We’re not kidding when we advise you to not walk away from the wort as you boil it for the hops addition. Watch how quickly that can happen!

Here’s how Shelley handles draining the grain bag after it comes out of the oven. The top of the mesh bag cools very quickly and is easy to handle. With a bit of careful manipulation you can turn the bag to apply pressure to squeeze out more wort with your fingers.

Use your own judgement! You know what you can handle regarding hot things in the kitchen. If it’s too hot for you, use a spoon or fork (careful not to poke the bag open) instead of your hands.

If you don’t have a cooking thermometer, you can get to “good enough” by watching your water. The instructions describe it as simmering at the bottom instead of the top; here’s what we mean.

The trick to siphoning is to put the receiving vessel lower than the source vessel like so:

To start the flow, you’ll need to give the siphon a few pumps.

When you get ready to bottle and to use the bottling wand, practice with some plain water first to get the hang of it.

If you have trouble taking the tube off of the siphon, run it under hot water. That should make it easier to get them apart.