Beer Forum

I am wondering which one is better. I have broken two plastic racking tubes while removing the vinyl tubing from the racking tube and would like to get a better piece of equipment to prevent this.

If you're breaking tubes, you're doing it wrong

That being said, the tube that makes up the central portion of the autosiphon is basically the same thing, so if you break the regular ones, you'll break it too. You won't break a stainless tube (and you can heat sanitize), but the ease of starting an autosiphon is a very, very nice feature.

I started using teflon tape under the tubing once because of tubing that was a little oversized, and it turns out that a wrap of teflon sanitizable and easy to remove.

l0nni3 wrote:I am wondering which one is better. I have broken two plastic racking tubes while removing the vinyl tubing from the racking tube and would like to get a better piece of equipment to prevent this.

The best way to remove the vinyl tubing is to run the point where the tubing connects to the inner racking cane under hot water. This helps the tubing to quickly expand and makes it easier to twist off the tubing away from the racking cane. It does suck breaking those when trying to separate them. I fully understand....

A couple of years ago I switched to the stainless racking cane in the orange carboy cap method to siphon. You place the cane in the middle hole of the cap and blow into the other hole. I use a $4 filter to blow in, but you can use it without.

anday6 wrote:I started using teflon tape under the tubing once because of tubing that was a little oversized, and it turns out that a wrap of teflon sanitizable and easy to remove.

I just tried that trick the other day. It worked great. Thanks!

Wayne