FV - Siphon or Tap

[Binkei Huckaback]

I never used to have a problem with syphoning, but it was always a bit of a faff until I discovered no-rinse sanitisers. However, my girlfriend decided to have a go at making wine and bought a kit which included fermenting bins with taps and a bottling wand. The bottling wand is a great invention.

 

[Binkei Huckaback]

If you just hold a bottle to the tap to fill it the only issues are the usual sanatising and then making sure it is smooth enough to avoid oxidation ?

You'd get lots of oxidation. I'd highly recommend a bottling wand. They're not too expensive and a great investment.

 

[The Cat]

You'd get lots of oxidation. I'd highly recommend a bottling wand. They're not too expensive and a great investment.

Got one last week gonna connect it up to the tap and do it that way. Am happy to use syphons but I'm all for making things quicker and easier.

 

[MagnusTS]

Depends if you want cheap and simple or costly and complicated
I tend to go down the latter route
I fitted a tap to the bottom of my FV that is mounted on a skate cos it’s too heavy for me to keep lifting.
View attachment 35615
Inside, I’ve fitted a King Keg tube and float to the tap inlet so when it comes to transfer time (I use KKs not bottles) I turn the tap ON and the beer comes from the top first. When the FV is nearly empty the float settles on the bottom and the beer stops flowing without disturbing the trub. This is what it looks like when finished. There’s about 5-10mm of beer left in the bottom.
View attachment 35617

@Buffers brewery I really like your setup here. Especially your bubbler attachment. I need something like that, with no space for a bubbler on my FV in the brew fridge.

 

[Ezza]

fitting taps to all my FV's has halved bottling time!.

 

[Buffers brewery]

@Buffers brewery I really like your setup here. Especially your bubbler attachment. I need something like that, with no space for a bubbler on my FV in the brew fridge.

Thanks. I don’t use the bubbler attachment anymore as I run a pipe through the sidewall of my fridge so I can collect the CO2. Could fit the bubbler on the outside of the fridge so you don’t have to keep opening the fridge door

 

[MagnusTS]

Thanks. I don’t use the bubbler attachment anymore as I run a pipe through the sidewall of my fridge so I can collect the CO2. Could fit the bubbler on the outside of the fridge so you don’t have to keep opening the fridge door
View attachment 35749

Impressive. How do you collect the CO2 and what do you do with it?

 

[AnimatedGIF]

The biggest downside of a tap on the FV that I have seen is that it's harder to put the FV in a water bath (not that I do, but some people do).
Whilst it could be argued that the tap is an additional item to clean etc, so is a siphon.. To me, the biggest downside is the potentical for leaks. I've had one tap leak, though it was through be trying to enlargen the hole in the bucket using a file as the drill but I had was too small. On my other bucket, I've never had an issue yet. As with all these things, personal preference prevails. I'd recomend if you can to have one bucket with and one without, see which you prefer. They'll still likely both get used (bottling bucket?).
I use taps, as I find it easier to take gravity readings from and am not very good at getting a siphon going, simple though I am sure it is.

 

[Buffers brewery]

Impressive. How do you collect the CO2 and what do you do with it?

I’ve only just started so still in the “finding out” stage. I have 2 avenues to explore on my next brew. First to inflate a foil balloon with the CO2 from the FV. This can be available for cold crashing when the beer can absorb CO2 as it cools, which creates a vacuum in the FV and therefore draws air in through the bubbler. Using a balloon means CO2 is drawn in rather than air. Second to see if enough CO2 is produced during fermentation to displace all the water from a full King Keg PB so I can do closed transfer from FV to PB.

 

[peebee]

…
Second to see if enough CO2 is produced during fermentation to displace all the water from a full King Keg PB so I can do closed transfer from FV to PB.

You may have a problem there. The CO2 will dissolve rather readily in water (like it does in beer!) which will mess up your observations.

But I can guarantee fermentation of a 20-25L batch of beer will evolve enough gas to fill a PB (several PBs!). Think of priming tables: 50g of sugar will get you over two "volumes" of carbonation (a "volume" is the amount of beer, "v/v" you might see elsewhere and another measure being "w/v" where "w" is weight, which would be a right pain if we had to figure the weight of CO2 in the beer!).

 

[Buffers brewery]

The CO2 will dissolve rather readily in water (like it does in beer!) which will mess up your observations.

Agreed. My thoughts are it's all to do with time. I believe that during the first day of fermentation CO2 is produced rapidly and if enough is produced quick enough it could empty my barrel of water
If that works I can then switch to my balloon to capture the gas from the slower stage of fermentation for use in the cold crash.
I love Xbeeriments

 

[Buffers brewery]

If I was a "Bottler", and I'm not, I'd make a foot pedal operated clamp to act on a silicone tube connected to the FV or bottling bucket at one end and a bottling wand (no valve) the other. The wand would be mounted on a stand high enough to get a bottle under. This leaves both hands free to hold and cap/screw the bottle. Gravity (or pressure) feeds beer to wand and as soon as the bottle is full press the foot pedal to stop flow and cap.
Could work
But definitely a tap.

 

[BeerOclock]

I mostly keg, but when I bottle I use a bottling bucket it has a tap and wand with a valve that opens and closes when the wand is at the bottom Of the bottle. Using the bottling bucket means you get uniform mix of priming sugar and gelatin if using. The plastic taps at the bottom of the bucket can be sanitised or detached and sterilised in boiling water. My bottling bucket was the first FV I bought as part of an “Everything you need to brew” kit. It came with the tap fitted. I quickly upgraded to plastic conical fermenter. The bottling wand is always dismantled and sanitised, as after a year’s use without dismantling, I did and found some old hop debris stuck in the valve.

I think if I was going to go back to siphoning I would use an auto siphon, but I don’t know how much they can be dismantled for cleaning.

I now only bottle strong stouts for Xmas, I make in the summer, that benefit from a prolonged conditioning. Still got aRussian imperial stout I made in June 2019, which is improving with age.

 

[Stonedhouse]

Many of us don't have taps on our FV's and don't want to fit them, taps can leak and need to be cleaned syphons do the job perfectly well once you have the method sussed.

My response was slightly tongue in cheek, hence the lol, but yeah I just hate using syphons..... which like taps can leak and need to be cleaned also . But my main reason for going to the effort of fitting a tap (with racking barb) to my fermenter is my quest for simple, quick and Oxygen free transfers to kegs. I just fit a pipe from the fermenter tap hook to Keg beer out connection, then run another pipe from the Keg CO2 in connection up to the Fermenter lid bubbler hole and provided the fermenter is up on the kitchen worktop and fermenter down on the floor I just open the tap, make a cup of coffee and 10 mins later the keg is full with no oxygen involved (I CO2 purge the keg first).

 

[Pavalijo]

My LHBS advised me to use a 25mm hole cutter when fitting the Little Bottler tap with wand. They said it would be a tight fit and I would have to actually screw it in.
I bought one like this image (but 25mm) from eBay for a few pounds; and they were absolutely spot on. And there is no sign of any leakage whatsoever.
The tap rotates and so before racking off or bottling I turn the tap to face the ceiling and fill with sanitiser.

 

[Hopperty]

Thanks everyone for all the advice - Fitted a tap yesterday, quite easy to do and no leaks (used a fostner bit to cut the hole)

It may work better than I thought, without the valve on the end of the wand the down tube remains full of liquid when the tap is turn off, this should make bottle filling faster and more controllable.

 

[DavieC]

I fitted a tap this morning,(Wilko's) to a FV which I use for batch priming(and brewing), , 25mm hole,screwed in and tightened nut on back by hand,tested and no leaks so transferred a brew into it this afternoon by Syphon tube for batch priming and bottling.It went ok apart from it did have a slight drip from the tap so next time I'll pinch it up a bit tighter, and the bottling wand was a bit loose fitting and came off the tap at one point but I turned the tap off quickly so didn't flood too much.After that I used a bit of gaffa tape to secure it and it was fine.