First batch of wine - A few questions

[tbayav8er]

Hi everyone,

A couple of weeks ago, I bought all of the necessary equipment, as well as my first wine kit. Vintner's reserve Pinot Gris from Winexpert. I have transferred the wine from the primary fermentation bucket to the carboy, where it has been for the last 7 days. A few questions:

1. I took the black sediment cap off of the end of my siphon tube (not knowing what it was) when I siphoned from the bucket to the carboy. There is about an inch of sediment in the carboy. In 3 days, I will blend in the chitosan and one other packet. Will the chitosan take care of that sediment when I mix it up?

2. The wine kit instructions don't say anything about a 2nd racking? Is this something I need to do?

3. My first S.G. reading when I first started the primary fermentation was 1.085. 5 days later, it was 0.992. Is this abnormal? The instructions say rack when the S.G. is about 1.010 (about 5-7 days). When I checked at 5 days, it was already down to .992.

4. What is the best and most cost effective way to clean/sanitize equipment? Things like the siphon rod seem tricky to effectively sanitize.


Thanks for your help!

 

[BernardSmith]

Hi tbayav8er, and welcome.
I think that the chitosan is meant to help clear the wine by encouraging the particles of fruit and yeast to drop to the bottom as sediment. So it won't remove the lees but it will help prevent more lees from dropping later.
A gravity of 1.000 or lower (your reading after five days of 0.992) suggests that very little , if any sugar is still in the wine to be fermented by the yeast. In other words, the yeast has converted all the available sugars (just over 2 lbs in every gallon of liquid if we go by your initial gravity of 1.085). My guess is (I don't make kits ) that the manufacturers of the kit recommend you rack from the bucket to a carboy when there is a little more sugar still to be fermented (1.010 , or about 4 oz in each gallon) because the yeast will still be producing a great deal of carbon dioxide and that CO2 will blanket and protect your wine from oxidation. My guess is that if you racked at day 5 and the gravity was at 0.992 given the speed at which the yeast was consuming the sugar there would still be enough CO2 between the wine and the air above the bucket for you to have no concern about any problems with oxidation. As long as there is no headroom between the surface of the wine and the bottom of the bung (an inch or so is fine) it will be fine.
Cannot speak about the MOST cost effective way to sanitize but what I do is make up a gallon or two of K-meta (2 oz to the gallon of water) and fill a washing bowl with this sanitizer. I fill the bowl by racking the sanitizer from the gallon carboys I store it in so that helps clean the inside of the tube and siphon and then I place my hydrometer, measuring cylinder, the racking tube and siphon, bungs and airlocks and any other equipment in the bowl together with any funnels I will use to pour the sanitizer back into the carboy when I am finished. I also keep handy a spray bottle filled with sanitizer and use that to spritz anything else as the need arises. I date the sanitizer and reuse it for a couple of months before tossing it.

 

[tbayav8er]

Thanks a lot, Bernard. There is some room to the bottom of the bung, but when I racked the wine, it still continued to ferment for about another 12 hours, so hopefully the wine is not oxidized. The wine kit instructions strictly say not to top up the wine in the carboy due to the fact that you have to mix etc. There's maybe 4" from the top of the wine to the bung. I've heard of the K-meta for sanitizing. What about cleaning agents?

 

[heatherd]

I use a one-step cleaner for cleaning, and kmeta for sanitizing. You can get a bag of kmeta, and it's likely more cost-effective than the tablets.

 

[tbayav8er]

Thanks Heatherd. I bought a bag of kmeta yesterday. The guy in the store told me I have to make sure I rinse thoroughly because of the sulphur smell that it emits? Is this true? I've seen clips on youtube of people just rinsing the kmeta solution through their equipment, and hardly rinsing at all. I also got a container of PBW for cleaning. Apparently it's supposed to be pretty good. One more question as well about bottling. The instructions say nothing about racking a 2nd time. The guy in the store told me I should rack it a 2nd time to get it off the sediment before bottling. Here's my question: I haven't degassed the wine yet. I only have one carboy, and one plastic bucket primary. Should I rack the wine to the plastic bucket, clean/sanitize the carboy, and rack it to the carboy, then top it up with wine/airlock it? Also, if this is the best option, should I do this as soon as I degas the wine? Thanks a lot!

 

[bkisel]

Personally I would rack the wine from the carboy back into the bucket, using the siphon tip this time. I'd then immediately clean and sanitize the carboy and rack a second time back again into the carboy. Leaving the tip off the second time would be fine or use the tip and just pour what's left in the bucket into the carboy.

After stabilizing, degassing and clearing I would wait a few days for the sediment to fall and rack yet again. [Do you have a second carboy?] For a 4-week kit I'd bulk age 2 months before bottling. At bottling I'd rack from the carboy to the bucket - add 1/4 tsp. of k-meta and gently stir- and bottle from the bucket.

Oh, welcome to the forum!

 

[BernardSmith]

I am not familiar with kits but I would imagine that most kits have detailed instructions and as this is your first kit and first attempt at wine making then I would try to follow the kit's instructions as close to the letter as I possibly could. These instructions will have taken into account all kinds of things like the final sweetness/dryness of the wine, the acidity etc. So topping up when they suggest that you don't may be an issue.
That said, I would not rinse K-meta from anything. First, the SO2 produced by the K-meta is what is sanitizing your equipment (think of sulfa anti-biotics), secondly, your tap water is likely to be less sanitary than the K-meta solution so you are washing out sanitized tubing and equipment with water that may contain bacteria and other organisms that you used K-meta to remove in the first place. Thirdly, having traces of free SO2 in tubing and buckets and measuring equipment etc all adds to protect the wine from oxidation and other kinds of spoilage: so eg, when I bottle my wine I will fill the bottles with K-meta to sanitize them and then pour out the solution but if there is literally a drop or two of solution still in the bottle I don't view that as a problem. I view that as a plus.
In answer to your question about racking the wine off the sediment, all other things being equal and the instructions being silent about that, I would but my bet is that the instructions have something to say about when to bottle and if there is a need to rack off the sediment before you are ready to bottle...

 

[heatherd]

Many kits don't say anything about racking prior to bottling, but it is something I always do. The reason is that I hold the racking cane up above the sediment in the carboy when I rack, and that yields only clear wine without any sediment. That allows me to take all of the remaining wine into the bottles, tilt the bucket, and just leave the cane sitting in the bottom the whole time; as well as to focus on bottling.

Heather

 

[RCGoodin]

I would recommend to keep racking until you barely see sediment at the bottom of the carboy.

This is just me, but prior to bottling I filter the wine into a fermenting bucket and then bottle from there. There are some experts that never filter because they feel the filtering process takes away some of the taste of the wine. I have been doing this for a couple years and the wine is more than acceptable to me.

Good luck in this new hobby. Once you've saved a few bucks, get an All-in-one vacuum pump from Steve. When you rack from carboy to carboy, at least 3 or 4 times, it takes care of the degassing for you. And, once you've used the bottle filler, you will never use any other piece of equipment for filling.