# hint to make sediment fall to the bottom.



## jamesngalveston (Nov 21, 2013)

I bottled a batch of dragon blood, about 20 gallons ago and when I opened a bottle there was a little sediment...I swear it was clear when i bottled.
I bought a small 5 lite led flashlight, to see better....

If your using a glass carboy with ridges, your wine will look clear, but if you look closer you will wee sediment laying on the ridges..very faint, but they do get hung up there....and when you bottle you will get it in your wine.

I take and put my hands on each side of the carboy and twist it back and forth a few times, and if you look, you will see that sediment on the ridges start to fall.

Just saying....not sure if anyone else has posted are even thought of....
THnaks.


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## jamesngalveston (Nov 21, 2013)

shoot, this is after adding super kleer and the wine pretty clear..
sorry.


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## grapeman (Nov 21, 2013)

You can also "bump" the carboy carefully on the floor by rocking it just a little on the edge and let it "bump".


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## jamesngalveston (Nov 21, 2013)

ah..so you have seen it settle on the ridges...


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## Rocky (Nov 21, 2013)

James, I want to show you my "slew-er" that I put together for just this problem. I have two pieces of wood and a Lazy Susan bearing hardware set sandwiched in between. I put the carboy on the slew-er and slew it right and left until the sediment falls. I had some scrap wood lying around and I bought the Lazy Susan hardware at Home Depot. The last picture shows the access hole in the bottom so I could get to the second set of mounting screws. Works great.


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## jamesngalveston (Nov 21, 2013)

ill be damned....thanks rocky for that, I am making one tomorrow...
and I thought i was a first>>>>lol


thank you....


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## Rocky (Nov 21, 2013)

*"What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun." Ecclesiastes 1:9*


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## jamesngalveston (Nov 21, 2013)

The greater my wisdom, the greater my grief.
To increase knowledge only increases sorrow.

Thank you.


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## kryptonitewine (Nov 21, 2013)

I always just rocked the carboy a little and let sit 24 hours. I like rocky's rocker.


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## tingo (Nov 22, 2013)

Rocky could this be used for degassing do you think? I allow my wines to age a year or more in carboys so Co2 is seldom a problem. But as my whites age I try to introduce oxygen as little as possible to avoid losing some of that golden color or aroma. When I degas them I try to just tip the carboys up on one corner and swirl them allowing any trapped Co2 to rush out. This eliminates the need to pop off the airlock. Your idea makes me wonder if I could use that instead.


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## jamesngalveston (Nov 22, 2013)

you are not going to ruin your wine with oxidation by just removing the airlock and degassing.....oxidation does not happen in a matter of seconds, are minutes.
expecially in a carboy..
If you emptied into a bucket for a few hours, then you might start to oxidize.


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## jamesngalveston (Nov 22, 2013)

heres an article for you...

http://www.eckraus.com/wine-making-oxidation/


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## BernardSmith (Nov 22, 2013)

*sediment in wine*



jamesngalveston said:


> I bottled a batch of dragon blood, about 20 gallons ago and when I opened a bottle there was a little sediment...I swear it was clear when i bottled.
> I bought a small 5 lite led flashlight, to see better....
> 
> If your using a glass carboy with ridges, your wine will look clear, but if you look closer you will wee sediment laying on the ridges..very faint, but they do get hung up there....and when you bottle you will get it in your wine.
> ...


 
But I wonder if the source of the problem is sediment in the carboy. If you bottle wine too soon after fermentation, even if that wine looks perfectly clear, after a few months fine sediment will drop out of solution. From your posts you appear to want to bottle very soon after the wine has fermented to the level of dryness you are looking for but if you were to wait another 3 or 6 months (or longer) I think you will find that sediment drops out. Rocky's technique for removing residual sediment adhering to the walls of the carboy may solve one problem but I tend to think that there is a more fundamental problem that this technique does not solve and that is the likelihood of microscopic particles coalescing and eventually becoming large enough to drop out of solution (flocculating) and one solution to that problem is... time.

Now if you are drinking the wine very soon after bottling the wine will have no visible sediment in it, but if you were to hold back a bottle and check it out 6 months later I suspect that you will find a small pool of sediment will have settled on the lowest part of the bottle.


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## dangerdave (Nov 22, 2013)

My little Vinbrite filter solved this problem for me. Cheap, simple, easy to use. I run all my white or blush wines through it before bottling.


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## Noontime (Nov 22, 2013)

We've noticed different forms of "gunk" in many of our non-grape wines that were bottled clear, but dropped sediment after bottling. Anecdotally it seems like non-grape wines are really prone to this. As others have said, time will help a lot, but something else we learned from a fellow winemaker was to add a clarifier when back-sweetening. We did notice we saw this mostly on our semi-sweet wines. So now we add bentonite with the sugar, concentrate, or whatever we're using to sweeten, and we haven't had a problem (yet).

edit: obviously we rack again before bottling.


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## DoodleBug (Nov 22, 2013)

Rocky said:


> James, I want to show you my "slew-er" that I put together for just this problem. I have two pieces of wood and a Lazy Susan bearing hardware set sandwiched in between. I put the carboy on the slew-er and slew it right and left until the sediment falls. I had some scrap wood lying around and I bought the Lazy Susan hardware at Home Depot. The last picture shows the access hole in the bottom so I could get to the second set of mounting screws. Works great.



Pure genius Rocky!!!


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## Rocky (Nov 22, 2013)

Tingo, I have never tried it but it seems like it could work. The Lazy Susan hardware is a ball bearing type and it is virtually effortless to use. If I hold onto the carboy, I can really slew it left and right.


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## BernardSmith (Nov 22, 2013)

Noontime said:


> We've noticed different forms of "gunk" in many of our non-grape wines that were bottled clear, but dropped sediment after bottling. Anecdotally it seems like non-grape wines are really prone to this. As others have said, time will help a lot, but something else we learned from a fellow winemaker was to add a clarifier when back-sweetening. We did notice we saw this mostly on our semi-sweet wines. So now we add bentonite with the sugar, concentrate, or whatever we're using to sweeten, and we haven't had a problem (yet).
> 
> edit: obviously we rack again before bottling.



Daniel Pambianchi has a lovely article in Wine Maker Magazine (2000) about filtering wines and he suggests that red wines are always liable to drop sediment unless filtered.
http://winemakermag.com/204-choosing-a-filtering-system-techniques


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## jamesngalveston (Nov 22, 2013)

i dont mind a little, i would rather drink mine early with a little rather the wait for a year to drink without...
the post was not as much about the sediment in the bottle as it was about the sediment getting stuck on the ridges of the carboy...as 
rocky showed a tool that helps eliminate it.


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## Tess (Nov 22, 2013)

Thats really cool rocky. I do the grab firmly around the middle with both hands and twist to the right quickly and then back to position with out stopping. Its works well


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## tingo (Nov 22, 2013)

I appreciate the article on oxidation. It said, however, to not trickle white wines when racking. They said splashing invites much more oxygen into wine then simple airlock removal. i degas using a wand in a drill motor. Lots of splashing. Also i start to allow my So2 to drop as I age. If we go off pH a lot of So2 most of the time is not needed. So since I let this number drop to end up in a more desired range I dont want it dropping too much by bonding to unneeded oxygen. I thank you again for taking the time to reference the article for me. I love learning more. How do you degas?


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## jamesngalveston (Nov 22, 2013)

i use a vacuum pump on my 5 and 6 gallon and larger batches.
on my 3 gallon i use a cordless drill...
i dont make smaller then 3.


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## jswordy (Nov 22, 2013)

jamesngalveston said:


> i use a vacuum pump on my 5 and 6 gallon and larger batches.
> on my 3 gallon i use a cordless drill...
> i dont make smaller then 3.



Yep you've grown quite a bit from those 1-gallon batches, James!


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## jamesngalveston (Nov 22, 2013)

i would say so....how u been wordy...havnt seen you post in a while...
hope all is good....


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