Reddit reviews MIni Auto-Siphon
We found 19 Reddit comments about MIni Auto-Siphon. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
Fits in 1-gallon jugsPrecision designed for smooth, leak-free operationSingle stroke action draws a Siphon without disturbing sedimentSimple to sanitize, easy to UseRemovable tip prevents siphoning of sediment
Fermtech Mini Auto-Siphon https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0064ODL1G/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_O18IBbH9HNE3C
If you're interested in cider, here's an easy method that doesn't use the kit.
Sweet ciders add another couple steps, but I can go into that too if you'd like. Once you depreciate the cost of the gear over several batches, it's quite cheap compared to commercial cider.
This one will work
https://smile.amazon.com/Fermtech-Mini-Auto-Siphon-3-8-inch/dp/B0064ODL1G/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1494300266&sr=8-3&keywords=auto+siphon
6.5gal plastic fermentor - $17.88 (Don't bother with glass fermentors!)
6.5gal Bottling Bucket - $18.81
Hydrometer - $12.99
3 3-piece airlocks - $5.00 - trust me, they'll break.
stopper not needed with plastic fermentor
Bottle filler - $5.09
10 ft 3/8th inch tubing - $10.99
Auto siphon - $8.76
don't need a bottle brush with plastic fermentor
144 bottle caps - $5.78
Use any pure sugar for priming - just calculate it right. I use cane sugar without issue.
Wing bottle capper - $15.48
Dial thermometer not really needed if you're slapping on an adhesive one, but definitely get this for a hot liquor tun if you're doing that.
Wine thief - $11.20
I never used a funnel or fermentor brush - you can use anything to clean but I suggest Oxyclean rinses
32oz Star San - $20.70
Adhesive Thermometer - $4.84
Total Cost: $137.52. Not ridiculous savings BUT you get 32oz of star san instead of 4oz of io-star which will last you years and sanitizer is expensive. You get a plastic fermentor instead of glass which is so much easier to clean and keep light out. Glass carboys are good for aging and aging is good for wine or special beers. Focus on simple ales that don't require it first.
The real savings come when you do all grain and make your own equipment. You can save $137 alone if you buy a big stainless steel pot and slap on a dial thermometer with a ball valve.
If it's a 1 gallon batch get the mini siphon:
https://www.amazon.com/Fermtech-Mini-Auto-Siphon-3-8-inch/dp/B0064ODL1G/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1498080342&sr=8-2&keywords=brew+siphon
if its 3-6 gallons get the big one:
https://www.amazon.com/Regular-Auto-Siphon-feet-Tubing/dp/B00AYHS7ZY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1498080342&sr=8-1&keywords=brew+siphon
They all work fine.
I've made some slight modifications to this, mostly to make it easier to follow. I've also included steps that should be quite obvious to someone who's done any homebrewing before, but I wish someone had told me when I first started.
I'd link to the original, for the sake of attribution, but the user who posted this deleted their account not long after I wrote everything down.
This will produce a sweet fruit-mead (or melomel). WARNING this will be far more alcoholic than it tastes, and should not be consumed if you've recently taken antibiotics, or suffered gastric distress, as the yeast culture will still be alive, and will happily colonize your intestines if your gut microbiome is too fucked up.
Equipment: Most of this stuff will be a good deal cheaper at your local homebrew store, but I've included amazon links (also to the yeast).
At least 2 (3 is better, for reasons we'll get to) 1-gallon jugs (I don't recommend scaling this up), glass preferred. Add an extra jug for each additional batch. This one includes a drilled stopper and airlock
Drilled stoppers (or carboy bungs) and airlocks, non-drilled rubber stoppers.
An autosiphon and food-safe tubing.
Food-safe sanitizing solution (I recommend StarSan).
An electric kettle with temperature selector is useful, but not needed.
If you want to bottle it rather than just keeping a jug in your fridge:
Empty beer or wine bottles (just save your empties), capping or corking equipment, caps or corks, and a bottling wand.
Ingredients:
2.5 lbs (1130g) honey, clover recommended.
A cup (approximately 250ml) or so of fruit (I recommend blackberries, and I strongly recommend against cherries, other recipes have worked for me, but this yields a very medical flavor with cherries).
1 packet Lalvin EC-1118 yeast (a champagne yeast notable for its hardiness, its ability to out-compete other microorganisms, and its high alcohol tolerance).
Optional: potassium sorbate (to reduce yeast activity when our ferment is done), pectic enzyme (aka pectinase - for aesthetic purposes). Both are also available in bulk.
Process:
Day 1:
Mix sanitizing solution with clean water at specified proportions in one of your jugs, filling the jug most of the way. Stopper it, shake it. Remove stopper, set it down wet-side-up (to keep it sterile), pour the fluid to another jug. There will be foam left behind, this is fine, don't bother to rinse it or anything. At low concentrations this stuff is totally fine to drink, and won't ruin your fermentation or flavor.
Add honey to jug, all of it.
If you have a kettle, and your jug is glass, heat water to around 160F (71 Celsius), pour a volume into your jug roughly equal to the amount of honey present. Fix sterile stopper to jug. Shake until honey and water are thoroughly combined. The heat will make it FAR easier to dissolve the honey. Set aside for an hour or so while it cools. Add clean water 'til mostly full, leaving some room for fruit and headspace.
If you're missing a kettle, or using a plastic jug, this is gonna be a little harder. Fill most of the way with clean water (I recommend using a filter) leaving some room for fruit and headspace. Fix sterile stopper, shake 'til honey and water are thoroughly combined. This will take a while, and you will need to shake VERY vigorously.
At this point, you should have a jug mostly-full of combined honey and water. To this, add fruit (inspecting thoroughly for mold, don't want to add that). Then dump in a single packet of the Lalvin EC-1118 yeast, don't bother rehydrating it first or anything, it'll be fine going straight in. Add pectic enzyme if you have it (this does nothing to the flavor, it just makes the end product less cloudy). Stopper it up, shake it again. This jug now contains your "must" (pre-ferment mead).
Pour some sterilizing fluid in a bowl, put a carboy bung/drilled stopper in the bowl, with an airlock. Ensure full immersion. Let sit for a minute. Replace stopper with your bung/drilled stopper, affix airlock. Fill airlock with clean water, sanitizing fluid, or vodka. Rinse the stopper, fix it to your jug of sanitizing fluid.
Place must-jug in a dark place, I recommend a cabinet or closet.
Days 2-7:
Retrieve jug, give it a little jostle. Nothing so vigorous as to get your mead into the airlock, but enough to upset it. This is to release CO2 buildup, and to keep any part of the fruit from drying out. The foaming from the CO2 release may be very vigorous. Do this over a towel for your first batch. If the foam gets into your airlock, clean your airlock and reaffix it. Perform this jostling procedure at least once per day, more is better.
Day 8:
Final jostling, I recommend doing this in the morning.
Day 9:
let it sit, we want the sediment to settle.
Day 10: Time to get it off the sediment
Shake sterilizing fluid jug. Affix tubing to siphon. Put the siphon in the sterilizing fluid, shake the jug a little just to get the whole siphon wet. Siphon fluid into either a third container or a large bowl. This is all to sterilize both the inside and outside of your siphoning system.
Remove siphon from jug. Give it a couple pumps to empty it of any remaining fluid. Place siphon in your mead jug, leaving the end of the tubing in sterilizing fluid while you do this.
Take the jug that you just siphoned the sterilizing fluid from. Dump what fluid remains in it. Place the end of the tubing in this jug, then siphon the mead into it. Make no attempt to get the last bit of mead into your fresh container, it's mostly dead yeast and decomposing fruit.
Add potassium sorbate if you have it, stopper the jug, place it in your fridge.
Clean the jug you started in. Clean your siphon and tubing.
Day 11:
Let it sit
Day 12 or later: time to transfer again, or bottle it.
If you no longer have a jug full of sterilizing fluid, make one.
Repeat the earlier steps to sterilize the siphoning system, with a bottling wand attached to the end of the tubing if you want to bottle.
Sterilize your bottles or a clean jug, either with fluid or heat.
Siphon mead either into your bottles or jug. Stopper/cap/cork when done.
Put your jug/bottles in the fridge.
The yeast culture is still alive, and will continue to ferment. The fridge, and optional potassium sorbate, will merely slow this down. I recommend drinking any bottles within two months, to avoid a risk of bursting bottles. The mead should already be tasty at this point, but usually tastes much better after a couple more weeks.
EDIT: Fixed the formatting up a bit.
Cool add-ons to the Brooklyn Brew Shop 1G kits (which I liked):
http://www.amazon.com/Beer-Wort-Wine-Refractometer-Scale/dp/B006GG0TDK/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1398314617&sr=8-3&keywords=refractometer+dual+scale
http://www.amazon.com/Fermtech-MINI-Mini-Auto-Siphon/dp/B0064ODL1G/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1398314371&sr=8-1&keywords=mini+auto+siphon
http://www.amazon.com/Brewcraft-Fermtech-Plastic-Bottle-Filler/dp/B0064OEE9O/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1398314427&sr=8-2&keywords=bottling+wand
Starsan you don't have to rinse off, and it really helps you to be confident in your sanitizing abilities.
http://www.amazon.com/Five-Star-FS_SS_16-San--16oz/dp/B00FA86OZ2/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1398314939&sr=8-3&keywords=star+san
http://www.amazon.com/Bottle-Capper-Red-Baron-Homebrew/dp/B000Q6ARMY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1398315533&sr=8-1&keywords=bottle+capper
http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f39/fermentation-temperature-control-440670/
Anyway, enough. Don't overthink it. Those kits are so freaking easy to do, my first batch turned out pretty drinkable despite some temperature screw ups during mashing.
You can watch homebrewfinds.com for deals on any items I listed, and you can even better, get them from your local home brew shop.
Note, if you think you want to do bigger batches later, the mini auto-siphon and any tiny kettles are going to be a waste of money... the refractometer, starsan, capper, etc. will still be quite useful.
I have a Balcones barrel as well, bought from the same place. I ended up having to buy a siphon with a smaller diameter that barely fit in the top opening. This one worked: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0064ODL1G/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1
I'm assuming this is from Brooklyn Brew Shop (I started the same way, have the same carboy :P ). That's pretty normal, it will settle!
What I did for my second kit from them was a cold crash. Stuck it in my fridge for 5 days and then bottled. I was warned this may kill the yeast/make bottle conditioning impossible but it turned out just fine. I can't say it will always work, but for me it did.
My first batch was super carbonated (possibly just too much sugar. Be careful! Small batches mean small miscalculations can make huge differences).
Also, be very careful when siphoning, the yeast can kick up very easily, especially if you don't cold crash. You will want some yeast for bottle conditioning, but the suspended yeast should be enough. If you can, buy a mini auto siphon. Makes siphoning way easier. I won't go back to just a racking cane. Also a clip if you can, or just a steady hand :)
Has anyone ever used one of the cheap red cappers? I'm on a budget, so I went with this. I'm planning on reusing Samuel Adams bottles from a variety pack I bought. I've got a Brooklyn Brewshop kit (afternoon wheat), a mini siphon {here}, and strainer, but no bottling bucket (I was told I can use a pot and siphon for just a gallon). Also got caps. Anything else I really need to get? I'm looking to start the process next week.
It is fairly easy to get large equipment like vessels and burners locally in India but it's the little stuff that makes your brew day/bottling day easier like the bottle fillers and auto siphons which are kind of difficult/expensive to get hold off. Depending on which city you are in hops, malts and yeast can be easy to source especially if you have any brewpubs around. The selection of hops is again very limited so like like /u/chino_brews suggested you could get bulk hops from YCH. Dry brewing yeast is available (Fermentis, Lallemand) but it is mostly sold in 500g bricks so I would recommend picking up some 11g packets as well. You should definitely pick up a large 16/32 oz bottle of StarSan and a tub of PBW or something similar for cleaning and sanitizing. I would also pick up a hand held bottle capper, a racking cane, a couple of airlocks and a spigot for bottling. Almost everything else can be improvised or jugaad if you're a little handy :)
Relax, don't worry, you made alcohol! isn't it neat?
get yourself something like this, it will help a ton. (your local homebrew supply store is probably cheaper)
1st question: 2 weeks is fine. If you want to wait another week or two that's fine too.
2nd question: see the auto-siphon above. use it to siphon all of the liquid above the yeast cake that's settled on the bottom.
3rd question: For our purposes, I like to think of gravity as a measure of sugar content. Since yeast eat sugars and poop CO^2 + alchohol, the gravity will drop during fermentation. This allows us to measure our alcohol content.
Fermtech Mini Auto-Siphon https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0064ODL1G/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_pmjzDbV80QZA9
This will fit a 1 gallon growler jug. Haven't seen anything smaller. That looks to be bigger than a gallon so check measurements to make sure it can reach bottom.
Chill it in your... dorm fridge or an ice bath. That will encourage yeast and other trub to drop out. Then you can use a racking cane and tubing or something like this to transfer it to bottles. If those are no goes, you can do a careful "still pour" - slowly pour it trying to leave trub behind. PET soda bottles will do the trick for bottles.
In my experience the quality of your cold brew is also highly dependent on your filtering system. I use the Hario mizudashi because it has a very fine filter and produces extremely clean cold brew. I prefer the cold brew from the Mizudashi even with lower quality beans to simply submerging coffee in water and filtering it later. I use a 10:1 ratio in the Mizudashi and I like drinking it at that strength. 4:1 is meant to be diluted by half, so keep that in mind.
If you're making cold brew by simply submerging it in water and filtering it later, I'd recommend putting the coffee in something like this and seeing if you like it better. However it's still possible to make good cold brew without doing this, just make sure you leave all the sludge at the bottom and filter out the good stuff. A siphon like this which is commonly used for home brewing beer could be the perfect tool.
EDIT: as far as beans go, try making cold brew with the cheapest possible option if you have a low budget. Some grocery store coffee will work just fine as long as it's made well. Cold brew is perhaps the most forgiving method of coffee brewing.
Were you talking about this guy?
I also use it for 1 gallon batches and it's a pain, but worth the $10 you pay. I think it's problem is that their 5 gallon version is great (still using mine 6 years later), but they couldn't scale it down properly.
There's the Mini Auto Siphon, made purposely for 1-2 gallon jugs.
So I’m not sure where I pulled this recipe from, it was probably inspired from another webpage but with my own twist and I’m still changing it as I go. So I originally tried 150g peeled ginger in a ninja single serve blender, filled to max line with water which was ~310ml and blended to hell. Then I put in pot, heated to ~65°C (150°F) and added 53g turbinado sugar (~4Tbsp) and 43g (~3 Tbsp) table sugar. I stirred for a few minutes to dissolve, covered and let sit about 30 min. Then I strained out the ginger muck, topped up with cold water to the 1L mark and chilled in fridge to room temp. Once it’s about room temp I put in the GBP grains to prevent any thermal shock. I also only use bottled (preferably Poland spring) water. Now the most recent batch was roughly quadruple of that but not topped up to 4L, instead closer to 3.5L making it a bit more concentrated. I let mine ferment fully dry and then force carbonate in a tiny 1.75 gal keg. If you wanna do swing tops I have one conditioning now with 3g of sugar added to the ~400ml that was in the bottle (I got them on amazon I think they’re 16oz bottles and this one was slightly under filled) I actually used 6ml from my cocktail simple syrup (1:1) and just put it in the bottle the other day.
Edit: sorry I wrote my recipes in real units and have to convert because... well Murica
Second edit: don’t forget to feed the grains! Even if you’re not gonna make another batch to drink, make a small 1L batch and give it a few hours on a vented container (I like using mason jars with these https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01H7G1NF0?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_share )
before putting in the fridge! Once in fridge their metabolic rate will come to a crawl and they’ll be in a solution of food and won’t starve (not for a good long while at least)
Third edit! Lol: the 5”? OXO strainer is ideal for harvesting grains and I also use one of these https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0064ODL1G?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_share to remove the bulk of the gingerbeer into another container before harvesting the grains out. It leaves all the muck leftover at the bottom and out of finished product. Also, most recent batch was neglected while heating and hit a boil so I’ll let you know how that changed it. I made one batch with fresh squeezed blackberry juice pressed and filtered as not to contaminate the grains and while it was wonderful it was a PITA. I plan to repeat but with some sacrificial amount of grains so I can just add mashed blackberry and let the culture extract the bulk of flavor then toss those grains with the vegetative waste at the bottom
Mini auto siphon. Great for decanting yeast starters without kicking much yeast up into suspension.