Bottler here. Auto-Syphon Question.

[fizzix]

Hey everyone.
My brew guy says my bottled beer is too cloudy and introduced me to the auto-syphon to rack a finished ferment off the trub, chill the new bucket for day or two, then rack that. Voilà, cleared beer ready for bottling!

Since I bottle though, I got to wondering if there'll be enough yeast left in the new bucket from this method to allow my priming sugar to carbonate?

(I prime the bucket, not each bottle if that matters.)

 

[JohnSand]

There will be plenty of yeast left to carb.

 

[fizzix]

JohnSand, I thank you!

 

[IslandLizard]

rack a finished ferment off the trub, chill the new bucket for day or two, then rack that.

Your "brew guy" needs to educate himself. Like reading around here on HBT.

There is no need to rack off the trub into another vessel. Just chill your "primary" fermenter for a few days at near 32F (cold crashing) with or without help of a fining agent, such as gelatin. Then rack the clear, ice cold beer into your bottling bucket with dissolved priming sugar and bottle away. The longer you leave the lid on that bucket the better it is. Once you remove the lid, the CO2 rich headspace fleets off and gets replaced by air (containing 21% oxygen), almost instantly.

Racking a fermented beer into a bucket and leaving it there for a few days is bad as you will oxidize it, due to both the racking process and a large headspace. This causes off flavors later, and kills hop flavors. You also risk infections. For the exact same reasons, "secondaries" are NOT needed.

IF and only IF a secondary is warranted (long term bulk aging, sours on fruit, sours in general, etc.) care must be taken not to introduce air (oxygen) into the beer while leaving minimal headspace in the secondary vessel. It also needs a tight cap and a suitable airlock to keep air out. Obviously, buckets don't fit that description.

 

[fizzix]

That makes complete sense, IslandLizard.
That also concerned me because I read here over and over about oxygen's destruction.
You guys have wisened me considerably and I appreciate it.

 

[IslandLizard]

Also keep in mind, to minimize or eliminate trub from transferring when racking to your bottling bucket or keg, don't stick the racking cane or siphon all the way down to the bottom, in the trub layer. Keep it somewhere in the middle of the fermenter, between trub layer and the top beer level. Then lower it slowly as the beer level drops. Toward the end, tilt the fermenter slowly and carefully toward the cane to keep the beer well deep. Once you see trub entering the siphon/cane quickly pull the hose out of your receiving vessel, or clam off tightly to stop the siphon action.

Make sure to stick one of those "flow inverter tippies" on the bottom end of the siphon or cane. It diverts the flow of beer to come in from the top instead of from the bottom. That helps in reducing the amount of trub it will suck up.

During racking, take care not to suck air at any time and thus causing it to bubble through your beer on the receiving end.

 

[fizzix]

Found this 3/8" inline filter that may be of some help, too.
May not have to rack at all.

 

[ncbrewer]

(I prime the bucket, not each bottle if that matters.)

Priming in the bucket might be part of the reason for the cloudy beer. If you're stirring, maybe it's not gentle enough, and trub is being kicked up. Transferring to a bottling bucket as recommended above will solve that part of the problem.

 

[ncbrewer]

Found this 3/8" inline filter that may be of some help, too.
May not have to rack at all.

The filter looks like a sanitation problem - might be hard to clean well. And it might stop up. Most brewers minimize the trub in bottles without an apparatus like that. I might be wrong - maybe others have some insight.

 

[jfolks]

The filter looks like a sanitation problem - might be hard to clean well. And it might stop up. Most brewers minimize the trub in bottles without an apparatus like that. I might be wrong - maybe others have some insight.

I use this “bouncer” filter for dry hop transfers. Rarely gets clogged. Not a sanitation problem. However, it will only stop large particulates like hop debris - don’t expect it to filter out haze (use a plate filter for that)

 

[Unicorn_Platypus]

I'm not a fan of cold crashing in primary (especially a dry hopped beer) as this can oxidize the beer. Your better of just skipping the cold crash in my opinion (unless you cold crash in a sealed vessel like a keg, or have a clever system like the brulosophy dudes to minimize O2 update during the crash)

I would advocate to just crash the bottles for a few days after they are fully carbonated and pour carefully not to disturb sediment in bottom.