After a Visit to the White Pages

[Rojoguio]

I have a question concerning oxygen exposure. I TIG Weld custom aluminum T-Tops so I have Argon everywhere. I have had the practice of filling my carboys with argon before racking, my 6 gallon glass big mouth bubbler (where I filter my wine for bottling), any carboy actively fermenting but will excessive headspace (air lock is bubbling), etc. Is this practice of keeping oxygen exposure reduced excessive? Thanks

 

[winemaker81]

A lot of folks use Argon and other non-reactive gases. It works.

I don't use it for large headspace, because I can't see it.

Sounds crazy, right?

Well ... logically speaking, I realize if you pump enough argon into the headspace, it will displace the air. But I have no idea how much is enough, and I have no way to prove it. OTOH, when I fill the headspace with a compatible wine, I know 100% what is in that head space.

You're on my Whitepapers page. Read this one for my thoughts regarding O2:

https://wine.bkfazekas.com/oxygen-is-not-the-boogie-man-in-winemaking/

 

[Rojoguio]

Your white page subject on oxygen prompted the question. Seems the bottles corked with #8 corks smooth quicker than the bottles corked with #9 corks. Also the #8's will have a wet line up the sides of the cork a 1/4 to 1/2 inch where the #9's will not have any wet on the sides when pulled. The wines under the #9's taste like they are still green. The White Pages are fantastic!

Argon is heavier than air, I use a very low cubic feet per hour setting as I don't use regulators I use flow meters. Once in a carboy it only exits by displacement.

 

[winemaker81]

Your white page subject on oxygen prompted the question. Seems the bottles corked with #8 corks smooth quicker than the bottles corked with #9 corks. Also the #8's will have a wet line up the sides of the cork a 1/4 to 1/2 inch where the #9's will not have any wet on the sides when pulled. The wines under the #9's taste like they are still green.

If wine is showing evidence of going 1/4" to 1/2" up the cork, the cork is too small. The most likely reason the wine is aging faster is because it's getting O2.

If you're drinking the wine relatively quickly, say within 6 to 12 months of bottling, it's probably fine. I say "probably" because there is no guarantee. The longer the wine ages, the higher the likelihood that oxidation will ruin the wine.

Time is always a factor in winemaking. I make some whites, which age faster and are used up faster. I make occasional lighter reds for quicker consumption. Most of my production is heavy reds, which are bottled at 12+ months, and often need a year in the bottle for good aging.

A while back one of our members stated something like, "we are always making wine for the future." I wish I could remember who said it, as it's true.

The one good solution to your aging problem? Make more wine and have patience. Make more than you can drink, and make some early aging wines, which gives the others time to age.

 

[Rojoguio]

Thank you for the advice. I'm out of #8 corks. The vendor had #9's on sale, a better grade like the ones that sealed so well so I picked up 500 last spring while the sale was going on. I did make much more than I could drink last time and plan 200+ bottles this time. There is 150+ bottles in the racks now. I'm sitting on two full size upright freezers full of vacuum chamber packaged fruit we raised this growing season. If we didn't take the direct hit from the Tornado April 10th I would have had to buy another freezer, our trees were loaded with fruit. The Tornado stripped off a lot of green fruit and threw my 200 gallon planters with our citrus assortment all over the place reducing our harvest. Citrus is just now starting to ripen, we pick thru January.

 

[Rojoguio]

This what's on hand. All the bottled wines are 2 years or older. I color code the wines with the seals using a gold leaf adhesive tab for the type & date.

The Carboys are full of Muscadine except for one that is the Dark Sweet Cherry.

 

[sour_grapes]

Argon is heavier than air, ..... Once in a carboy it only exits by displacement.

Sorry, but this is not accurate. Argon can diffuse out. I.e., air and the Ar will intermix via diffustion.

Yes, Ar is heavier than air. But thermal agitation at room temperature thoroughly overwhelms mere gravitation. It takes a few minutes, but these gases will mix.

 

[Rojoguio]

Sorry, but this is not accurate. Argon can diffuse out. I.e., air and the Ar will intermix via diffustion.

Yes, Ar is heavier than air. But thermal agitation at room temperature thoroughly overwhelms mere gravitation. It takes a few minutes, but these gases will mix.

Good to know, thanks. You didn't give a accurate length of time & any other ambient external environmental factors that influence the process so we can learn from it. If you can expand on that it would be great to get a understanding of where to draw the line.

 

[sour_grapes]

Good to know, thanks. You didn't give a accurate length of time & any other ambient external environmental factors that influence the process so we can learn from it. If you can expand on that it would be great to get a understanding of where to draw the line.

I did give an accurate time. I didn't give a precise time because there is no hard cutoff. The Ar would leak out gradually. We can measure the diffusion coefficient D for Ar in air, and it is on the order of 0.000005 m^2/s. The diffusiuon length is 2*sqrt(D*t). So in, say, 200 seconds, the diffusion length is 2*sqrt( 0.000005 m^2/s * 200 s) = 0.06 m = 6 cm = 2.5". This is characteristic of how far the Ar would mix into the layer above it in that length of time. (Again, it is not sharp -- it is a fuzzy front line. The actual time-dependent concentration gradient will follow an error-function distribution, erfc(x/sqrt(4*D*t), if you want more accuracy.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fick'...ant_concentration_source_and_diffusion_length

Even worse, that is due only to diffusion in an absolutely still environment, with a precisely homogeneous temperatre. In most cases, convection due to any small temperature differences will make the mixing happen more quickly.

 

[sour_grapes]

The post above discusses the diffusion process. Here is a post regarding the equilibrium state, i.e., the Ar will not provide a "blanket" in the long run even in a closed container: https://www.winemakingtalk.com/threads/topping-up-carboy.70899/#post-748100

I agree that a dense, inert gas such as argon is useful for displacing oxygen and other gases (before mixing can take place). But at equilibrium (i.e., a couple of minutes later), the mixing is essentially total, not just "to a degree." Do you want a quantitative figure? I just did the calculation. The Ar content at the bottom of a 10 cm tall container would be enhanced over oxygen by a factor of 1.000005. That is, if you started with, say, 90% Ar and 10% O2, the wine would be seeing 90.00045% Ar and 9.99955% O2.

So, the real benefit is displacing the O2 originally, not due to any later (truly negligible) tendency of the Ar to sink.

(I probably should have said more than "a couple of minutes," more like 20 minutes for nearly complete mixing.)

 

[Raptor99]

The simple explanation, that I read somewhere on WMT, is that each gas will diffuse throughout the available space within a relatively short time. So any "blanket" of Ar or CO2 will be very short lived.

CO2 is heavier than Oxygen, so if the heavier gas formed a "blanket" below the oxygen, we would all suffocate because the layer of the atmosphere closest to earth would be all CO2.