Pump question

Well, they will work.

The standard answer is that you should not use any pump where teh wine will come into contact with NON-food grade materials and you shoudl avoid pumps that agitate the wine to prevent oxidation. The only pumps I like are peristolic pumps and vacuum pumps.

how 2 hole stopper about an aquarium pump that pushes air in the top and you have a glass tube to allow the wine to come out.

Pressurizing your wine with air is really a bad idea because it'll tend to promote oxidation. Gravity racking is much better as long as you can arrange to lift the container.

Tom S

that's good to know. suppose instead we have some wine fermenting somewhere and instead of an airlock, we have a pressure gauge and a valve and thru practice we figure out how much pressure it takes to get the CO2 to push the wine out of another bottle using that instead of the air pump?

That would work wouldn't it?

Why not do it in reverse. Get an stopper with two holes drilled in it, and use your pump to create a vacuum in the recieving carboy, then vacuum transfer the wine.

You could use one of these too.

It uses water though, so if you are into conservation, you may not want to.

but there again, you are exposing the product to air on the supply side.

I suppose you could buy a tank of CO2 and use that to push the product around.

No, not really. Just enough to take the airlock off and put the rubber stopper in.

Anyway, the amount of air exposue is minimal. People make award winning wines with greater air exposure than that.

It is not beer. Wine can handle a tiny bit of oxidation, which can actually add complexity, as long as you do not treat it roughly and overdo it. Plus sulfite does a wonderfull job of protecting wine from oxidation.

Yes, but it'd be painfully slow. Pushing the wine with inert gas from a cylinder is a lot more practical, but you need to be careful not to apply too much pressure or you may have a very serious accident. I would never pressurize a glass carboy e.g. Stainless steel kegs are safe up to ~30 psi and barrels are good to 3 to 5 psi.

Tom S

another issue is that the vessel you are transferring to also contains air. I suppose optimally you would would fill that vessel with CO2.

The simple answer is :- if your containers are small enough that you can elevate them without injuring yourself or disturbing the sediment, then rack by syphoning otherwise use a small purpose built pump. I have an Italian made 35020 Polverara pump, it is bi-directional, self priming and made of brass. Remember brass? Thats the stuff that minimised H2S (in shiraz in particular) before stainless steel was introduced. It was quite inexpensive, about AU$160.00, rated at

My answer is tempered by the fact that I rarely make white wine, only reds and the tiny amount of air contact when priming the pump is not an issue.

Before I bought this pump I messed around with a drill pump for a couple of years. It worked but not very well. Don't bother to go down that path.

Regards Ian

As long as you did not exceed the pressure that would cause your vessel to explode. Most vessels are not made to contain pressure well and you may end up making a bomb causing death.