Why not rack the trub out?

I'm doing a beer that's going to age on oak cubes. To make sure they don't just sink into the trub and sit there without giving away their flavor, I need to get the trub away from the beer.

But I only have the one better bottle which is on loan (my 3 gallon glass carboy broke after one use! Damn it!).

So why not siphon the trub out from under the beer? Does this work? That way I won't have to worry too much about oxidation, either since the headspace will be nice and full of CO2.

Anyone tried this?

Interesting idea. Similar to a conical fermenter, but the exit is via siphon out the top of the bucket instead of valve out the bottom.

Some thoughts:
1. Some yeast can compact very hard, and with the weight of the beer on it, all the liquid might be squeezed out, making it tough to siphon
2. Siphoning beer off trub allows you to end up with 100% beer in the new container, then trub + beer in the original. Siphoning out trub I doubt you can be left with 100% beer
3. It would be easier if you could just install a spigot in the bottom of your fermenter, but this ads an element that might leak during fermentation, and another thing on sanitize

I do not think it will work. Trub is more like mud than like water. It is difficult to siphon mud or silt unless you have a good flow of water to move it along. In this case, instead of water it would be your wort being used up.

Is it possible for you to siphon the wort from the carboy into a 5 gallon bucket, clean out the trub, then siphon back into the carboy?

Some people would suggest just aging in the 5 gallon bucket. You may have a preference for using a carboy. The short time in the (sanitized) bucket should not affect anything. As you may have considered, there is more risk of introducing air and oxidizing it each time you rack the wort. If you are careful it should be OK.

Aged on oak sounds great. Another thing on my to-try list.

how about hanging the cubes in a bag suspended in the beer?

I have not used oak cubes, so Im not positive, but seems like they would float. And like mentioned earlier, putting them in a bag would probably help them float. But, bagging them might make it tricky to get them in the better bottle. Like I said though, I haven't used them, but I still think they float and maybe just a few will sink.

you can tie the bag off with some (sanitized) marbles so it sinks...

Why wouldn't you ferment the beer in your primary for a couple of weeks, rack it to the secondary (i.e. off the trub) and add your oak then?

If you would prefer to add your oak to the primary I don't think you will lose much of the oak flavour just because it's in the trub.

Good luck!

osagedr said:

Why wouldn't you ferment the beer in your primary for a couple of weeks, rack it to the secondary (i.e. off the trub) and add your oak then?

If you would prefer to add your oak to the primary I don't think you will lose much of the oak flavour just because it's in the trub.

Good luck!

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He said he only has the one borrowed fermenter.

I say just dump the in and see what happens. Don't hassle with trying to siphon out the trub only.

To be clear, it's a 2.5 gallon batch in a 3 gallon carboy. I don't have another 3 gallon carboy; I had a glass one but it broke on brew day before I got a chance to put the beer in it. So one of my brew buddies lent me the 3 gallon better bottle.

I have a couple of glass 6-gallon carboys but that is just way too much headroom for a secondary ferment. Didn't have them with me on brew day.

I guess I should just buy myself a better bottle anyway, but it's so hard to keep spending money on stuff - I just bought that 3 gallon glass one and then it broke so I can't bring myself to buy another carboy so soon.

So I will just add the cubes to the primary during lagering and let them float if they want to. Hopefully the cold will help them sink a bit. It's all a learning process, innit.