Fermtech Mini Auto-Siphon With Tubing – Item of the Day
Every day I bring you an item on Amazon that I personally use or has been purchased by many members of the audience and I have researched enough to recommend.
Today’s TSP Amazon Item of the day is the Fermtech Mini Auto-Siphon With Tubing. As many of you know I am a huge fan of small batch mead making. In fact at one of my workshops I demonstrated why by making a batch of mead, racking a batch into the secondary and bottling a batch and did all of that in under 30 minutes.
I have been making mead, wines, ciders and beers for a long time, like 20 years in all. But when I really got into small batch meads (one gallon) a few years ago when Michael Jordan showed me how fast and simple it could be.
The problem was for 20 years I made 5 gallon batches and a big racking cane was just a pain in the ass for siphoning a gallon, so I checked to see if there was a mini cane and found a bunch of options and settled on this one.
I like that it comes with 6 feet of tubing. Frankly I cut it in half and find 3 feet about perfect for transferring from one container to another (racking). I no longer use a bottling wand for bottling, instead I rack to a 2.5 gallon carboy and use the spigot on it to fill my bottles.
I looked for a 2.5 gallon carboy to recommend on Amazon, they have them but DO NOT buy one there, I get mine from Uline. The ones on Amazon are all like 20-35 bucks, which is just stupid. You can get them here on Uline or 14 bucks a piece. And yes I have fermented in them as well for larger batches.
Okay back to the racking cane/auto-siphon. This thing rocks, you put your hose on it, put it into the vessel you want to rack to, pump it one to two times and it starts flowing. I rack from a small step stool and set that on my counter and put my receiving vessel in the sink. Makes clean up a snap. With small batch meads, ciders and wines you will transfer each batch at least twice and the Fermtech Mini Auto-Siphon With Tubing is the easiest and fastest way to get the job done.
Remember you can always find all of our reviews at TspAz.com
P.S. – While I focused on using this for making mead, ciders and wines above, if you check out the reviews on Amazon; you’ll find a ton of very happy kombucha brewers that use this item as well.
I love the items of the day!
How do you get this siphon and tubing clean after? Do you have a little bowl with that star clean or whatever the cleaner you talked about that you run through, or is there another way to clean these?
I turn the hot water on the sink, I grip the tubing and the cane against the spigot with my hand and force hot water though it. I rinse out the tube with hot water and shake it hard with my hand over the top. There is a little part on the bottom that pops off, I take it off and clean it out with hot water.
I take the tubing out side and spin it fast to dry it out and just let the plastic parts dry standing up on a towel.
People make it way more complicated than necessary, the key is hot water and as soon as you are done with it, clean it.
I’ve got the two yeasts you recommended. How much do you use on each batch? The entire packet? One of each?
I use one pack of each as it is so cheap and that gets a rolling fermentation going fast.
That said if you are doing two batches in one day you could easily split one pack to two batches. I would not however, save half a pack, do to a risk of contamination.
FWIW the packs are sufficient for up to 5 gallons.
I bought this exact item a few weeks ago. Glad to see I made a good choice.