carboy top off with CO2

Uh, Don, this may seem like a dumb question but if it's a pain to clean & sulfite bottles & jugs, what do you do with your wine once it's finished???

Steve

If you're serious about winemaking, you can get a 5-pound (small) tank of CO2, plus a regulator, for about $120. If you just use it for topping off carboys, it should last several years, I'd think. Once empty, you can take it to any retail gas supplier and exchange it for a fresh tank for about $15.

David

I use a CO2 tank, and try to purge the headspace in all my vats, tanks, and carboys. But IMHO, this is not an effective alternative to topping off. As you add CO2, it combines with the air, and much of it dissipates. it helps, but is not perfect oxydization prevention. For my own wines, I keep tanks and carboys topped off - as well as using CO2.

Ric

If you you regularly have several batchs going, has anyone tried attaching the outflow form a fermenting carboy to a carboy that needs topping up such that the CO2 passes from one to the other? Seems like it would work but then I find it easier to just have lots of different size jugs.

Ray

Don

It's all just a lot of extra clutter that has to be purchased, assembled, cleaned, stored, and maintained. Life is much easier if you just use top up wine. Make your own (1 white and 1 red), lable it as such and set it aside just for that purpose. It must be bone dry, average acid (pH~3.5), contain *no sorbate*, and low(er) alcohol (10-11%).

A three gallon batch will make 24 swing top (Grolsch type) bottles which have reusable closures and can be stored upright. If you prefer wine bottles, 3 gallons will make a case of bottles and a half case of splits. Plastic closures for these (such as "red tops" found at ECKraus) are also reusable and allow the top up wine to be stored upright.

Using CO2 will only insure that it will have to be mechanically degassed at some later stage. More clutter and more hassle !!

Just one man's personal opinion.........

Frederick

Good sugestion Fred. I usually have enough wine on hand that I have something I have made that I could use if I needed it. But why would you emphasise no sorbate? Of course it would not need any on it's own if it was bone dry which I agree with as a requirement. Is that a taste preference?

Ray

He probably advises against sorbate to avoid possible 'geranium' effect on wine that has undergone MLF.

Sorbate and MLF are a no no...........

Sorry for the late reply, got caught up in some stuff.

What I mean by "difficult to clear and sulphite both" is that when you have say a 19l carboys and a couple of

1 liter or 750 ml bottles of wine, it's difficult to sulphite both with the right dosages and to break up the kit finings into the right amounts for both sizes of glass that your aging in.

Don

I'm not so sure of that. Let's suppose you have a bunch of 19l plus 750 ml and 1.5l carboys/bottles that you have to clean and put air locks and stoppers in, plus you have to separately fine and sulphite both. Compare that to

1 two hole stopper with a pipe equipped with a stop valve. You hook up the CO2, leak it into the carboy watching the airlock to set the bubble rate. Let it run for X seconds and when your finished you turn off the gas and disconnect or if your doing one carboy at a time you leave it connected.

It's the mixing of CO2 and O2 that has me worried but I figure if you do it long enough most of the O2 would be displaced. And the sulphite takes care of the residual.

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Perhaps. As I said I just want to explore the idea.

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Sure but on the last top up you leave it for 4 or 5 months and it should degass itself or you do a quick mechanical degass and you done.

Don

Thanks for the clarifiation Don. I thought you meant clean & sanitize. Now I see your problem.

Some people handle that by merging everything into a larger carboy or primary for the time it takes to sulphite & clear. Then back into the smaller vessels.

Steve

Or you could use argon or nitrogen instead.

Pp

Thanks for clarifying. I make few sweet wines and use a minimu of sorbate. Guess I just have not run into a problem.

Ray

What are the absorbtion rates and pros and cons for nitrogen? I have another use for nitrogen that would make that of interest.

Don

pros and cons

AFAIK argon and nitrogen don't go in the wine like CO2 does. Both are also heavier so they should be better in protecting. The only con I can think of is they are probably more expensive? They use nitorgen in the small canisters (Wine Preserve?) for sparging the headspace of partially full wine bottles so for whatever it's worth, that's the gas chosen for consumer application of this idea.

Pp

Yes you can do like you say. It's called sparging and I'm sure lots of folks do it. But I think you may have missed my point.

Example: If your secondary starts as (say) a _full_ 5 gallon carboy, and each time you rack you replace loss(es) with top up wine, when it comes time to bottle you will still have a _full_ 5 gallon carboy. No need at all for odd sized containers or sparging.

While I never did a kit wine myself, I once helped a friend solve the kit size restrictions by simply adding a bottle of top up wine to the open primary even before the yeast was added. When it came time to transfer to secondary, he had enough to completely fill the carboy while still leaving behind the worst of the lees. Topping up thereafter left him with a full 6 gallons to be bottled.

Not knocking your idea, just offering some alternative ideas that someone who lurks here might find useful. Good luck.

Best regards,

Frederick

Take for instance the kit I'm doing now, 23l Kendall Ridge Showcase Pinot Gris. Big hopes for this one. No primary. I'm fermenting in a "23l" glass carboy with D-47 yeast. At 23l I'm just up to the shoulder. No real problem during fermentation. If I open the carboy I generally give it a couple of good swishs after closing to release the CO2 displace the O2. However at the end of fermentation there is less and less CO2 to do this with and I have about 3l of space which translates to 4 or 5 bottles of wine. If I transfer to a 19l I have 4l to do something with; with the issues mentioned previously with clearing and sulphiting.

So going to smaller carboys/glass bottles does not seem to be the answer. Staying in the 23l does but I need to top up or purge. Using 3-4 bottles of wine does not seem to be the answer at least for me as I often don't have that amount around and would prefer not to "pollute" the wine with different types. Thus the hunt...

Don

Don wrote " Take for instance the kit I'm doing now, 23l Kendall Ridge

~If it's a 23 liter kit why are you shy of 23 liters volume in the primary fermentation vessel? Do instructions say to add more water later?

"If I transfer to a 19l I have 4l to do something with;

~I can't comment on problems with cleaning carboys or bottles...seems like we all have to do that. But it's no problem to add sulfite to various size containers. You need fresh K metabisulfite. You need a gram scale and a beaker or flask of known volume. Make a stock K metabisulfite solution and add various volumes to different size containers to deliver the desired SO2 dose. Example: To add 50ppm SO2 to 1 gallon juice or wine you add 0.3285 grams K metabisulfite. Dissolve 3.285 grams K metabisulfite in enough water to make 100ml Each 10ml of this solution delivers 0.3285 grams K metabisulfite To add 50ppm SO2 to various size containers add the following;

1.5 liter container - 4ml 1 gallon container - 10ml 3 gallon container - 30ml 5 gallon container - 50ml

Using this approach it's quick and easy to add accurate amounts of SO2 to different size containers. You don't need topping up wine. You don't risk oxidizing your wine because the empty head space is filled with an unknown air/gas mixture. I've lost wine using CO2 to fill headspace before and don't care to take that risk again.

Bill Frazier Olathe, Kansas USA

of 23 liters volume in the primary

mentioned previously with clearing and

A variant on Bill's approach that work really well for me and that I've got from Jon Iverson's book: I have 10 ml pipettes graduated in 0.1ml increments and also a 1 ml pipette for precision additions.1/4 tsp of K meta dissolved in 25ml of water gives about 40ppm for 6 gals, and 1 ml of this solution give 50ppm for a wine bottle. From this I can easily calculate how much solution I need to say add 20ppm to 3 gal carboy (6.5 ml), for which I'd use the bigger pipette. Or I can do small adjustments of the SO2 level (5-15 ppm) directly into bottles before bottling using the 1 ml pipette. It works really well.

Pp