Siphoning Home Brewed Pilsner Beer

"Hi, I'm Mark Emiley on behalf of Expert Village. In this segment, I'm going to teach you how to siphon or rack your beer. Now this process can actually be one of the trickier things for people to pick up. There are several tools out there such as the "Siphon Starter" which can really help you out. However, I'm going to assume that you have not bought these, and teach you how to do this with the most basic equipment. The simplest way to start a siphon is to fill a racking cane and hose filled with water, pinch off the end, then dip the end of the racking cane into your beer and then open up the other end into the vessel in which you want to siphon your beer into. To do this, we are going to be filling the racking cane out of the sink with water, and then using this to start our siphon. You want to keep the bottom of the hose underneath the level of the beer or water that is flowing in. As you are racking from the top, you want to keep the end of the racking cane underneath the top level, but not down in any muck that may be forming at the bottom of your fermenter. You will keep this working its way down as your levels of water drop. As many people have problems with racking, we recommend practicing with water as I'm doing now. As you get close to the end of your racking operation, you're going to want to gently tilt your bucket and keep the head of the racking cane just under the beer level so that you can pull up all the beer that you can while not picking up the sludge. After you are done racking, put your sanitized airlock and stopper back onto your carboy. While it may be tempting to start siphoning with your own mouth, do not do this as your mouth is full of plenty of microbes which will contaminate your beer."