Siphoning & Cleaning Questions

[MaltySmoOTH]

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to start a siphon on a 5/16 " hose without using an auto-siphon or your mouth for that matter? I don't want to contaminate the hose.

Also, I just bought some pbw for the first time and was wondering if I can soak and clean air-lock's, bung's and siphon tubing with it?

Another thing, is it really necesarry to clean siphon tubing or can you just use star san?

Thanks.

[BDawg]

1) Try a turkey baster. You can push the nozzle into the hose and go from there.
But, an autosiphon is 10 bucks well spent.

2) PBW is great. Just don't soak plastic stuff TOO long in it. It can start to turn plastics to jelly if they are left in it for long periods of time. You can feel it happening.

3) It can't be santized if it isn't clean.

[brewinhard]

+1 to the autosiphon, but if you can always do it the way my local homebrew buddies do it - take apart a bic pen and using the outer plastic piece that is now hollow, sanitize it and shove it into your siphon hose. Then suck on the end of the plastic to get your siphon going, and quickly pull out the pen part when the siphon flows well. Personally I think you are much better off with an autosiphon, but who am I to judge?

[animaldoc]

I use a 60 cc catheter tip syringe as a mouthpiece. I like the idea of the Bic pen case. You coud also use a smaller or larger piece of tubing that would fit in or on your racking hose -- sanitize it, suck it, then pull it out

[spiderwrangler]

You can just use your penis pump you purchased using checkout code BNARMY...

[Ozwald]

This was one of the 'gadgets' in the latest issue of Zymurgy. Guy uses a short piece of copper tubing to start his. Bit more expensive than an ink pen (& a really dumb idea to include with the annual gadgets, IMO - but most of them were pretty lame this year)

[spiderwrangler]

I liked the 'put paint marks on your keg' gadget... Maybe as a part of a tip series that has one every issue, but as a gadget of the year?

[Ozwald]

I liked the 'put paint marks on your keg' gadget... Maybe as a part of a tip series that has one every issue, but as a gadget of the year?

Yeah, I looked through it again. 5 of 10 should've never made that list.

Hey, I've got this great idea for a brewing gadget. I call it a BK. I know it's a complicated acronym, but it stands for boil kettle. This neat gadget is a type of vessel that can be heated in some fashion or another & it's very useful in my brewery, as I use it to collect the runnings from my mash, heat it up & it also allows you to add hops at different points. Ingenious gadget, why didn't I make the list?

Maybe I should have thought about using a different shaped cooler to serve my beer from. Like an ice cream cooler...

There have been some dumb ones in the past, but this year they deserve an award.