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- Jan 19, 2018
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I've been staring at my five gallon secondaries in awe of the rolling action still going on bring lees and 'stuff' from the bottom up to the top and then watching it fall. It's almost like a lava lamp from the 70's for those of us in this season of life. Which got me thinking about racking...
I have simple plastic 5gal primaries and 5gal carboys I use as secondaries. When I transferred from my plastic buckets, I used my siphon and hose. The siphon has about an inch standoff base on it as to not pick up anything closer than that from the bottom of whatever vessel it's inserted. I racked the entire contents the siphon would pick up which included a lot of gross lees/yeast/particulates. That's all in the secondary now boiling&rolling around and is a couple inches deep which will be considerably deeper than that 1" standoff on the siphon.
First question, is this normal going from primary to secondary in picking up and transferring so much 'stuff'? Or do you try to hold the siphon up just a bit off the bottom and not grab it all? I know it sounds silly to those who have done this a million times, yet I can't be the only newbie wondering if it's normal to transfer all this material. I'm guessing that once the dry point has been achieved, that's when you again rack to a clean carboy - gross lees and all - and the true settling process begins.
Which brings me to my next question. When it comes time to rack off to a clean carboy, there's a good chance the gross lees will still be considerably deeper than the standoff of the siphon. Do you raise the siphon base to do reduce this, or suck it all up again?
Or do you suck up all those intentionally to a smaller bucket to get them out of the way?
Edit to add:
I'm basing this question off of the use of grapes I harvested and pressed, not just straight juice or a kit.
I have simple plastic 5gal primaries and 5gal carboys I use as secondaries. When I transferred from my plastic buckets, I used my siphon and hose. The siphon has about an inch standoff base on it as to not pick up anything closer than that from the bottom of whatever vessel it's inserted. I racked the entire contents the siphon would pick up which included a lot of gross lees/yeast/particulates. That's all in the secondary now boiling&rolling around and is a couple inches deep which will be considerably deeper than that 1" standoff on the siphon.
First question, is this normal going from primary to secondary in picking up and transferring so much 'stuff'? Or do you try to hold the siphon up just a bit off the bottom and not grab it all? I know it sounds silly to those who have done this a million times, yet I can't be the only newbie wondering if it's normal to transfer all this material. I'm guessing that once the dry point has been achieved, that's when you again rack to a clean carboy - gross lees and all - and the true settling process begins.
Which brings me to my next question. When it comes time to rack off to a clean carboy, there's a good chance the gross lees will still be considerably deeper than the standoff of the siphon. Do you raise the siphon base to do reduce this, or suck it all up again?
Or do you suck up all those intentionally to a smaller bucket to get them out of the way?
Edit to add:
I'm basing this question off of the use of grapes I harvested and pressed, not just straight juice or a kit.