# When corks pop off



## Elmer (May 25, 2014)

So last night I bottled my Pinot noir.
Started in December 2013, aged in carboy for 5 months.
I have racked it numerous times, for degassing purposes.

After bottling I went back down to the lab an hour later to fin atleast 5 bottles with the corks trying to escape the bottle.
I uncorked and used new corks.
I noticed one of the bottles when I pulled the cork, had a white mist inside the bottle, gassy and mist like.

This morning I went to check and 1 additional bottle had lost its cork and the bottle was most likely sitting uncorked all night.
Some info: I spritz k meta just prior to bottling.
I usually fill within a 1/2 inch to the bottle of the cork.
I use the AI1 when bottling and racking (I do find that the AI1 makes a lot of suds when you bottle at full speed. Which is why I usually regulate with the thumbs thing)

The bottles that lost their corks were randomly in the bottle batch. I could understand if it was at the end when you hit bottom of carboy and suck up air!

My questions:
Is the uncorked bottle likely oxidized & ruined?

Could excess k meta cause gas build up?

Does the full level have anything to do with pushing corks out?

Could my aging on oak have added gas to the wine, hence I needed more time to redegass?

How could I not be fully degassed after aging, racking & bottling with AI1?


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## Julie (May 25, 2014)

what was your final gravity reading? and did you backsweeten without adding sorbate? Your wine is either re-fermenting or it needs degassed. Aging on oak or adding more k-meta does not add gas to your wine.


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## Elmer (May 25, 2014)

Julie said:


> what was your final gravity reading? and did you backsweeten without adding sorbate? Your wine is either re-fermenting or it needs degassed. Aging on oak or adding more k-meta does not add gas to your wine.




Thanks Julie!
Final SG was .996 or .994 (not near my notes).
It was a wine expert selection Pinot noir .
Yes I used sorbate
No I did not back sweeten

I can't imagine that it was NOT degassed after all those rackings

Is there a chance for gas to get in urging bottling with the AI1?

I notce that while bottling my AI1 would burp or hit an air pocket and mate cause gass to get in.



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## sour_grapes (May 25, 2014)

What was the (approximate) temperature during the degas rackings and storage? Seems to make a big difference whether it is in the 70s vs. the 60s.


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## Elmer (May 25, 2014)

sour_grapes said:


> What was the (approximate) temperature during the degas rackings and storage? Seems to make a big difference whether it is in the 70s vs. the 60s.




Basement is around mid to low 60's


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## Julie (May 25, 2014)

it takes longer to degas a wine that is in the 60's as oppose to one that is in the 70's. I'm thinkin you are gonna have to uncork and degass again. And as far as that one bottle that sat over night, I would just drink it.


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## seth8530 (May 25, 2014)

How long did your wine bulkage before you put it into the bottle?


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## the_rayway (May 25, 2014)

Hey Elmer,
I've got my wine in the basement sitting around the 60's and for the three reds, they've been bulk ageing for 9 months and they still have a lot of gas. With the temps being that low, it makes it hard for the c02 to escape. 

Try putting it back in the carboy and put it in a nice, warm room for a week. Then degas it with your whip (or whatever) again.


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## Elmer (May 25, 2014)

seth8530 said:


> How long did your wine bulkage before you put it into the bottle?




5 months in a carboy.
Racked atleast 4 times, manually stired to degas for half an hour.

If my wine was not fully degassed, why did 5 out of 31 pop and not the other 26?

My wine is already in the bottle, I do t know that I will in cork and degass


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## ColemanM (May 26, 2014)

Are these new or recycled bottles? I have corks not go in all the way with some of my recycled French wine bottles. If the bottles are all recycled, were the ones whose corks came out all similar in style?


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## seth8530 (May 26, 2014)

Elmer said:


> 5 months in a carboy.
> Racked atleast 4 times, manually stired to degas for half an hour.
> 
> If my wine was not fully degassed, why did 5 out of 31 pop and not the other 26?
> ...



Honestly, my bet is the wine needed more time to bulkage and release gas. Have you tasted the bottles that blew? Did they taste like wine or did they have a funk to them?

As I am sure you can tell I am not a fan of forced degassing to get wine into the bottle early. I tend to bulk age for at least a year before I bottle often times longer.

Also as others have mentioned the temperature you are aging at might have helped CO2 stay in suspension.


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## Elmer (May 27, 2014)

seth8530 said:


> Honestly, my bet is the wine needed more time to bulkage and release gas. Have you tasted the bottles that blew? Did they taste like wine or did they have a funk to them?
> 
> As I am sure you can tell I am not a fan of forced degassing to get wine into the bottle early. I tend to bulk age for at least a year before I bottle often times longer.
> 
> Also as others have mentioned the temperature you are aging at might have helped CO2 stay in suspension.




I guess that could be the case, and I will take your word for it.

but if that is the case I am baffled that I still require degassing. 
Typically when I stir in the clarifyers I use that as an opportunity to degass manually. I usually stir for quite some time, 20 - 30 minutes.
Not to mention the numerous rackings with the AI1 pump.
Last racking I had there was little to no bubbles in the carboy.
then again to aid in degassing I will rack between vessels and back. 

But is it possible to get air or gas sucked up or mixed into a bottle when bottling?

but at this point they are bottled and will remain that way.
I have more pressing matters to attend to (leaky pool pipe)


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## Boatboy24 (May 27, 2014)

Even in the 60's, I would expect that a handful of rackings with the AI1 would have extracted most, if not all, of the CO2. Are you "tasting" the CO2, or feeling any carbonation? Was there a significant change in temp during/after bottling?


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## Elmer (May 27, 2014)

Boatboy24 said:


> Even in the 60's, I would expect that a handful of rackings with the AI1 would have extracted most, if not all, of the CO2. Are you "tasting" the CO2, or feeling any carbonation? Was there a significant change in temp during/after bottling?



Basement has been consistent (so say the 3 thermometers in my basement), even with the dryer running!

I did not taste any CO2 or anything fizzy.

However I on a few occasions a few of the bottles were filled with bubbles, either because I was filling to quickly and had to stop, which caused a slight burst in the stream,
Or because my daughter moved the cane out of the wine causing some air (that's what you get for allowing a 4 year old to help) .

but this is the 1st time I have ever had this happen.


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## seth8530 (May 27, 2014)

It is hard to tell for sure without actually being there but one thing I can PROMISE you is that whatever is going on with your wine has nothing to do with air or bubbles getting into your wine from the racking or bottling process. If it is not trapped Co2 in your wine the only other thing I could think of is some kind of microbial instablity.


Here is a question. I see that this is a grape wine... Correct? Did you perform MLF and the wine and confirm that it was complete? Infact, if you did not stabilize against MLF and did not let MLF perform to completion while bulkaging then I can almost guarantee you that you have a spontaneous MLF going on. One of the results of which being CO2.


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## Elmer (May 27, 2014)

seth8530 said:


> It is hard to tell for sure without actually being there but one thing I can PROMISE you is that whatever is going on with your wine has nothing to do with air or bubbles getting into your wine from the racking or bottling process. If it is not trapped Co2 in your wine the only other thing I could think of is some kind of microbial instablity.
> 
> 
> Here is a question. I see that this is a grape wine... Correct? Did you perform MLF and the wine and confirm that it was complete? Infact, if you did not stabilize against MLF and did not let MLF perform to completion while bulkaging then I can almost guarantee you that you have a spontaneous MLF going on. One of the results of which being CO2.



Seth, 
Thanks for all the info.

I did not, have not and never have I done a MLF.
This wine in particular is a WE Selection Pinot Noir.

I followed the directions and the only change was bulk againg for 1.5 months on 2 oz Med Toast Hungarian cubes and 1 oz of heavy american oak chips.


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## tonyt (May 27, 2014)

Elmer said:


> I guess that could be the case, and I will take your word for it.
> 
> but if that is the case I am baffled that I still require degassing.
> Typically when I stir in the clarifyers I use that as an opportunity to degass manually. I usually stir for quite some time, 20 - 30 minutes.
> ...



Elmer, if the wine tastes good and no more corks pop out don't worry about the gas. Just shake each bottle after opening as you would a bottle of Coke when you were a kid. Keep it for yourself, use it for topping up, don't enter any in competitions or give any away. 

In the future use a brew belt to warm your wine up to 74 degrees prior to degasing. Oh, and make sure you are using #9 corks and not #8s.


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## Elmer (May 28, 2014)

tonyt said:


> Elmer, if the wine tastes good and no more corks pop out don't worry about the gas. Just shake each bottle after opening as you would a bottle of Coke when you were a kid. Keep it for yourself, use it for topping up, don't enter any in competitions or give any away.
> 
> In the future use a brew belt to warm your wine up to 74 degrees prior to degasing. Oh, and make sure you are using #9 corks and not #8s.




Tony, thanks for advice.

I think I have always used 8's until recently when I used both 8's & 9's!

I just freed up a 1 gallon container, so I might put 5 bottles and work on degassing. Maybe manually. Maybe I will throw some more oak and let sit for a while.
This will also give me a chance to taste test and determine gassyness of it.
Unfortunately I no longer have a a vessel to hold 5 or 6 gallons of this wine, so I can not try to fix all at once.

I cant have 31 bottles and never share! that would be super shellfish!

I dont do competitions, never really given it a thought, so that is out.


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## Elmer (May 30, 2014)

So now that I have diagnosed the issue as being gas,

Would a proper course of action be to dump all bottles (rack) into a carboy.
Manually degass an rebottle?

Or should I let sit and degass by itself and bottle in a few months?

Or maybe rack bake and forth between carboys a few times using the AI1?


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## seth8530 (May 30, 2014)

Honestly, if it was my wine I would let it sit and wait.


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## Elmer (Jun 3, 2014)

Last night I opened 17 out of the 31 and racked into a 3 gallon carboy.
Some of bottle popped more than others. 

When all the wine was in the carboy, there were some good suds.

Now I will either do some racking back and forth tonight to get it degassed or just let it sit for 3 months (I dont drink wine that sits in a carboy) then bottle during mid summer. (I kind of need that 3 gal empty).

But I did drink what did not fit into the carboy. Not bad, but had a young, not finished taste to it.


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## Chilled (Jun 4, 2014)

*I didn't get my first kit degassed well enough.*

Elmer,
My first kit was not degassed properly. I opened the bottles, degassed and re-bottled. It turned out pretty good.
Now, 22 kits later, I make sure each kit is properly degassed at the right time.

I do not know how much vacuum a given carboy can handle. So, use your own judgment. But, I now use one of the two methods below. 
First, I warm the wine (carboy) to about 75 degrees F. Very important!

Then, vacuum rack with the pump pulling 16 to 20 inches using a hose clamp near the racking cane to reduce wine flow and maintain the vacuum. This will pull out much more CO2 than just vacuum racking at 12 inches with an unrestricted flow. 

Or, with vacuum at 20 inches, use an orange cap and a sanitized fiberglass rod (fishing arrow) stirring slowly at first, then more aggressively after about 5 minutes. This second method usually takes me about 15 minutes. Sometimes a little less.
I stir,stop briefly to let the bubbles come up and stir again.

Again, this is what has worked for me. I make no claim to it's safety. Use your own judgement.

Good Luck,
Dave


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## garymc (Jun 7, 2014)

I think the temperature thing is key here. I suspect the yeast woke up as the smaller volumes in the bottles got a little warmer (for instance if the carboys were on the floor and then the bottles were up off the floor on a rack or in boxes.) Or the warmer temperature just increased the pressure exerted by gas that never made it out.


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## NoSnob (Jun 8, 2014)

The first thing I would check is whether the ullage of the 5bottles was less than that of the rest of the batch. One half inch of ullage,to me, seems less than desirable. Less clear to me is what caused the white mist inside one of your bottles. Since it was only one bottle, it does not seem to be systemic for the entire batch. For your next batch you may find a brew belt on your carboy will warm it up enough to make your degassing more efficient. 70F plus is needed to ensure your best degassing. But I'm still not sure degassing is your problem here. 

NS


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## Elmer (Jun 10, 2014)

Drank 1/2 a bottle of this batch last night.
an hour or 2 before I was to open the bottle I gave it a really good shake and watched all the bubbles in the bottle.
I opened it when I got home, there was not as great of a "POP" when uncorked.
I put a tasting cork in it and shook it again and there were some bubbles, but not a great "POP" when I took the tasting cork off.

The wine itself was not nearly as oaky as I had anticipated. Especially considering how I oaked the heck out of this.
I guess some of the oak dissipated after bottling. I wished it was smokier.
There was not a alot of fruitiness for a pinot noir, but it is still an young wine.

over all, I would easily drink this any time (in fact I have 1/2 a bottle left I am waiting to have when I get home and binge watch fringe!)

Now I just have to deal with the 3 gallon carboy of pinot sitting in the basement !!!!


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## Elmer (Jun 10, 2014)

I racked what was left of my Pinot Noirs that have been sitting in a 3 gallon, into a 5 gallon carboy.
Iraq back-and-forth at least four times to attempt to degas.
There were not a lot of bubbles or suds.
What bubbles did show up were from me using the thumb throttle and putting a burst of air into the car boy.

I am thinking of bottling this stuff this weekend.

However now my question is,
Since I just did a bunch of splash racking under vacuum, should I add more k meta before bottling?




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## seth8530 (Jun 10, 2014)

You should check the SO2 and verify if you need to add kmeta prior to adding it in.


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## tonyt (Jun 10, 2014)

like you I do not have testing capabilities. Perhaps you have a nearby friend or a LHBS that can test for you. short of that I would I add 1/8 teaspoon full and bottle.


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## Elmer (Jun 11, 2014)

tonyt said:


> like you I do not have testing capabilities. Perhaps you have a nearby friend or a LHBS that can test for you. short of that I would I add 1/8 teaspoon full and bottle.



Tony, 
I like that idea, but the 2 LHBS that might do it, are 40 minute drive.
The closest one is has no idea what SO2 is.

I will add 1/8 tsp and bottle.
These bottles will most likely sit and bottle age for the next 6 months.


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## tonyt (Jun 11, 2014)

When I went thru this same procedure a couple years ago the wine was pretty funkey for the first 9 months or so. Unfortunately I assumed it was just due to the extra manipulation and wouldn't improve. So I proceeded to drink it early then realized it was aging well. At that point I only had a couple bottles. Always the case.


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## Elmer (Jun 16, 2014)

After racking 4 times early last week , I added 1/8 tap meta and manually degassed by stiring.
Today I bottled the rest of it into 16 bottles.

3 out of the 16 had corks start to rise.

I know this batch is not gassey, so I am starting to wonder if I either 
A) added air/gas to the mix when bottling, in little bursts from the AI1 throttle
B) did not leave enough room between cork and bottle- in the 3 bottle in question all of them had 1/2 inch or less of air space between wine and cork.

I did purposely avoid any bottle which looked like it had a wider opening.

I have never had an issue like I did with this one!


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## tonyt (Jun 16, 2014)

I think air space is your issue. I use a filling wand that always leaves the wine exactly where the neck meets the shoulder of the bottle. With a #9 1.75 corks it leaves 1.25 inches of air.


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## seth8530 (Jun 16, 2014)

Could be your corks are not sealing well. Either way I would advice bulk aging. Why not wait? What is the rush to degas? Perhaps your wine is not stable for whatever reason.


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## Elmer (Jun 24, 2014)

tonyt said:


> I think air space is your issue. I use a filling wand that always leaves the wine exactly where the neck meets the shoulder of the bottle. With a #9 1.75 corks it leaves 1.25 inches of air.



I am starting to think it was airspace.
I popped a bottle last night and it was not the least bit gassy.
I would call it excellent if it wasnt so young ( I know it will get better).

from now on I will try to keep a little more airspace in my bottles


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## vacuumpumpman (Jun 30, 2014)

I am just now reading this post - 
I will let my wine warm up a bit prior to bottling - and I always use #9 corks x 1.75 and then they get put in the cellar at a lower temperature when bottled. This causes even more vacuum in the bottle - due to the liquid will cool off and lower a bit. 

As for bottling with the Allinonewinepump - I know you cannot add CO2 to your wine as you bottle with it. You can if you don't release the vacuum a bit while bottling - you will see some agitation of the wine - mainly only at the top of the bottle.


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## GeoS (Jul 6, 2014)

A vacuum pump will not reintroduce CO2 into your wine. Did you add any sugars without adding sorbate? There should be about 1.25 inches from the bottom of the cork to the wine. Wine is a liquid and is considered an incompressible fluid at these temps and pressures so when you insert the cork you compress the air between the cork and the fluid. The less volume of air the greater the pressure. Sounds to me like you do not have enough air space in the bottle. I use a bottling want as well and if I fill the bottle to the top the wand takes up just the right amount of volume to give me the 1.25 inches


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## vacuumpumpman (Jul 6, 2014)

Elmer you mentioned you were using #8 corks - are you still doing so ?

If you want PM me with your phone # and I will call you back as soon as I am able


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## GaDawg (Jul 7, 2014)

The cork size will not cause the corks to pop off. The release of gasses causes the cork to pop.


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## Elmer (Jul 7, 2014)

GeoS said:


> A vacuum pump will not reintroduce CO2 into your wine. Did you add any sugars without adding sorbate? There should be about 1.25 inches from the bottom of the cork to the wine. Wine is a liquid and is considered an incompressible fluid at these temps and pressures so when you insert the cork you compress the air between the cork and the fluid. The less volume of air the greater the pressure. Sounds to me like you do not have enough air space in the bottle. I use a bottling want as well and if I fill the bottle to the top the wand takes up just the right amount of volume to give me the 1.25 inches



This sounds like a solid explination to my issue.

I try to maximize my wine to bottle ratio and fill up each bottle as much as possible.
I tend to fill up anywhere from a 1/2 inch of airspace if not less.

so the fact that I am not leaving alot of space between wine and cork.

and yes I am using a #8 cork.

Thanks for the help!


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## GeoS (Jul 7, 2014)

Yup, it's like pushing a cork into an empty bottle. The change in volume caused by the cork is insignificant next to the volume in the bottle. However, when you fill the bottle with wine the change in volume becomes much greater.

P1*V1 = P2*V2

When V2 is cut in half the pressure at P2 must double to balance the equation.


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## Brew and Wine Supply (Jul 9, 2014)

If you are getting any fizzing at all while bottling with an AI1, you need to de gas more. Bottled some Norton, thought I de gased enough but now its a sparkling norton, I use 8's and have not had any pop yet. 
Guess I'll open them all and de gas again......


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## GeoS (Jul 10, 2014)

The vacuum pump system such as the All In 1 are great, however, they do not completely degas your wine. In order to get the gas out of the wine you need two things, aggitation and heat. Since heat can only be achieved in moderate amounts, and you don't want to cook your wine, it's up to aggitation.
Splash racking does aggitate and release gas but it's not enough. You would have to splash rack about 6 or 7 times to degas. I use a whip after splash racking with a vacuum pump. This takes me about 1/2 hour to 45 min.

Also, if you tween the pH by adding a bicarbonate you will need to let the wine sit for a few days then degas again.


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## vacuumpumpman (Jul 16, 2014)

If you use the Allinonewinepump from the start you will have at least 6 rackings prior to bottling. Everytime I rack I use the degassing cane - which definitely agitates the wine and uses film degassing method also. 
As long as you bring your temperature up to 72-74 degrees and vacuum rack - you should be ready for bottling.


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## GeoS (Jul 16, 2014)

I'm not familiar with a degassing cane? How does it work.


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## vacuumpumpman (Jul 16, 2014)

This is a quote from Grasshopper - who originally designed the concept. I make and sell them at a reasonable cost -

http://allinonewinepump.com/accessories.html


This falling film technique degasses significantly better than just letting the stream entering the receiving carboy fall and splash to the bottom. There is also much less foam generation. The foam is a result of air entrapment in the wine (even with the reduced pressure from the vacuum pump there will be some air in the carboy) so it probably results in less potential for oxidation (just guessing on this last point). Dralarms suggests shortening the inlet leg of the cane to make this less awkward and Steve suggest having a dedicated bung for this to make it easier to switch from degassing to normal racking. 

**************
Default Falling Film Degassing
From my previous life as an engineer I know that a falling thin film of liquid is very efficient for mass transfer (i.e. moving a material to/from the liquid phase to the gas phase it is falling through). It is efficient because the transferring material (CO2 in our case) doesn't have far to go within the liquid to reach the surface and the turbulence of the film continually renews the surface with fresh CO2 containing wine. Thus I devised the following method of vacuum racking that should be more efficient than simple splash racking to move CO2 from the wine into the reduced pressure gas phase in the carboy. The method should work for gravity racking but probably not as well.

I took the racking cane which has a short leg at the top bent 90 degrees from the longer leg and inserted this into the stopper so that the transfer tube connects to the long leg and the short leg is in the carboy pointed at the side. Pulling a vacuum on the carboy causes the wine to impinge on the side of the carboy and fall down the side. See pics in the file below.

I have tried this a couple of times now and it seems to do a much better job of degassing compared with just having the wine fall straight to the bottom in a single stream. I wonder if anyone else has tried this and/or knows of a reason why it may not be as good of an idea as it seems.


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## GeoS (Jul 17, 2014)

Makes sense. Thanks. That certainly should help.


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