Racking to a Secondary with Mr. Beer
For my latest beer, an as yet to be named pilsner, I’ve tried a bit of a different brew process than that instructed by Mr. Beer. To add to that, I wanted to get it off of the trub to try and clear it up a bit and keep the flavor clean. My first couple beers have had the same odd, slightly off flavor to it, and the only thing similar between them has been sitting on the trub for 3 weeks. I 
figured it couldn’t hurt to get the beer into a new fermenter after a shorter period of time. Also, I wanted to test out a method of racking to a secondary that I could use to dry hop, as opposed to screwing it up like I did last time. I didn’t dry hop this time, or rack onto anything, but I did want to try the method before committing a good batch to it. So this expbeeriment was born.
It was a rather simple method of racking, using just vinyl tubing (7/16″, I believe) and gravity. It also involved a second Mr. Beer fermenter, and everything was sanitized of course. I put the empty fermenter below the full one, and hooked the tubing up to the nozzle of the full fermenter. To reduce splashing, I wrapped the 
remainder of the tubing around the bottom of the empty fermenter. This method worked perfectly, with minimal splashing and no spills.
My main goal was really just to avoid contamination, and so far so good. There aren’t any signs of contamination visible in the brew, just tiny air bubbles on the surface. Obviously I won’t know for sure until I taste the finished product, but I’m hopeful that this method will work once it comes time to rack onto a bed of hops or fruit to infuse some flavor. I’ll be taking a final gravity reading tomorrow, and I like to taste the sample when I’m done with it, so I should have a good idea of how it’s going to come out by the weekend. But that’s the good thing about brewing – no matter your mistakes, you still end up with beer.
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This looks tasty.
Derr what’s this?
2 comments on “Racking to a Secondary with Mr. Beer”
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Das Ale Haus 
Did this work well?
Yea, it works great for me. I do it on every brew now, but I’m now mainly using this racking method for batch priming before bottling. Same concept as racking to a secondary, and saves a lot of hassle that day.