# How many carboys can you degas with a medical pump



## Arkansan07 (Feb 10, 2014)

Hey guys I know alot of people use vacuum pumps to degas wine. My family grows blackberries and Im thinking of making a 30 gallon batch this summer and it would be nice to be able to degas all those carboys at one time. Will one of the medical pumps handle multiple carboys? If not, what kind of pump should i get to handle 5 carboys or so at a time?


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## sour_grapes (Feb 10, 2014)

I don't see any problem with this plan. It may take a little longer, but still better than doing it individually 5 times. 

The limiting factor is not only the pumping capacity of the pump but also the conduction of the tubes you use to hook all the carboys together. Use a larger size tube if you can.


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## Arkansan07 (Feb 10, 2014)

Lol physics is not a strong point of mine. So will the vacuum eventually reach a high point and maintain the pressure? Im using the 3/8 hose but I could bump it up to 1/2 or even larger.


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## jamesngalveston (Feb 10, 2014)

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CZUkY8T4CY[/ame]


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## Arkansan07 (Feb 10, 2014)

jamesngalveston said:


> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CZUkY8T4CY



yea i saw that video, but I dont think he ever said how powerful of a pump he was using. He said it was expensive though and I know you can get the medical pumps for a reasonable price.


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## Turock (Feb 10, 2014)

Can I ask you a question? WHY do you want to manually degass a fruit wine? I am not a fan of manual degassing unless you are making a kit or an early drinking wine. Blackberry isn't an early drinking wine. It needs to spend some time in bulk aging in order to get the sediment out of it. Proper bulk aging does a whole lot of things for you, one of which is to stabilize the wine. And a bulk aging time of 9 months to 1 year really helps in firming up the flavor. In the 9 months or so spent in bulk aging, the wine is naturally degassed. Manual degassing really runs an oxidation risk, as well.


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## Arkansan07 (Feb 10, 2014)

Turock said:


> Can I ask you a question? WHY do you want to manually degass a fruit wine? I am not a fan of manual degassing unless you are making a kit or an early drinking wine. Blackberry isn't an early drinking wine. It needs to spend some time in bulk aging in order to get the sediment out of it. Proper bulk aging does a whole lot of things for you, one of which is to stabilize the wine. And a bulk aging time of 9 months to 1 year really helps in firming up the flavor. In the 9 months or so spent in bulk aging, the wine is naturally degassed. Manual degassing really runs an oxidation risk, as well.



Im a newb lol. You think all the CO2 will be gone in that time span?


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## jamesngalveston (Feb 10, 2014)

since your a newbie, i will fill you in.....Turock,Runningwofl,and a few others are the best at what they do...Make wine.
Anytime they give you advise, take it....I do.
just saying.


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## RegionRat (Feb 10, 2014)

I do it all the time. I have done as many as 5 at one time. Just dont over think it.


Here is a video I shot a while ago.

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QuGYD7FwTA0[/ame]

RR


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## sour_grapes (Feb 10, 2014)

Arkansan07 said:


> Lol physics is not a strong point of mine. So will the vacuum eventually reach a high point and maintain the pressure? Im using the 3/8 hose but I could bump it up to 1/2 or even larger.



The physics of degassing is surprisingly complex. Here is some info, but I think RegionRat is right -- don't overthink it too much.

Your vacuum pump has two important specs: how low a vacuum it is capable of creating, and how much gas it can take away per second (i.e., how fast the pump is). You could have a very fast pump (can pump lots of gas in a short time) that cannot get to very low pressure (because it stops pumping so well at low pressures). Or you could have a pump that can get to a low pressure, but it takes a long time to get there.

As you pump on a carboy of wine, there are three flows of gas that we must consider. The flow OUT (caused by the pump), the CO2 that is evolved from the wine, and any air that leaks IN around your fittings and stoppers. If the leaks are significant, and the pump is slow, you will never reach a low pressure, no matter how long you wait. (But I don't expect this will be the case for most reasonable setups.)

Then there is the problem of CO2 getting out of the wine. As you lower the pressure, it becomes favorable for the CO2 to leave. However, there is a barrier (an "energy barrier") preventing a bubble from forming. There are several ways to foster the development of a bubble. One is shaking or stirring. (Think about shaking a can of soda or beer.) Another is providing nucleation sites for the bubbles. (Think of the bottom of a champagne glass, where the bubbles emanate from the same spots over and over; there are probably scratches in those spots.)

What I have taken to doing is to have a carboy only half full, pull a vacuum on it, and then shake/rock the carboy. Lots of gas is released in this way.


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## Arkansan07 (Feb 10, 2014)

i appreciate all the advice, i have learned alot by reading threads on this forum in the last year


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## grapeman (Feb 10, 2014)

You can either let the wine degas naturally or use the vacuum pump (aspirator in your case). If you do one single carboy at a time all you need is one bung with a hole in it to hook a hose to (a barbed fitting will work - or I use one of the orange carboy caps with the double outlet and caps). Degassing time will likely be about 10 minutes. Change to another carboy and repeat. All combined, about an hours work. If you try to do 5 at a time, it might work with your pump and it might not. Then you need to spend more money buying bungs with two openings to connect them all together. Next you need the connectors and more tubing. This will take hours and then you still need to degas. Do you see where I am going with this? I recommend you just do one at a time and avoid the headache of setting up the other rig.


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## richmke (Feb 10, 2014)

You could do it with all single hole bungs, and lots of T's to connect all the tubing to the vacuum line. 

As long as the medical pump is rated for continuous use (and you have minimal air leakage), it should work. Like Paul said, if the pump is slow, it may take a while to build up the vacuum, and all the carboys, more or less, will feel the same vacuum. The more tubing and head room you have, the longer it takes to build the vacuum. Note: The carboys farthest away from the pump may feel a lower vacuum (tubing loss). Put the line to the vacuum pump in the middle of all the T's (3 carboys on each branch). That would add one more T, but should improve the vacuum at the last carboy.


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## Turock (Feb 11, 2014)

Well, just remember---even if you degass manually, you STILL need to allow the wine to sit and bulk age. And in that time, the gas comes out of it all on its own. So why risk your wine degassing? 

I'm OK with degassing wines that are designed for early drinking---and for kits because you have to follow their instructions exactly. But for all other wines, bulk aging for 1 year is always the way to go. In the 1 year's time, the CO2 will be out of the wine, the flavors very firm, the wine clear with no sediment or haze, and the wine will be stabile for bottling.

If you're interested---Google bulk aging of wine. If the link comes up from UC Davis on this subject---this is the most definitive white paper I've ever found on the subject. It will open your mind to comprehending all the magic that happens in bulk aging, and why you should always do it. This link was part of the winemaking course online from UC Davis.


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## olusteebus (Feb 11, 2014)

splash rack everytime you rerack. that will take out a lot of gas.


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## vacuumpumpman (Feb 11, 2014)

I agree ^^^. It is really the easiest thing to do. You have to rack no matter what - so if you use vacuum to transfer you are automatically removing the CO2


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## WVMountaineerJack (Feb 11, 2014)

You could use a gasgetter (winegasgetter.com) to do multiple carboys. We usually try to let ours age a year, but we have a bunch, until you build up a stock of wine you of course are not going to bulk age everything, you want something to drink. So how about set 2 carboys back out of the way and let them bulk age nice and slow and degass the others and drink up! We still run the degasser pump on each carboy before we bottle just to make sure its degassed, even after a year you can still have a surprising amount of gass in some wines, age alone doesnt always take it out. After you get started and have a few batches under your belt then you can start paying more attention to what some of the radicals have to say, its much easier to listen to them while you have a glass of blackberry wine in your hand  WVMJ


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## Turock (Feb 11, 2014)

In 25 years, I've never had a wine not degass in 1 year's time. Splash racking at every racking is not recommended as it injects too much oxygen into the wine.


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## vacuumpumpman (Feb 11, 2014)

Turock said:


> In 25 years, I've never had a wine not degass in 1 year's time. Splash racking at every racking is not recommended as it injects too much oxygen into the wine.



If you are racking under vacuum - how can you get too much oxygen into the wine - when you have a negative pressure ? (vacuum ) 

You will have more contact with oxygen doing it traditionally, because of the surface area and contact time during transfer rate.


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## Turock (Feb 11, 2014)

Are you sure he's racking under vacuum? Many people who use just a racking cane and gravity can see this advice and think it correct. Splash racking should only be done when there's a purpose for doing it, and CO2 is not reason enough.


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## jamesngalveston (Feb 12, 2014)

I read the white page from UC davis, is there a different section for fruit wines...all I read about were wine from grapes. Which by the way, was excellent.
Even though grapes and strawberries are a fruit, does not mean they should be handled the same way while making wine.
A filet mignon and a chuck steak are both beef...but i would never cook them the same.


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## Turock (Feb 12, 2014)

OK James---Just THINK about it for a moment. Fruit wines have LOTS of sediment in them and suffer,very often (and more than some grape wines) from protein haze. The basic idea is to remove these in order to stabilize the wine because, as you read, all these components are unstable and you want to get them off of the wine. 

Also, another missed point is that without bulk aging you are trying to evaluate a young wine to determine how much sugar,when you are back sweetening, you should add. You CANNOT evaluate the characteristics of a young wine because the profile will change alot after bulk aging. You want to get those flavors FORWARD so that you can then balance the remaining acids with a certain amount of sugar. Instead of forcing young wines into a bottle because you are in a hurry to drink them, the better approach would be to make early drinking wines like skeeter pee,etc. so that your fruit and grape wines can spend a proper time period under bulk aging. 

Maybe this is why EVERYONE praises all the wines we make and want us to open our own winery----we are VERY patient winemakers. Our whole goal is to produce the best taste that we can---to have wines with BIG, chewy flavors. Doing EVERY step of winemaking---using the best protocols at every step---makes a huge difference. When you do it half-way, the result is also only half of the way. I want it all.


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## Arkansan07 (Feb 13, 2014)

Turock said:


> OK James---Just THINK about it for a moment. Fruit wines have LOTS of sediment in them and suffer,very often (and more than some grape wines) from protein haze. The basic idea is to remove these in order to stabilize the wine because, as you read, all these components are unstable and you want to get them off of the wine.
> 
> Also, another missed point is that without bulk aging you are trying to evaluate a young wine to determine how much sugar,when you are back sweetening, you should add. You CANNOT evaluate the characteristics of a young wine because the profile will change alot after bulk aging. You want to get those flavors FORWARD so that you can then balance the remaining acids with a certain amount of sugar. Instead of forcing young wines into a bottle because you are in a hurry to drink them, the better approach would be to make early drinking wines like skeeter pee,etc. so that your fruit and grape wines can spend a proper time period under bulk aging.
> 
> Maybe this is why EVERYONE praises all the wines we make and want us to open our own winery----we are VERY patient winemakers. Our whole goal is to produce the best taste that we can---to have wines with BIG, chewy flavors. Doing EVERY step of winemaking---using the best protocols at every step---makes a huge difference. When you do it half-way, the result is also only half of the way. I want it all.



2nd paragraph makes so much sense. I will be doing this from now on.


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## Turock (Feb 15, 2014)

You'll never be sorry that your wines spend time bulk aging. If you go read the UC Davis thread for yourself, you'll really understand all the chemistry of bulk aging.


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## jamesngalveston (Feb 15, 2014)

i bought 4 xtra 6 gallon carboys just to bulk age my blackberry this year...i made a press just to use the juice as you do.
I plan to make my batches and age for a year...Im looking forward to the outcome, if i can live that long..lol

thanks turock for all your knowledge and your willingness to share with others.


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## Arkansan07 (Feb 15, 2014)

I wonder if there are any 30gal food grade drums that can be fit with an air lock? I have access to more blackberries than i could ever need so I want to do a big batch.


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## Turock (Feb 16, 2014)

James---You make me smile. I'm glad you're listening to me--LOL. Blackberry needs 9 months to 1 year of aging. We always like the 3 extra months to bring us to 1 year of aging just to be sure all the debris is off of it and all the CO2 gone. Be sure to let me know what you think of it after it's aged,as opposed to what you've been doing. What do you mean--live that long? You're just a young buck!! Sixty years old is nothing!!!

Arkansan--Well, there are a couple ways to handle that amount. Either find yourself 5 or 6 gallon carboys or go with Tuff-Tanks. They are sold in 9,14,and 22 gallon sizes. Check them out at www.eckraus.com


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## Wade E (Feb 16, 2014)

Ive had a few wines not degas in almost 1 1/2 years. Most due and I dont remember if those few were meads or not. The pump used in that first video looked like a medical pump and if you look at the prices they sell for at medical supply stores you see why he said it was expensive! You can get them on ebay new sometimes for as little as about $125 shipped while some still sell used for around $400! You have to really shop around and sometimes youll have to watch for a week or 2 to really get a good deal.


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## Runningwolf (Feb 16, 2014)

Arkansan07 said:


> I wonder if there are any 30gal food grade drums that can be fit with an air lock? I have access to more blackberries than i could ever need so I want to do a big batch.
> 
> 
> Sent from my iPhone using Wine Making



I use ss beer kegs. They are 15 gallons and thats heavy enough when they are full. I keep them on floor dollies you can buy at Harbor Freight for about $15. Bungs are readily available for them at LHBS or on line.


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## richmke (Feb 16, 2014)

Wade E said:


> a medical pump and if you look at the prices they sell for at medical supply stores you see why he said it was expensive! You can get them on ebay new sometimes for as little as about $125 shipped while some still sell used for around $400!



I picked up a schuco pump off craigslist for $75


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## irishwinemaker (Mar 28, 2014)

anybody ever have a carboy "implode" from the vacuum?


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## Runningwolf (Mar 28, 2014)

Your question should say a glass carboy. The answer is no from me and I have never even heard of it happening to anyone. There are lots of warnings out there but again I never heard of it happening.


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