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auto syphon vs kettle valve

Damrite

Grandmaster Brewer
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I always use the auto syphon to transfer my wort to fermenter, is it better to just use the kettle valve instead? I don't have a brew pump so I would have to do it by gravity.
Thanks
 
When I do a 10 gallon batch, I use my autosiphon, because I see no need to risk my back lifting it high enough to get it above my fermentor. 

When I do 5 gallon batches, it's easy enough to lift my kettle up onto this roller cart that I have, so that I can just open the valve and let it drain.
 
I pour it. Five gallons of course. Couldn't safely do that with ten. I only siphon when I don't want air to get into it.  So I pour the brewpot into a brew bucket where I can verify the volume and add water if necessary, then I pour it into a funnel to fill the carboy that it ferments in.  I want to get as much air into it as I can at this point. 
 
Maine Homebrewer said:
I pour it. Five gallons of course. Couldn't safely do that with ten. I only siphon when I don't want air to get into it.  So I pour the brewpot into a brew bucket where I can verify the volume and add water if necessary, then I pour it into a funnel to fill the carboy that it ferments in.  I want to get as much air into it as I can at this point.

I used to pour it also.  Pouring works just fine. 

I got an aquarium pump about a year ago and I've been using that to aerate ever since.
 
I open the kettle valve (with a stainless steel scrubber wedged over the inside of the valve) and direct the wort into the fermenter with a hose to maximize splashing and aeration.
 
There's no wrong or right way here. The benefit of using a valve is less equipment to clean after brewing, no heavy lifting if you have enough height to gravity drain, and the option of using a kettle screen to help keep hops from going in the fermentor. Of course the screen can get clogged, making it a slow painful draining process.
Using a siphon is easy and other than cleaning, doesn't have many negatives. You can use a reusable muslin bag for filtering as well. The bags can be a headache to clean, though.
Also, as mentioned before, you can always dump it all in a bucket if you don't care as much about the clarity or the hops going into the fermentor. I often do this for stouts, porters, and hefeweizen.
 
I open the kettle valve and drain through a stainless steel strainer until I'm near the end (valve runs dry), then pour through the strainer.  The strainer helps oxidize and pulls out solids.
 
When I was doing 5 gallon batches in an 8 gallon pot, it was still easy (relatively) to pour the contents into the fermenter.  When I switched over to a 15 gallon heavy duty kettle, even 5 gallon batches were getting too heavy to pour so I used gravity feed through the ball valve (whirlpool by hand first to try and move the trub into the center of the pot).

Now that I'm producing 10 gallon batches, I broke down and bought a pump.  I first whirlpool using the pump. let it settle, and then transfer through a Brewers Hardware Trub strainer (http://www.brewershardware.com/Trub-Strainer/), through a plate chiller, and then into the fermenter(s).

The addition of the pump makes all aspects of moving liquid around so much nicer.  I've gone from chronic back pain to bliss :)

-Dan
 
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