A topic that is almost never discussed

[Wade E]

Welcome Weltercat and please tell us of your wine experience. As for the matter at hand, the wine will degas on its own either way as long as you using an airlock on the carboy and in the right temp range as the cooler it gets the more the wine will not release CO2.

 

[texasermd]

I use a medical grade vacuum aspirator which will pull about -22 inches mercury of vacuum pressure. I use it in conjunction with the auto-siphon but I am using the 2nd port in the orange cap not to blow into to start a siphon but to attach to the vacuum to decrease the pressure in the carboy. If the racking cane is installed, the free end of the hose is placed in the vessel you wish to remove wine from and it will travel to the low pressure space of the aforementioned carboy - even uphill!. Since there is a considerable vacuum, this in effect degases the wine quite efficiently. If one simply wanted to degas, forget the racking cane and hose, attach the vacuum to the port and put your thumb/finger over the other port to create the vacuum. When the wine is new, there is quite a bit of degassing foam produced so that when the top of the carboy is at hand, you have to release the vacuum, let the foam subside, then reapply vacuum to get the level up near the bung. I used this method to transfer all 200 gallons of wine I just made to 3 and 5 gallon carboys. It took about 2 minutes per 5 gallon carboy to effect the transfer. Here is a picture:

 

[weltercat]

Wade

Thanks for the welcome. I am semi new to wine making but I have read a few
books and in the last couple of years or so I have brewed about a dozed
different 5 gal batches of fruit wines and Mead.



Since I am a beekeeper I started brewing mead to use up some of my excess honey
and I just sort of progressed to fruit wines since I have access to several
fruit trees and a huge amount of blackberries.



I have had degassing problems with all of my wines and mead.



I have followed the recipes as closely as I can but it seems like I get fiz
when I try to bottle. I have read on Jack Keller’s website that you can test it
by filling a bottle half full and shaking it with your thumb over the top. If
you get fizz you need to degas. I have always gotten fizz when I did this.



Just for some background I usually let my wine sit on the pulp for 10 days in
the primary and then transfer it to the secondary. I then rack off the lees
after a month in the primary and then rerack every three months. So when I
bottle the wine it is at least 7 months and 10 days old and still needs to be
degassed with my vacuum pump. Should I give it another three months before bottling?



The mead seems to blow off more gas than the fruit wine. I think it’s because
it takes more time to ferment, hence more trapped C02.

 

[dfwwino]

Welcome. It just depends on what you want to do. I usually let all my mead and fruit wines age in bulk for over a year and use about a 1/2 dozen rackings. I never have problems with gas in my fruit wines and mead even though I don't degas artificially. For example, I will be bottling a mead later this week that was started in August 2006. Or you can speed it up by degassing artificially, using a vacuum pump, or as we less equipped do, using a drill stirrer and/or vacuvin.


Also, mead takes more time to ferment unless you feed nutrient over time. You can speed it up byadding nutrient and stirring the must over a few days at the beginning of fermentation.


By the way, do you have any honey for sale? If so, where are you located?Edited by: dfwwino

 

[Wade E]

Welter, I use a drill mounted mix stir and a mity-vac brake bleeder after stirring and I never bottle until I can hold 15" of vacuum for at least 4 hours. I have 2 meads(melomels bulking right now. A blueberry and a raspberry. Must e nice to have your own honey and fruit.

Edited by: wade

 

[weltercat]

Thanks for the advice here guys. This is really great. I do
not have any excess honey this year. I am in a semi urban setting here in south
<st1ity wt="on"><st1lace wt="on">Seattle</st1lace></st1ity> so I
keep the number of hives in my yard to less than six. I am down to only two
hives this year. I usually get at least a couple hundred pounds of honey but it’s
all spoken for this year.






I guess the advice is just to give the fruit wine a few more
months to degas. In wine making procrastination is usually a good thing so it
is right up my alley. Although, I get anxious to bottle and drink the stuff. Patience
is a virtue but kind of a crappy one in my opinion.




It is nice to have access to my father’s orchards. He has
plums, cherries, apples, pears and even grapes growing all over his place in
western <st1tate wt="on"><st1lace wt="on">Montana</st1lace></st1tate>.




Edited by: weltercat