Other Which wine to top up carboy for fruit wine kit

[FlamingoEmporium]

I only have one bottle left. The rhubarb and strawberries didn't do well last year. I have bought frozen strawberries but loathe to buy rhubarb.

 

[Rice_Guy]

Suggestion; if you squeaky clean degas when racking, DO NOT USE THE HEAD SPACE ELIMINATOR FOR STORAGE! If you intentionally keep CO2 in your system a check valve combined with vacuum is a good tool for creating a high carbon dioxide/ low oxygen inert headspace, ,, in which case you could do long term storage. (cyser in the one year long test below did a blue ribbon)
,,Suggestion; if you do not use a vacuum gauge you have no idea if the mechanical seals as old rubber corks are working, it took me a few tests to find leaks. I have found that the rubber bulb (yes/no detector) pulls at 5 inches Hg but doesn’t always release, so you don’t know. Some things as universal cork I haven’t ever gotten to work. Silicone fittings work basically 100%. ,,,, yes you should be conflicted if you can’t measure what you have.
,,I will use a check valve set up (Granger) with several inches of ullage as long as I have enough dissolved gas to see bubbles when I pull the head space down to 20 inches Hg. Since running the test below every batch is under check valve at a year age, ,, when fiddling/ removing wine, for bench trials.
,,Red grape has a good slug of antioxidant so you can choose to be more sloppy without hurting the wine. To the extent I can I still keep long term storage head space down, ,,, why be sloppy?

How long have you had a wine under vacuum for and how much headspace was there? You haven't noticed any negative effect to the wine? I actually have a couple of these headspace eliminators but I'm very conflicted on how to use them effectively.

About a year ago we had a discussion about holding vacuum and vacuvin stoppers and check valves
so I killed a few days testing hardware. > results
View attachment 85669
Conclusions
* An effective vacuum set up needs to have the same seals as one would use with gas lines
* old corks get hard and are not effective at holding a vacuum
* a carboy with wine in it will release CO2 and not hold a vacuum as long as a dry system
(working definition of a good enough degassed wine was the carboy can hold a five inch Hg vacuum for 30 minutes)
* The rate of change decreases as the pressure differential decreases, There was still a slight difference on gage at thirteen months with the empty flask
* A new vacuvin check valve is effective at holding vacuum
* A new plastic check valve is effective at holding vacuum (polysulphone and nylon construction)
* To know how well a hardware setup is performing one needs to have a vacuum gage
photo setup 1 photo setup 2