carboy corks popping

[seth8530]

And I disagree with your disagree so we can agree that we disagree.


Removing excess but not all CO2 you are helping to remove unwanted odors in the wine created during fermentation.

You will also allow the wine to clear faster as CO2 greatly slows sediment from falling out of the wine.

Excess CO2 will cause may give the illusion your wine is still fermenting. Even though a wines gravity may read .990 there is still sugar in the wine. Only a refraction enter can tell you exactly how much remains. How would you know if it's CO2 naturally escaping or fermenting?

If you speak to any professional commercial winery I'm sure they will tell you they filter out any remaining yeast, sediment and excess CO2 when their wine has finished fermenting.

You do have a point but I believe removing the excess CO2 upfront is more beneficial.

I do not believe that degassing really has a major impact on removing odors caused by fermentation compared to bulk aging and letting it off gas on its own.

Force degassing would allow the wine to clear faster, but why the hurry? Wine is a long term project. Even if you degas the wine and get it clear, it still does not mean its ready. You are bottle necked by the aging process not the clearing process.

As to giving the illusion of fermentation, using bubbles to gauge fermentation activity has never really been a reliable method of getting an idea of what the yeast are doing. A hydrometer of refractomoter however, can do this even if their is gas in the wine.

Filtering is common practice, but I am not sure how many force degas their wine. Perhaps some of the wineries focused on really quick turn arounds, but other than that I am not sure how many need to do it.

My major criticism of forced degassing is that I believe it is an unnecessary step that accomplishes nothing that can't be achieved by aging. In addition, as I mentioned before, I believe that it does remove a layer of protection from the wine as it bulk ages. Then again, I age all of my wine for over a year in the carboy before I even consider putting them into a bottle. So, that might explain why I have never seen a need for the procedure.

If one really wants to get stuff into the bottle in a hurry, I do agree that forced degassing can help you do that. But, I do not really feel the need myself to do that.

 

[Winolady]

One more stupid question... it seems so obvious that I feel silly asking... but anyhooo, when you degas by the aging method, you have an airlock on the carboy to let the CO2 out the whole time, correct?? Would one year be enough?

 

[Thig]

Yes on airlock. I would think 1 year might be long enough but you could always help the degassing along.

 

[BernardSmith]

One more stupid question... it seems so obvious that I feel silly asking... but anyhooo, when you degas by the aging method, you have an airlock on the carboy to let the CO2 out the whole time, correct?? Would one year be enough?

There are no stupid questions. There can be stupid answers but all questions are good. IMO, how long a wine takes to degas naturally depends on many factors: the ambient temperature the wine is stored at (the colder it is the longer it will take), the volume of the wine in your carboy (one gallon will degas faster than six), the wine itself (some liquor seems to be able to absorb more of the CO2 while other wines seem to be more able to release the CO2), I suspect your location on the planet in relation to sea level (the higher you are , the less able the wine will be to hold the CO2), the flocculation of the yeast (I think that yeast that flocculates more has a greater ability to enable the gas to collect with less energy and so be expelled more easily), and also how much CO2 was left in the wine before you racked the first time and your racking technique throughout the year (if you splash rack you are more likely to force more of the CO2 to escape). All in all, I think a year is certainly a reasonable amount of time for much of the CO2 to have been expelled. But others, with far more experience than I may have very different understanding

 

[seth8530]

I have never had a gassy wine after aging with an airlock for a year. Often times, it takes much less time than that, but I am not exactly sampling that often either.