I have a 7.9 gallon fermentation bucket that I bought a while back at the home brew shop in my town. I've used it for several batches, but always seem to suck up a small amount of the lees with the racking cane. I was thinking about drilling a hole a few inches above the bottom of the bucket (hopefully just above where the yeast cake would settle), attaching a spout with siphon tube, and just opening the spout when racking. Does anybody have any experience making/using something like this? I don't want to jump in and ruin my bucket, or do it in a way that would mess with the mead.
Putting a spout on a fermentation bucket
- Thread starter PDonn63
- Start date
-
Love Gotmead and want to see it grow? Then consider supporting the site and becoming a Patron! If you're logged in, click on your username to the right of the menu to see how as little as $30/year can get you access to the patron areas and the patron Facebook group and to support Gotmead!
-
We now have a Patron-exclusive Facebook group! Patrons my join at The Gotmead Patron Group. You MUST answer the questions, providing your Patron membership, when you request to join so I can verify your Patron membership. If the questions aren't answered, the request will be turned down.
You'd have to add something inside to redirect the suction upwards instead of just sideways, or you'd get far too much lees.
Some lees will always be transfered unless you're ok with parting with a lot more mead than I am! Plus right out of primary so much more is going to drop in the next couple weeks anyways that I find I always have to rack about 2 weeks to a month out of secondary into tertiary anyways.
Some lees will always be transfered unless you're ok with parting with a lot more mead than I am! Plus right out of primary so much more is going to drop in the next couple weeks anyways that I find I always have to rack about 2 weeks to a month out of secondary into tertiary anyways.
Personally I don't like having a spigot on containers that are going to be more than temporary (hour or so max) storage space. They can leak, and are a good place for spoilage organisms to hide.
I have several buckets with spigots for bottling though. You'll need a valve and a gasket, plus some sort of nut to tighten the whole thing up.
I have several buckets with spigots for bottling though. You'll need a valve and a gasket, plus some sort of nut to tighten the whole thing up.
I bought a spigoted primary fermentation bucket secondhand from a you-brew place that was moving to the big metal fermentors and I did use it for primary for one batch.
Didn't get much sediment transfer when I racked, but it did leak a little at first before I tightened it the rest of the way! It's mostly been too much of a pain to clean and reassemble for me to bother using again though, and you do lose more must that way, I'm OK with a little sludge from the first racking transferring, and thereafter there's usually not enough to get sucked up the racking hose.
I think the spigot on mine had the spigot on one side and threads on the other, foam (or something compressible) gaskets that seemed to seal pretty well if it was tight enough, and a plastic nut to tighten it all with, take a look around and see what you can find... Mostly what I didn't like was that the hole was low enough that I had to cock the spigot to the side or it would touch the floor. I think the setup they had at the you-brew let them hang over the edge of a shelf or something.
Didn't get much sediment transfer when I racked, but it did leak a little at first before I tightened it the rest of the way! It's mostly been too much of a pain to clean and reassemble for me to bother using again though, and you do lose more must that way, I'm OK with a little sludge from the first racking transferring, and thereafter there's usually not enough to get sucked up the racking hose.
I think the spigot on mine had the spigot on one side and threads on the other, foam (or something compressible) gaskets that seemed to seal pretty well if it was tight enough, and a plastic nut to tighten it all with, take a look around and see what you can find... Mostly what I didn't like was that the hole was low enough that I had to cock the spigot to the side or it would touch the floor. I think the setup they had at the you-brew let them hang over the edge of a shelf or something.
