Select a Category

Last 20 Posts

Auto Siphons – Moving the Wine

April 15th, 2009 by robin in wine making

We have discussed many pieces of equipment that are “must haves” when making your own wine. Some may say that today’s topic – the auto siphon isn’t necessary, but I argue that it makes things so much easier that making wine without it is just silly.

Auto Siphon

Some home winemakers use only a racking cane and tubing to transfer their wine. Technically, this method works just as well. However in order to get the wine moving, one must use their mouth on the free end of the tubing to create the suction. When making wine we work so hard to keep things sanitary. Therefore, I believe that using your mouth on one of the pieces of equipment simply throws all that hard work out the window, especially when there is something just as simple and cost effective that is much more sanitary.

An auto siphon, pictured above, is a hard tube with a cane that fits inside it and a removable cap for the bottom. When used in conjunction with the appropriate sized tubing, you can quickly create a suction that allows you to effortlessly transfer your wine (or any liquid for that matter) from one location to another. You simply insert the bottom of the siphon in the wine and the end of the tubing in the empty container to which you want to transfer; this could be a sanitized carboy or even a bottle. The action to start the suction is to pull up on the cane inside the tube and then pushing down quickly. This immediately creates the flow of wine through the tubing – you do not need to pump the cane, simply move it 1 or 2 times and you are done. One other fact I’d like to point out is that you do not need to drastically draw up on the inside cane. If you pull the cane beyond the surface of the liquid in which the auto siphon is submerged you are no longer building pressure inside the tube. You only need to draw the cane up slightly to get it to work.

An auto siphon also can make quick work of bottling your wine with the addition of a bottling tip. This is an economical and easy way for a home winemaker to bottle a batch of wine. We will discuss this nifty tool in our next article.