Yeah I sanitised the foil and then when I had fashioned the cane filter, put the end into a jug of boiling water just to be sure. Once finished I just disposed of the foil which saves messing about with a hoppy muslin bag.
Satisfying really as I haven't read about this method anywhere and had been worrying about syphoning and in the end it worked beautifully! :-D
*edit* worked well with leaf hops but not tested yet with hop pellets. I will use the same method when I bottle my Youngs APA and report back!
I now use a sediment trap which I have had no problems with but... before I got this I put the bag on the other end of the pipe to catch the hops. This worked very well too. I also used the bag to get the oak chips out of the oak rum kit that I did recently. That did need a bag to get all the bits out!
As to bag never used one. But bubbles in the siphon tube yes had that and I came to the conclusion they were CO2 bubbles caused because the top of the siphon is lower than air pressure. I also had loss of siphon and came to the conclusion at the end of the siphoning I still need at least 9 inches so siphon will not be lost. I bought an extra length of siphon pipe and a tap and the pipe goes to bottom of both fermentors and when bottling also bottom of the bottle. This reduces the air mixed in and also means less head on the bottle so now I do not have to top up bottles once head has settled. If the head is big enough you can siphon really slow.