Racking wine from juice concentrate, is it needed?

[Glen]

Hello all,

I have my second batch of wine started as of yesterday. My first attempt was an apple wine made from store bought juice and concentrate. I racked per normal guidelines. Albeit a little early, sg 1.040. There was some yeast at the bottom but not much other gunk. It has since been rack one more time and is bulk aging.

My second wine is from concord concentrate. It is in a 7 gal carboy and an airlock could simply added at an sg 1.030. I don't expect much gross lees since it was likely filtered where it was made.

Does anyone have experience with forgoing the racking from "primary" to "secondary" and just letting it finish as is. Is it not the primary reason to perform racking at this time to get it out off of the potentially rotting/rancid pulp and skins? And not necessarily the dead yeast....

If it's not going to ruin the wine, I would just add some yeast nutrient?

 

[salcoco]

Rack once the wine has completed fermenting, at sg=1000. then rack after three days. any gunk will be gone by that time. add k-meta and bulk age .

 

[Noontime]

Yes you can let it complete fermentation, although you'll still want to transfer out of the primary to get it off the "gross lees" within a reasonable amount of time. You do have a bit more time to do so since you don't have the seeds, skins, etc, that will decompose quickly, but the packed dead yeast will decompose and contribute off flavors eventually as well. Once you get it off the gross lees, if you choose you can sur lie age by stirring the fine lees back into solution everyday to get a particular flavor profile, but if anything sits too long in a thick pile at the bottom of the carboy, you run the risk of it getting funky.

 

[Glen]

How much time on the dead yeast do you think i have before i should rack?

I assume this would also apply to the apple wine i have bulk aging. A lot of lees were left behind in the secondary, but since i racked it over to age it. a new layer is appearing as it continues to clear. My plan for the apple wine was rack it at 3 months to a bottling bucket and bottle it. Fingers crossed.

 

[salcoco]

the standard I use is the rule of three. complete fermentation rack to secondary, after three days rack again. after three weeks rack again. bulk age as long as desired or rack again at three months and bottle if wine is clear. add kmeta at three day and three week rack . if bulk aging beyond three months add k-meta without racking. if bottling add k-meta. at your option I would rack your apple wine now add some kmeta and then bulk age to your desired period.

 

[Noontime]

I don't have an exact number for you, but I'm guessing you could leave it on there for quite a few weeks if you wanted to (again complete guessing here based on nothing more than my own anecdotal experiences). My point was if you have an inch or two of anything on the bottom of the carboy, that stuff at the bottom of the pile will eventually rot.

Like most things in winemaking, there's a spectrum of consequences and nuances. There's very few absolute rights and wrongs and do's and don'ts. There's best practices that give you the best chance of making good wine. You might leave it in the carboy for 8 months and then rack, and find you have a perfectly OK wine...but would it have been better if you racked it few times? There's only a few things that will completely ruin your wine, and you just want to do your best to avoid making opportunities for those things to happen.

I hope I haven't been completely confusing in my ramblings.

 

[Glen]

Thank you both. I know this is more of an art than a science but antidotes are always helpful. Stand on the shoulders of giants...

Rule of three is easy to remember, will keep that in mind and will follow it. Didn't want to over rack or under rack.

As always this community has come through.