Homebrewing: Day 7: Rack to secondary fermenter

Today was day 7 after starting my first batch of beer. The bubbles were down to 1 or 2 a minute, so it was time to "rack" ...transfer the beer to a secondary fermenter (in my case, just another large bucket) for another week of fermenting. The idea is to give the yeast a chance to do more digesting, and get the old sludge removed. (click on any of the thumbnail images to see a larger pic)

The first step was to gently carry the bucket of fermenting beer from the back room closet out to the kitchen counter. It's not so bad carrying it, but for a runt my height to hoist the thing up onto the counter was entertaining to watch. I let it sit probably a good 20 minutes (to let it settle) whilst I washed some equipment and filled the secondary fermenter with sanitizer. Then it was time to pry the top off of the primary fermenter...

Oh man, that already was smelling like good beer!

Everything - including my arms and hands - had been covered with sanitizer to be safe. So I got the siphon started and positioned the hose in the bottom of the secondary to keep the wort from splashing around...

As soon as the liquid was flowing properly, I covered both buckets to keep out as much contaminant as possible, and let it run...

Here the siphoning has completed, the (sanitized) lid has been pushed down on the top of the secondary fermenter, the airlock (washed, sanitized, and filled most of the way with sanitizer) has been inserted, and a plastic cup (which I snipped a bit to ensure there was easy exhaust of CO2) was inverted over the airlock. The purpose of the plastic cup is to ensure that the lid of my new Cool Brewing Fermentation Cooler (a lined and insulated cooler bag with a zippered top) would be held off of the airlock. I also taped the sensor probe of my electric thermometer to the side of the fermenter, so that I can easily monitor the temperature with the cooler zipped closed...

And here's the proof of how well this Cool Brewing bag works! We keep our air conditioning set to 78F. With one litre of frozen water in the bag (two 500ml frozen water bottles just placed inside on the bottom of the bag, outside of the fermenter) ...the temperature of the fermenter is sitting at 69.2F. NICE!!

Next weekend: BOTTLING!