Transfer from Primary to
Secondary:
1. Sanitize your carboy. I use
a funnel to get the water into it. I do about 3 gallons of sanitizer.
Star San is my preferred sanitizer. I keep it in a carboy and use it many times over before dumping it.
2. Sit on a chair and hold the
carboy on its side in your lap. Swirl the sanitizer around by shaking the carboy
vigorously.
3. Leave the carboy on its side
for 2 minutes. Then rotate it a little, and leave it 2 more minutes. Then
rotate it again for 2 more minutes. Again, your goal is to get all surfaces of
the carboy to be in contact with the sanitizer for 2 minutes.
4. Dump the sanitizer into a clean sink or kitchen tub - you will need to use it again. When the sanitizer is almost gone from the carboy, stop, swirl it up so get any off the bottom, and then dump it into the tub. Sanitize your tubing (shorter wider tube for the spigot). Sanitize the stopper.
I have a Rubbermaid tub that I only use for brewing procedures.
I sanitize things like racking canes by getting sanitizer into the entire cane, and then coating the outside with sanitizer for 2 minutes.
5. Attach the sanitized tube to the spigot, remove the airlock from the primary fermenter lid, and let her fly into the carboy. You can take the lid off if you want (I did it many times) but now I just take the airlock out to prevent any unnecessary stuff floating in the air from getting into the beer. If you don’t take the airlock out, the water in the airlock will get sucked into the beer, which wouldn’t be the end of the world, but avoid it if you can.
6. Tilt the bucket at the end to
get as much as you can into the secondary.
Whether fermenting in a bucket or a carboy, you can use a 2x4 to tilt the carboy. This helps pool the beer and allows you to transfer as much as possible.
7. If applicable to your situation, use a wine thief to pull a sample for a hydrometer reading.
An easy way to sanitize your wine thief is by filling a hydrometer test jar with sanitizers and setting the wine thief inside of it.
A wine thief makes it easy to pull a sample from a carboy.
Here is the hydrometer in a test jar.
8. Put the stopper and airlock into the carboy and away you go. You might have to wait until the stopper is dry before it will stay very well in the carboy mouth. If you have to, you can tape it down until it will stay on its own. Now put the carboy in a room that is 55-70 and wait. (If you are sure fermentation is complete, you can store it cooler. If you think some additional fermentation might yet take place, keep it a bit warmer).