Bottling stick - bubbles

[Andy]

Having a tap on the fermenter is *very* useful - I modified mine in this way and racking the beer off is now very easy. I still have to syphon out of my KingKeg which I use for conditioning and that's a pain!

[DaveR]

Thanks, Andy. Not seen one in local HBS - will have to order one. Somewhere there's tips about getting a siphon going (think you either fill the tube with water or carefully submerge most of it in the fermenting bin before sealing with a suitable sterilised bung - not one's finger!).

Edit - must type faster!

Cheers,
Dave

[PieOPah]

My first fermenter had no tap and I found racking off nearly impossible. The tube would float up and start to draw small amounts of air. To fix this I took some cable hiding tube and cut this down to hold my tubing in place. For some reason this didn't help and my racking would just stop for no explicable reason.

After this, I bought a Better-Bottle (plastic Carboy) which had a tap. Unfortunately my tubing didn't fit the tap and while racking was much easier, it was far from perfect.

I have since bought some tubing which fits the tap perfectly. For the first time, I have been able to rack to my keg PERFECTLY.

I got all but a dribble of my beer and NONE of the slurry.

When I bottle, I will be racking to my third fermenter which also has a tap. I just need to get the correct size tubing for a bottling stick. For now though I am very happy with my setup.

[shaunmarrison]

I had the same problem with gas in the bottling stick - at one point there was a cyclone of bubbles in the centre of the tube as the beer was flowing. The bubbles were too large to be CO2 I'm sure of that.

I removed the bottling stick and attached a syphon tube over the tap and the flow stopped completely - for some reason it was drawing air into the outer lip of the tap to allow the beer to flow.

It was a Young's Tap & Bottling Stick (the white one) - DaaB says there is a Black one which is much better - the white one is crap!

I've tasted the beer I've bottled (3 weeks ago now) and it tastes fine, so hasn't spoilt it, but I won't be using that bottling stick anymore.

Hope that helps!

[Western Brewer]

I too used a bottling stick for my first Ag and got tiny little bubbles forming in the tubing. Didn't know any better so carried on. Hasn't effected the beer at all, so wouldn't worry to much.

[Andy]

I have subsequently used the stick with the same syphon tubing and no bubbles! This time I cracked open the KingKeg lid about 30 mins before racking to allow the CO2 pressure in the keg to equalise. Perhaps this made the difference!