Anyone ever see these in bottling buckets recently? I needed to purchase a new bucket for my clean gear, and saw this included on the other side of the spigot. Looked like a great idea – no need to tip the bucket forward on those last few bottles! That was, until, I used it to bottle an apfelwein this past weekend. (I know, not beer, but it would've happened the exact same way if it were). I don't know if it just wasn't secured correctly or what, but the damn thing let in so many bubbles/suds into my bottles. They had a white frothy head on them before I even put a cap on. Was cursing the entire time, because what was I gonna do at that point, stick my hand down in there and pull it out? All I could think about was oxidation... I guess my reason for posting this is to: 1. Rant 2. Inform everyone out there that these things can suck, so user beware 3. See if anyone else has used one of these before and didn't get excessive bubbling from it when bottling. Here is what they look like
Around 66F, but I always bottle at this temp, and have never had any issues with bottling until this thing came along.
I've seen this rig done with a bent piece of copper tubing about the length of your pinkie finger. I wonder if having a curve in the tubing would do better than a 90 degree joint.
Not sure you should be too worried about oxidation. The bubbles are CO2, right? Maybe I'm not picturing this properly.
I don't think I would worry about oxygen production because what should happen with the production of foam is your c02 is trying to come out of solution. I.e.The oxygen will be suffocated.
It very well could just be CO2, but it's more like a gurgling sound coming from the spigot, and I can see tons of bubbles flowing through the transfer tubing to the bottling wand. It used to never be like that. Used to be a smooth flow of beer, cider, etc. into the bottle. I'm thinking it's that piece of plastic that's disrupting the flow.
I've had this happen with an auto siphon when dealing with the last of my whole leaf hops. I use a paint straining bag. I sanitize the bag, wrap it around the inside of the beer bucket and I dip the siphon in the middle of the bag and submerge. I rack as normal and I get a ton of bubbles around the neck of the auto siphon. I thought that this was air coming up from the keg side of the siphon, and thought it was strange because the draw side was always completely submerged. This is CO2 for sure?
That's kind of the situation I had with this. Just lots of bubbles making their way into the transfer tubing, and it could easily just be CO2 (I hope) but it always bothers me for some reason when I'm not getting a clean transfer. I may have to try your paint strainer technique when I decide to rack this sour I have going off 2 lbs of currants
No beer, no leak, just bubbles being introduced into the transfer tubing somehow. This makes me wonder if the black plastic piece is disrupting the smooth flow of beer from the bottling bucket to the transfer tubing/bottling wand.
I don't know. I guess I need to follow the bubbles more closely. I was imagining some slight cavitation around the bend might allow CO2 to come out of solution and create bubbles. I see something similar with my racking cane sometimes, but not with a lot of foaming, just a few more bubbles in solution. I may not be thinking about this correctly.
I'm hoping it's CO2....and this could also very well be one of those 'RDWHAHB' threads, but for the record I'm going to stop using this plastic fitting for future brews. Just figured I'd warn you guys about it because I didn't have a good bottling experience with it.
Could it be air getting in where your tubing meets the spigot? Or perhaps a pin hole or tear in the tubing itself? Or perhaps the spigot is slightly misshaped and air is being introduced there somehow? I've never used a bottling bucket to bottle beer, just a racking cane and tubing directly from the fermentation vessel, or the spigot designed for kegging/bottling on conical vessels. I never understood why folks move the beer to a separate vessel to then move it into bottles?
I've never done it any other way. So you just add the priming sugar straight to the fermenter before racking? And then you autosiphon straight into bottles?
I used to do it that way when I first started, and just mixed the priming sugar nice and gentle like, never had a truby beer or any issues. I never used an autosiphon either. I stopped bottling/priming years ago, I just bottle from carbed kegs and have done so for over a decade now I think. I do prime some belgians in bottles though, and some long term storage brews as well. I've always cold crashed and never had any issues with mucking up trub/yeast/particulates when stirring in priming sugar. Gentle and easy. Always worked and never had any issues.
