when I rack my brew from carboy to the primary to mix it with the priming sugar to bottle it, I am getting alot of foaming in the line, I'm using a racking cane with the tip on it, and a siphon hose of the proper size. when the brew comes up through the cane there is no bubbles in it, and where the hose hooks onto the cane I make sure there is no airbubble there. but about half way down the siphon line there is some bubbles forming. there is no holes in the siphon hose. but when I get all the brew into the primary, there is probably 3 inches of foam on the top. I'm worried that imp losing alot of my beer fizz with this foaming, does any one have any ideas on how to reduce this problem? thanks
I don't have this problem, but I can make a few suggestions.
First, make sure you aren't carrying over too much trub or yeast; solid particles like yeast etc. are nucleation sites for bubbles. Also, the protein in the trub will enhance foam formation. Next, make sure your fermentation has mostly finished. This will give time for CO2 dissolved in the new brew to come out of solution. Depending on the yeast you use and the fermentation temp. this time can vary quite a lot, but should be on the order of a week or maybe less for ales. Next, make certain that the fit between the tube and the cane is good (you indicate you have already done this). If the fit is not good, the bubbles (which will be air instead of CO2) will be very small where they enter the flow and get larger as they progress, so it is not always obvious where the leak is.
I suspect the foam is CO2 outgassing from the new brew and forming foam in protein in the brew.
Lastly, unless it is oxygen getting pulled into the beer, there is little chance it will do any direct harm even if it foams. Even if it is oxygen, I don't think it will do much harm, except the priming sugar will go to CO2 instead of CO2 and ethanol. There are some that will say oxidation is a possible problem, but if the beer is not hot, I don't think there is likely to be a problem with this. Between the time you add the priming sugar and the time you get it bottled (presuming you prime just before you bottle) a negligible amount of the sugar will be fermented. I used to put caps on the bottles and not crimp them for a half hour or so to let CO2 formed push out any oxygen because I had read in a book that this was a good idea. One day instead of a cap, I put an uninflated balloon on a bottle of just primed ale to see how much CO2 was formed in a half hour. The balloon did not inflate at all. Therefore, I reason that the amount of CO2 formed in a half hour or so is trivial and you should get good carbonation even if the beer is dead flat when you add it to the bottles.
The only possible significant negative in my opinion would be if the foam indicates that there is too much protein left in the brew. If so, you can get "volcano beer" that starts foaming when you open a finished bottle and doesn't stop until all the beer is foam. A friend of mine had this problem. It is funny to watch someone open one but the whole batch is a do-over.
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