Bulk aging question

[Killa J]

I’m coming up to the end of my first wine kit being made. I plan on bulk aging it in a carboy, mainly because I don’t have enough wine bottles or a corker yet. I have a few questions:

1) When do I add the fining agents? The instructions say add them once fermentation is complete, but not to add them right away if bulk aging.

2) If I’ve degassed the wine with the AIO wine pump, what’s the best method to seal my carboy? It’s a Vintage Shop PET carboy, and I have a drilled rubber stopper for it. Should I plug the hole in the stopper with a tiny cork plug? Get a big cork for the entire opening? Or one of those rubber covers that goes over the outside of the carboy?

 

[sour_grapes]

1) IMHO, if you are bulk aging, you may add the fining agents whenever you want. You can wait a while and see if it clears on its own and you can decide not to even add them at all, for example. Alternately, you could add them soon, then rack off the detritus in a few weeks or more.

2) I presume you have an airlock for the drilled rubber stopper. I would just top it off and leave it under airlock.

 

[Ajmassa]

1. Yes! To reiterate what sourgraoes said, doing whatever you want is one of the great things about winemaking. To each their own. For kits I’ve just followed instruction’s timeline of the steps. And then just top up and bulk age after.
2. Even though you think your degassed it still takes more time and small amounts of co2 will release over time. It seems like the majority of bulk aging is done under airlock up until bottling. Solid bungs aren’t as commonly used I think. I’ll use em only when I’m past the time I wanted to bottle (>9 months usually) and procrastinating.

 

[FTC Wines]

Now that we have a good wine inventory, we age our kits 12-18 months in a carboy & barrel. Therefore we don't use the clarifying agents. We do vacuum degas & then keep a airlock on the carboys. Roy