Here’s an item you may have never seen before. Well, you may have seen plastic tubing before…but maybe not the long clear plastic cylinder with the black rubber and plastic components on it.
The item that is enclosed with the red rectangle is a racking cane. It’s a tool that allows you to transfer your beer from one vessel to another. Mostly likely as a beginner, you will use the racking cane to transfer your beer from the fermenting bucket to the bottling bucket. As you get more experienced and you buy more equipment, you may use it to move your beer to a secondary fermentation vessel or into a keg.
The cane part (the cylinder) generally hooks on the top of your bucket. The end of the cane has a rubber tip that allows beer in enter the cane indirectly. Here is my really crude drawing of how beer flows up the ranking cane tip.
With this tip, the possibility that the yeast sludge that has settled on the bottom of the bucket won’t get sucked through the cane and into wherever you are sending the beer.
This kit’s racking cane actually has an auto siphon on it. It allows you to start a siphon without having to start one with…your mouth…which isn’t really optimal. To work the auto siphon, you would push on the plunger on top of the cane to force air out of the bottom. When you pull up on the plunger, beer gets pulled in and your siphon should start. Pretty sweet!
Here are some other articles for homebrewing beginners:
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