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Racking Your Home Brew Without Wracking Your Nerves |
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Saturday, 24 May 2008 |
By Frosty
There comes a time in all good home brewing procedures when the contents of one fermentor must be transferred to another fermentor or to a another vessel for subsequent bottling. At the outset it seems a simple enough task. The complications arise when you remember that it is not just a matter of dumping one bucket into another. Racking your home brew has both a major purpose* and a major risk. The main purpose of the racking process is to separate the fermented liquid from all the yeast and hop detritus at the bottom of the fermentor being emptied. The less junk you bring over from the first vessel the clearer your home brew will be. The main risk with the racking process is that it provides many many many opportunities to introduce contaminates into the mix which can (and will) negatively affect the quality of your final product. The fewer the opportunities for contamination the better the beer. With all this in mind, let's tackle the project.
Step number one is the same as all the other home brewing steps - sanitize! Sanitize everything that will touch the fermented brew and as many things as possible that will touch the things that touch the brew. Start with the sink and scrub it down with a good strong cleanser. After thoroughly rinsing the sink, fill it with about 2 gallons of clean warm water and mix up a batch of Type A no-rinse sanitizer - being careful to dissolve all of the little granules. When the sanitizer is ready dunk all of the equipment you will be using into it. The main items here will be the siphoning wand and your siphon tubing. These should be submerged in the no-rinse sanitizer and then raised up to allow the liquid inside to run through them. Do this as many times as necessary to be sure that every inch of the tubing (inside and out) has been exposed to the cleanser. If you are preparing to bottle then you will also have to give your bottling valve a similar treatment. Also be sure to sanitize the secondary vessel (do I need to say this?). You can sometimes do this by dipping it in the sink but more often than not you will have to mix a gallon or so of Type A sanitizer in your bottling vessel or secondary fermentor. If you are mixing sanitizer in the target vessel be sure to allow the mix to touch every inch of the interior either by shaking the carboy vigorously or slowly pouring all the sanitizer out while rotating the bucket.
While all of the nice clean equipment dries (on a clean dry surface) you have a good opportunity to position the fermentor to be emptied on a high counter or table top. (Actually, you may want to position this item before you start sanitizing everything else so that the gunk you disturb while moving it has time to settle again.) The trick in positioning the fermentor is to get it high enough to allow you to position the receiving vessel so that its top is still below the bottom of the fermentor. Be sure to leave room to allow you to tip the fermentor while siphoning so that you can get as much wort transferred as possible.
There is no putting it off now - it is time to rack. The main goal in racking is to get all the clear wort into the receiving vessel while leaving as much sludge as possible in the fermentor. Your final full bottle count (the yield) is dependant on a successful racking session. The main obstacle to achieving this goal is getting the siphon going in the first place. Every brewer has his own method to get the siphon flowing. What follows is my method - you are welcome to use it, too. Whatever you do, do not start the siphon by sucking on the end of the tubing with your mouth.
First - wash your hands. If you have left the Type A cleanser in the sink you can use that on yourself and then drain the sink. Refill the sink with enough cool clean water allow you to submerge (and completely fill) your siphon wand and tubing. Next use your thumb to close off the end of the tubing so that no air can enter. With the siphon wand in one hand and the plugged up tube end in the other move over to the fermentor and dip the siphon wand into the wort. Then drop the end of the tube into the receiving vessel trying not to release your thumb until the end of the tube is below the bottom of the fermentor. This works every time. If you want to you can let the water in the tube drain outside of the receiving vessel before putting the tube end in - just be sure to keep the tube end below the bottom of the fermentor.
Once the wort is moving from the fermentor to the receiving vessel you need to focus on keeping the siphon wand as near the surface of the wort as you can with out letting it break the surface thus allowing air to enter the line and kill the siphon. The reason for keeping the wand high in the liquid is to avoid sending chunks of hop and yeast sludge down the line along with the wort. (You are going to suck up some sludge - so relax, there's no getting around it.) Of course, as time goes by the tip of your wand will get closer and closer to the remnants of fermentation. Before you do reach the bottom of the barrel (as it were) gently tip the fermentor toward you and adjust the location of the wand to the side where the wort is deepest. Keep it going as long as you possibly can.
That's it! You are done! Now the wort that was in vessel A is now in vessel B ready for the next step called for by your recipe. You may be bottling, dry hopping, or just setting the jug back to ferment some more. The ordeal is over. This is a really good time to enjoy a tall cold one - enjoy!
*There are a few side benefits of racking your home brew. One benefit is that it can help to aerate your wort in preparation for bottling. Another benefit is that it gives the brewer an easy way to introduce and mix in the bottling primer sugar.
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