Congratulations Smurfe
Are you trying to keep a wine from oxidizing during fermentation by layering it with a type of oil? Someone told me they did that in the ancient times.
Smurfe
Well I grant you this one. Actually it is not during fermenting but during aging.
But you are right.
Ok I will explain.
A lot of discussion is going on about topping up of the cartboy afther you have racked your wine and there is a lot of headspace.
Best way is to move to smaller carboys, but that is not always possible as they are not always available.
Then you can top up with wine, juice water etc.
Some are filling the carboy with marbles to top up, or are using an inert gas like Argon.
I tried to examine the ancient approach. But I wanted to know several things:
- Will the wine oxydise
- will the oil spill due to exposure to oxygen
- will the fluids mix
- will the taste of the oil get into the wine.
- will the oil be spilled through the exposure of oxygen.
Well oil is a widely known preservative in food storage. So I thought it
is not likely to spill over time. But only tests will tell if this is the case in an open jar as opposed in the food industry in a closed tin can or glass jar. Only one way to find out: test it yourself, and that is what I did.
So I took a wine bottle and drank half of it. The other half I split into 2 bottles.
So I have now a bottle with a little bit of wine (look at the picture). I then added a lot of olive oil to one bottle and sunflower oil to the other bottle.
The results are what you are looking at in the picture. Both looked similar.
My thoughts were that if I used a little bit of wine and a whole lot of oil it was more likely to have influence on eachother then if I was going to use a lot of wine and a very small bit of oil.
Said in other words: if this would work, it is certainly not going to spill my wine if I use a small bit of oil on a 3 gallon carboy.
I put a paper tower on the bottle so oxygen could go in but no bugs could get in.
I left it like that for more as a month.
After one moth I racked the wine from beneath the oil.
How to proceed:
Take a siphon and put a small bit of plastic at the bottom and suck.
Now while the plastic stays on the siphon put the siphon in the bottle to the bottom and blow a bit.
The plastic will get off and no oil will get into the siphon.
I will look into this to test for other means. The best way is of course a fermenter with a tap at the bottom.
So now for the results:
The wine from the bottle on which I poured olive oil, was not oxydised and was not spilled. But the wine definately had a taste of the olive oil in it.
Now if you use a small drop of olive oil on a large carboy you are not likely to notice it but nevertheless I would not recommend it (although the ancient Romans did it this way).
The wine from the bottle with the sunflower oil was great.
It was not mixed, it was not oxydised, it was not spilled and there was no of flavor from the oil in the wine.
I am certainly willing to try this experiment in a larger batch and for a longer period.
One month is a short time in wine aging but my results so far are very promising.
Look if this will work or you. Try with small bits of wine and a lot of different oils.
In future times the experiment will continue.
In the mean time it was fun having you all guessing what I was trying to do.
Thanks
Luc