How to Rack Homemade Wine, Beer, Cider and Mead using a Simple Syphon

Racking is the process of transferring homemade wine, beer, cider or mead from one vessel to another, using a simple syphon and gravity to help you. Bottling later involves a similar process.

This is a reader-supported site and I am an Amazon affiliate. That means that if you purchase a product or service using my one of my links, the company compensates me at no cost to you. I only recommend books, products and services I personally use. And this is racking with a syphon from a demijohn.

Racking is intended to be gentle and efficient and a process which, when done correctly, does not disturb the sediment or waste too much liquid, but instead helps to clear it. You generally rack when the first main fermentation has finished. When you do this your brew may start fermenting again briefly, which is absolutely fine and to be expected.

However don’t be tempted to rack too often. Every time you go through the following process you expose the drink to the air, thereby risking exposure to bacteria and contaminants. You also don’t want your drink to oxidise before it’s even been bottled.

Why do we Rack Homemade Drinks?

We rack to move liquid into a clean, sterile vessel leaving the sediment behind. This is because these solids at the bottom can lead to an off-taste if your brew sits on it for too long. Solids can also prevent drinks from clearing since, every time you move the vessel, the sediment is disturbed. Racking is important and your recipe may call for you to rack your brew once, twice and maybe even three times before bottling it. 

Occasionally you will come across a white wine or mead recipe that doesn't need racking. Homebrewing ingredients kits like Winebuddy, Solomon Grundy SG Wines and Festival kits generally don't need racking, because they tend not to include many solids.

Festival Cider Kit with all the ingredients to make cider included. These kinds of kits typically don't need racking because most of the solids are taken out when the ingredients are prepared.

But most drinks made from scratch do, particularly ciders. Even if a recipe doesn’t specifically state to rack it but there’s loads of sediment, I’ve been known to rack it anyway.

Two demijohns of Cider which had just been put into demijohns. That muddy look is apple and yeast particles. They cleared remarkably quickly on their own, leaving about an inch of thick sediment at the bottom of the vessels. Racking got the liquid into freshly sterilised demijohns, which helped to speed up clearing as well as avoiding any 'off-taste' from the cider sitting too long on the sediment.

What Causes Sediment?

Sediment at the bottom of a brewing bucket or demijohn will vary in make up and quantity. It will include herb, fruit and vegetable solids if you used them. It will also include the remnants of any yeast nutrients that you added and a lot of dead yeast particles. That's because yeast reproduces during fermentation and, once it has finished fermenting, the dead yeast floats to the bottom to join any other particulates there. 

What kind of Syphon should I use?

I recommend using a Simple Syphon which is made up of a piece of syphon tubing, a sediment trap and a small tap to control the flow of liquid and help to avoid waste. The syphon tubing is food grade to avoid unwanted chemicals getting into your drink. There is a rigid tube fitted into one end of the tubing with a detachable cup at the bottom. This filters out the majority of solid particles and dead yeast cells. A syphon tap fits into the other end of the tubing, and enables you to stop and start the liquid flow which makes life much easier, especially when you come to bottling later on.

A simple syphon makes racking and bottling your homebrew much easier, whilst avoiding unnecessary waste.

How to Rack Homemade Wine, Beer, Cider or Mead

You will need

• The original vessel (I'm going to refer to this as a demijohn, you may be using something different) containing your drink (let's say wine for the purposes of this), with the sediment settled on the bottom 

• A second demijohn big enough to take all the contents of the first

• A simple syphon

• Cleaner/steriliser

• Either a fresh bung and airlock, or be ready to clean and sterilise the existing one.

Method

1. Clean and sterilise all the equipment you're going to use, including the inside of the syphon tube by passing your sterilising liquid through it.

2. Gently move the demijohn containing the wine with sediment on to a high surface, such as a counter top or a chair. 

3. Ensure the sediment is still at the bottom of the demijohn - it may have been disturbed when you moved the vessel so leave it for a bit before racking so it settles back down again.

4. Put the second sterilised demijohn on the floor below the first one containing the liquid. Or a chair, if that's below it. Wherever you choose to put the second demijohn, it must be below the first so that gravity comes into play, to transfer the liquid. If they are not one below the other this process won't work. 

5. Remove the airlock and bung from the first demijohn and, if you are going to use them again, wash and re-sterilise them.

6. Put the sediment trap end of the simple syphon gently down into the demijohn. If there’s a lot of sediment, you could secure the syphon in the top of the demijohn with pegs. That minimises movement so the sediment isn't swirled around as you syphon off the liquid. 

7. Gently suck* the tubing end of the syphon until liquid starts travelling up the tube, then pop that end into the second demijohn. Be very quick to avoid spillages. It can help to lay newspaper on the floor to catch drips. Your wine will start transferring to the second demijohn through the tube.

8. As the clean demijohn starts getting full or when you start hitting the sediment in the bottom, whichever happens first, turn off the tap on the simple syphon to stop the flow. 

You are trying to strike a balance between not letting too much sediment into the second demijohn, whilst not having too big a gap in it either. It is better to get a bit of sediment in the second demijohn rather than having a crystal clear second demijohn which is nowhere near full. Too much oxygen at the top is not your friend. I have been known to put the remaining sediment in the first demijohn through a coffee filter to extract as much liquid from it as possible to fill that gap. It may be not be crystal clear, but it does fill some of the space in the second vessel.  The small amount of sediment that gets in the second time will simply sink to the bottom again. 

If you end up with a large gap in the second demijohn between the surface of the liquid and the neck, you could top that up with bottled water, or sediment that has been put through a filter as above, or grape juice (if it's wine), or a mix of sugar and water. Or simply boiled, cooled water.

9. Finally, fit the sterilised bung and airlock into the second demijohn.

* if you're not a sucker, you could use an automatic syphon which you pump instead. You can get 4.5 litre automatic syphons for use in a demijohn, or 23 litre automatic syphons for use in a bucket.

When it’s time to bottle your wine, cider or mead later, use gravity in exactly the same way - see more about bottling your homemade wine, beer, cider and mead here.

Want to learn more about Wine Making?

Book recommendation:

Wine Making - a Guide to Growing, Nurturing and Producing by Kieron Atkinson and Jane Travis, with a foreward by Oz Clarke. Covers all aspects of wine production, whether that's a dozen bottles of wine created with love from your kitchen table, or thousands of cases from a commercial vineyard. An interesting read, even if you have no aspirations to start your own vineyard.

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