I was wondering what the importance of siphoning is when transferring beer from my secondary to my bottling bucket, rather than simply dumping the beer from secondary to bottling bucket? My first batch I siphoned, and it was tasty. My second batch I simply dumped in to the bottling bucket, but haven't had any yet so I'm unsure if I may have made a big mistake....
You're going to introduce some oxygen by siphoning, but you don't want to introduce any more than you have to. Pouring, even if you do it carefully, will certainly do just that. Leaving as much trub/yeast sediment in your fermenter and getting as much beer as you can from your batch are a couple more reasons to siphon and not pour.
well...define big. none of us around here are going to recommend splashing a finished beer. not really even a debate. so next time you know. Cheers.
Thanks for the input, fellas. You have no idea how glad I am that I only did this to my IPA and not my precious RIS!!!
Drink it fast and you may be able to stay ahead of the staling, but hops can be the first thing to go. You'll probably also notice there is a lot sediment in the beer because dumping doesn't leave sediment behind and good siphoning can. If you keg, get that beer cold as fast as possible, because low temps slow staling. If you bottle, you are going to have to keep the beer warm for a few weeks to prime the bottles. The good news is that active yeast during priming should reduce oxygen levels some.
This this this. I really pooched a batch of IPA I made a while back, oxygenated it to hell and back at bottling, but it was still decent because I drank it all within a few weeks of it being carbonated. But wait a month or two and you may find yourself pouring them down the drain. I have about 40 bottles left of one of my old batches that are awaiting that fate and I'm having a hard time forcing myself to do it...
Another alternative is to put a spigot on your primary...no siphoning and no dumping. Siphoning into a secondary before the bottling bucket will also introduce some O2...the less you move your beer around, the better. Can't understand why more homebrewers don't use a spigot...old habits die hard, I guess.
I know some better bottle can be ordered with spigots. This seems (to me at least, I could be wrong) like it would be an area of concern for sanitation. You couldn't take the spigot apart to clean it. They make these adapter arms so you can, but I hear they are difficult to work with.
No need to take spigots apart to clean...flush promptly and thoroughly and sanitize before AND after use...never had a problem (knock on wood).
You can buy a spigot for a bucket that completely disassembles. I use the cheaper, common red and white spigot often sold with bottling buckets. It can be partially disassembled, but I don't bother. I started using spigots 4 years ago because auto-siphons made me angry. No obvious infections since then. Easy bucket to keg closed transfers with CO2 and gravity.
~8 yrs with buckets AND spigots...no infections...the key, IMHO is really cleaning/sanitizing immediately AFTER AND BEFORE use I've replaced 1 spigot in that timeframe...and that was because I broke the bucket
One of the main reasons I bought a speidel fermenter is it has a spigot built in. So much easier and I transferred about the same amount of junk into the bottling bucket as I did with the siphon, which is minimal. Also, it makes it that much easier to take gravity samples and taste the beer during the process to determine when its done.
