replace it. I used it for the first time to
rack my latest batch from primary to secondary. It worked great for
starting the siphon. However, after I had siphoned maybe a gallon,
bubbles started to flow through the siphon. After ensuring that this
was not due to a loose connection between racking cane and hose, I
decided that it was just dissolved CO2 coming out of solution. But the
bubbles quickly got worse to the point where I had a big airspace at the
crook in the racking came which caused me to lose siphon. Of course,
with the auto-siphon, flow was easily restarted. But... Investigating
further I could hear air entering around the piston ring at the bottom
of the auto-siphon. I attempted to seal the top of the outer tube of
the auto-siphon with my hand, but to no avail. So now I think I have
completely oxidized my brew. Crap.
Searching this newsgroup's archives and other fora, I see that others
have encountered this problem, but I haven't seen anyone describe a
working solution. Have any of you encountered this? Even the packaging
suggests that Fermtech is aware of the problem because there's a picture
of their product with a pointer to the piston ring and a text box that
says, "_NEW_ Improved Design - /prevents introduction of air./" But
apparently this is not the case...
I did not have this problem when I test siphoned with either sanitizer
(before I racked) or cold or hot water (after I racked). I would have
thought that the flow would have been in the opposite direction, that
the brew would be at a higher pressure than the air in the outer tube,
so that the outer tube would have filled with liquid in the event of a
leak - shows what I know. I have seen suggestions to put sanitizer in
the outer tube to seal it, but it seems that this would just get sucked
into the brew and then air would leak in anyway. I may have to relegate
the auto-siphon to tasks where I don't care about aeration, like moving
sanitizer around and siphoning cold wort (gyle?) off of trub.
Suggestions?
Wow, this is a long post (I guess I'm giddy to be back on this ng
again). I'll post part two of the query in a separate thread.
-Will
will dot trice at comcast dot com
Ecnerwal
Will Trice <m...@invalid.com> wrote:
> It worked great for
> starting the siphon. However, after I had siphoned maybe a gallon,
> bubbles started to flow through the siphon. After ensuring that this
> was not due to a loose connection between racking cane and hose, I
> decided that it was just dissolved CO2 coming out of solution.
Well, I don't know about the autosiphon leaking air, but I do know that
the actual effect (with a regular siphon) of having the siphon break
after the beer has fermented due to dissolved CO2 coming out of solution
in the high part of the siphon was the crux of my long brewing vacation,
and the reason I dropped a pile of money on a peristaltic pump (used,
cheap, as these things go) and tubing (new, from a reputable supplier,
considerably cheaper in absolute terms) when I got back in.
Not having to move full carboys is a nice side benefit, but the
siphon-breaking madness of dissolved gasses was the prybar that got the
wallet open. I like siphoning. I do all sorts of things with siphoning
water, sometimes on quite a large scale. I know theory and practice back
and forth - so I know exactly why my beer likes to break its siphon when
crawling up from the bottom of a 6-1/2 gallon carboy that's nearing the
bottom - it's under far less pressure inside bend at the top of the
tube, so if it's starting the trip saturated, it's going to let some
bubbles out when it gets up there. I worked out various maddening
schemes to minimize the issue, but it remained a problem I was fighting
with, and I dislike fighting with my hobbies. So now I have a pump.
If I ever find the free time to do some old-school programming, I have a
pump which could perhaps be used for efficient bottle filling (ie,
dispense so much, at this rate of speed, then slow down, then stop -
without needing to know anything other than what size bottle is being
filled) but the one I have does need a computer to manage that part -
some of the fancier/newer ones have that much built in. But that's not
my issue, so I won't buy them as long as my old clunker works - it's
just a possible added benefit if I can find the time to write software,
or find some ancient software the pump maker (cole/parmer and/or barnant
- Masterflex) does not make available for obsolete things like mine.
--
Cats, coffee, chocolate...vices to live by
Joshua Willett
I tend to have the same issues with mine. I find that adjusting the
distance of the inner wand with the outer tube can often eliminate
problems. I have however, never had my siphon break because of it. I
do get some bubbles, but, I tend to think time and light do more
damage to my beer and hop aroma, than the once , or twice I siphon it
from my primary/secondary/bottling bucket. If you are bottle
conditioning at a low temp, such as a lagering fridge, or something as
restrictive as Duval in the lower 30's the oxygen could in fact be
positive for continued attenuation of the wort after the addition of
yeast.
I doubt it is actually co2 coming out of solution unless your
fermenter has been capped as in a "real ale" style.
Will Trice
> I doubt it is actually co2 coming out of solution unless your
> fermenter has been capped as in a "real ale" style.
>
Yep, as I discovered, putting a little water in the outer tube prevents
this from happening. Just tried this last weekend when I bottled two 5
gal. batches (and brewed 2 more 5 gal. batches - long day...).
Definitely not CO2.
-Will
will dot trice at comcast dot net
Ben
not getting that damn piston area clean. If you look at it closely
there is a deep crevice in it that is a prime spot for sticky wort to
collect. Take it apart when you clean it and get in there, then leave
it apart while drying.
Will Trice
Thanks for the tip. I do take it apart for cleaning and drying, but I
hadn't noticed that crevice. I'll be sure to inspect that after each use.
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