"My brother bought a couple of these from Amazon. You stick the working end into the wash the other end into another vessel and giggle the working end in the wash. The siphon starts in just a couple of seconds. These are all I'll use from now on. They're great for racking my sugar washes.

http://www.amazon.com/Su...F+6%27+Siphon+Hose"

That doesn't look as easy as they claim John. Do you have one of those????

"Scotty,

I have the style Red mentions. I have a big one for my fermenting buckets/carboys and a small one for my one gallon jugs and I can tell you that they are very easy to use. Just a few little pumps and away they go.

When I bottle, I spray the bottling bucket and outsides of all hoses with some StarSan then dump about a half gallon of StarSan in, draw off a few ounces via the bottling hoses & wand to get them sanitized. Then I use the siphon to return the remaining StarSan to the storage container so the siphon is santized. At that point everything is ready to go ... a few quick pumps and the beer is happily on its way from the fermenter to the bottling bucket. It's very, very easy. And as Red mentioned, the bottom cap does a pretty darn good job when racking.

I use the small one for my apple wine and for small batches of rice wine. It's sized for use with the gallon jugs. Same deal ... just very easy. And they clean up pretty easy too.

The only thing I would suggest is that you don't short yourself with the tubing. Get at least five or six feet ... that'll give you plenty of hose to put in the receiving bucket/jug so it doesn't slip out when you do your initial pumping ... or when you need to fuss with your source bucket to get it on an angle.

In any case, I really like the newer style siphons and I think they're waaaayyy easier to use (and more sanitary) than a traditional racking cane. I also remember seeing a stainless steel auto-siphon on the web somewhere ... I'll try to find where I saw it. I'm generally not a big fan of plastic, but I must admit that I have no complaints.

BTW: It's good to hear from you gentlemen. I've been completely socked time-wise ... haven't had much time to stop in to say hi.

Regards,
--JB"

I've been using auto-siphons for years, and I'd be crippled without one, anymore. I also bottle with the auto-siphon on one end of the tube and the spring-valve bottling wand on the other. The only limitation I've encountered is that you can get the transferred liquid too hot for the black plastic siphon parts. Ok, it was probably boiling, so I can't really complain, but I've got one auto-siphon that doesn't work well anymore.