any homebrewers?

[Repsychler]

I try to be surgical clean with my brewing procedures, especially since I'm often making fruit wines and not going through a long boil as with beer.
Don't worry about trying to syphon through the vent hole, take the lid off. I tend to set the lid on the bucket, just pushed over enough for the racking cane to get in.
Going into secondary, you should probably worry more about oxygen than contaminates, since the beer does have alcohol in it now.

Oh, and I currently have a batch of strawberry wine in secondary (Needs to be racked again I think) What to my fellow brewers have going?