WineXpert Island Mist Degas

[jgmann67]

It's been weeks since I bottled my first kit - an island Mist Peach Apricot Chard that I boosted with a pound of sugar and a liter of concentrate. I realized a little too late that I probably should have degassed the wine a bit more before bottling.

My question : what do I do now to deal with excess CO2? The wine is perfectly clear, there isn't enough gas in there to worry about bottle bombs and after it's been open a day it goes from tasting "pretty good" to tasting "really good."

Part of me wants to go down to storage and shake the #%¥! out of each bottle and I wonder if that will do any good.

 

[wineinmd]

Just from a general solubility standpoint, I don't believe shaking will do you much good. You have very limited headspace (hopefully), and the solution has probably already reached equilibrium at your storage temperature at this point. Even if you manage to shake any additional gas out of solution, it will likely just diffuse back in since it is corked and has nowhere else to go.

I'm definitely not an expert, so that might be all wrong, but it makes sense in my head. I imagine someone here will have some real life experience with this problem, so maybe they have a good solution.

 

[sour_grapes]

Shaking won't help a wit if you don't uncork the bottle first. I believe your choices are: live with it or deal with it. Live with it the way you have been, by decanting. Or deal with it by opening all the bottles, dump into larger vessel, degas, and rebottle.
I know which I would do!

 

[jgmann67]

Shaking won't help a wit if you don't uncork the bottle first. I believe your choices are: live with it or deal with it. Live with it the way you have been, by decanting. Or deal with it by opening all the bottles, dump into larger vessel, degas, and rebottle.
I know which I would do!

You'd go the latter, then? I'm not averse to the idea. Do I need to re sanitize all my bottles or can I do this quick enough to dump, degas and rebottle?

 

[sour_grapes]

No, I would do the former! Embrace the frizzante! I am way too lazy to do all that work to avoid a little fizz.

 

[wineinmd]

Nerd alert.

Check out the last paragraph on page 2 of this technical paper.

Turns out I retained at least something from school.

 

[wineinmd]

Two thoughts.

1. Is there any way to draw a vacuum on each bottle? I don't know much about different vacuum options.

2. Uncork each bottle and put a sanitized balloon with a pinhole over the mouth as a ghetto airlock device and then shake the bottle. In my head, shaking would drive the CO2 out of solution and into the headspace and the balloon. The pinhole would allow it to escape. When the balloon starts to droop, shake again. I have no idea how well that would work, but perhaps you can try it on a single bottle and see what happens.

 

[sour_grapes]

Nerd alert.

Check out the last paragraph on page 2 of this technical paper.

Turns out I retained at least something from school.

Nerd alert, but linguistics: the thing that struck me about that paragraph was the repeated use of the word "inert" as a verb.

As the legendary Calvin (of Calvin and Hobbes) put it: "Verbing weirds language."

 

[wineinmd]

I love Calvin and Hobbes. Lots of great life lessons.

I didn't even notice that. I thought it was actually a thing, but none of the references I checked show it as being a verb. I can put a check mark next to "Learn something new today".

Edit: Or a check mark next to "Unlearn something wrong".

 

[cmason1957]

Rather than a balloon, why not get a wine saver (I think that is the name) it comes with a device to put into the bottle, you pump a few times and create a vacuum. That will pull out the co2. You can do it provable right before you serve each bottle.

 

[wineinmd]

Rather than a balloon, why not get a wine saver (I think that is the name) it comes with a device to put into the bottle, you pump a few times and create a vacuum. That will pull out the co2. You can do it provable right before you serve each bottle.

I didn't know such a beast existed. That looks like a much more elegant (and likely much more effective) solution. I don't know how strong of a vacuum it pulls, so you might have to help it along by shaking to get the CO2 out of solution if can't pull it from solution by itself.

The balloon idea still sounds like a fun experiment. Perhaps I can draw off a small bottle of my Sangria prior to degassing and see what happens.

 

[richmke]

IMHO, just decant the bottle before serving. I also think that fizz in IM's are good.

 

[jgmann67]

Rather than a balloon, why not get a wine saver (I think that is the name) it comes with a device to put into the bottle, you pump a few times and create a vacuum. That will pull out the co2. You can do it provable right before you serve each bottle.

That's probably the direction I'll go. I really don't want to have to re-bottle the remaining stock.

 

[jgmann67]

We drank a few bottles this weekend. Family seems to like it.

I pop the cork, pour a half a glass, shake the hell out of it, pop a stopper on it and put it in the fridge for about an hour. Perfect.