Racking to Secondary

Day 5: Racking the beer to a secondary five gallon carboy took about an hour, cleanup included. Note to self: Racking with the kit's fancy racking cane is really a two person operation unless you find some sanitary way to straighten and clamp the siphon hose to the secondary. The racking cane has a sort of cover/gasket designed to fit snugly onto a wide mouth plastic carboy. Unfortunately, it has a bit of slop in the fit of my 6.5 gallon glass primary carboy. Which means you have to use one hand to apply even pressure to the seal.

At the same time you've got to guide and maintain the sanitized siphon hose down into the secondary without contaminating things. Your feet end up doing this task.

In order to activate the siphon, you have a tiny air filter you blow through while crimping the hose with your other hand. Then you release the crimp when the beer starts to flow.

This is the point where the hose will pop out of the secondary and douse the floor, the inside of the closet, the insulating blanket on a chair nearby, and any paper products within a yard radius.

Well, at least I know the brew smells like good beer!

Final gravity has dropped to 1.014 at 68º from an OG of 1.052 at 60º, so the alcohol content seems a touch higher (6.1%) than the recipe predicted (3.8%). My guess is I got more boil-off than predicted. Need to calibrate the carboy to a five gallon mark.

The specific gravity sample tastes beer-like, but very bitter, with a butterscotch malt aroma. And very, very yeasty. This must be the definition of green.

Respiration is still building pressure inside the secondary. I haven't yet observed any bubbles passing through the airlock. But the dark brown kraeusen scum was left on the walls of the primary, along with a solid quarter inch of pale yeast cake.

A bit more air space than expected
 in the 5 gallon  plastic carboy.

I'm hopeful that in a few weeks this will be a pretty decent beer.