siphoning out the wine

Hi, I have always bottled the wine with the wine from the top of the source bottle. Just the other day I thought that if I first remove the stuff on the bottom, that the whole might benifit, and the result would be less cloudy. Has anyone tried to first rack the bottom lees out before the rest of the wine? and if so, how did it go?

Sean

Reply to
Sean Cleary
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I accidently racked some of the wine lees into my filter setup. Clouded up everything and ruined the filters.

You can rack off the wine into another carboy/bucket, then bottle from that. That goes fairly fast tho it may leave a significant amount of liquid in the other container. Should you count that as dreg bottles and fill up a few magnums, chill'em and let them sit, then decant off the wine and drink within a week.

At least, that's what we do.

With the filter setup I'm very careful to either rack off the fining material/lees to another demijon or to very carefully lower the racking cane as I go. I can drop the cane in and let it siphon out all the material around it to a junk bottle, then as the wine clears in the hose I hook it back up to the pump- that works well too.

With the reds it's nearly impossible to see where the sediment is because they're so dark, so this procedure really only works for whites.

Jas> Hi,

Reply to
purduephotog

Thank you for what to do with the lees. Wonderful idea. I usually just tossed them. But I do not think you understood what I said. I ment to deliberately remove the lee liquid first, by siphoning off the bottom, hopefully w/o distirbing the rest of the wine. This is in alternative to either accidentally racking wine with the lees, or to removing the non lee liquid with a hope that the lees will not be disturbed. This second hope is usually only partially correct: the lees will be disturbed by either suction/siphoning or by tipping the carboy over and removing the top liquid.

Sean

snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com wrote:

Reply to
Sean Cleary

Sean-

Actually, I did understand what you said. That's a technique the wife uses in beermaking and is very popular to do with stainless conical fermenters. You lower the racking cane into the sludge, turn it on, and pull it down. When it runs or speeds up, you stop. Repeat over the next few days to continue 'harvesting' your yeast off.

Problem is, it wastes too much, IMHO, for work in glass flat bottomed vessels.

But you can definately try it- I'm sure others out here do- it's just not something we practice.

Jas> Thank you for what to do with the lees. Wonderful idea. I usually just > tossed them.

Reply to
purduephotog

Thank you for clarifying that you did know. I would then seem that a pointy bottom container would work better for this. I may put one side of my containers on a block, creating a well for the lees. Thank you for inspiring that idea. I was still wondering if anyone with experience in doing this in wine can give pointers.

Also under consideration: remove some of the lees and then top siphon the rest when it all settles down.

Thank you, Sean

snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com wrote:

Reply to
Sean Cleary

Forget it. That doesn't work.

Tom S

Reply to
Tom S

I agree with Tom, I can't see how you would not stir things up and just have to start over. Racking has been practiced the same way for centuries, maybe millenniums. You would be vacuuming up the lees in effect and I can't imagine that working. That said, you won't ruin it so try it if you want to.

They do make a conical fermenter for wine that hangs on a wall. It has a large ball and cone shape with a valve on the bottom to let the lees go into a ball shaped compartment. I guess you can pull off the ball once you collect the lees, maybe you shake them into the ball like when you riddle sparkling wine. (I'm doing all of this from memory, it seemed expensive and too much like work compared to carboys, besides, where would I put several?)

Joe

Reply to
Joe Sallustio

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