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Degassing

A buddy and I have been making wine for quite a while, and while the results have been acceptable, better would be fine. One place where we may fall down is the degassing. We bought a wand that fits in a drill and the ends flare out when the drill is turned on. Initially we did this at slow speed but perhaps lately got a little carried away. The last couple have foamed rather violently. Should we discontinue its use, use it only at slow speed, or just give up on it and use the spoon. Is just hard to tell when the wine has been completely degassed. We have noticed a tingle on the tongue in some bottles, but not all. Is that incomplete degassing?

Thanks in advance

RB

Reply to
Robin & Dianne
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Just to point out, you only need to degas wines that have very short secondary times. Wines that bulk age for months to years really do not need degassing. That tingle can very well be excess co2 in the wine.

Reply to
Droopy

I'll have to disagree with droopy. Even though I wait almost a year before bottling, from carboys with several rackings, I invariably got too much CO2 in the bottled wines before I started degassing. I use a bottle-brush in a variable speed drill once the weather warms up in May and yes, sometimes it foams too violently, which just means lower the speed for a while.

Reply to
ernie

huh, what temp do you keep your carboys at? I have never detected any co2 in wine over 6 months old at home.

Reply to
Droopy

We had this discussion before and it appears experiences vary (as always). I've got noticeable CO2 on most cold fermented whites even after 9 months of aging. The bulk aging is done at room temperature because I don't have a colder storage room, and at that time the wine would have been racked at least 2-3 times after the ferment.

On a tangent - I have a red/black currant mixed that got stuck at about

1.000 last year but got going again 3-4 months ago. It's under airlock at steady 72F or so, and it's bone dry now. The weird thing is that all/most of the CO2 is still in the wine, it's complately saturated with it. Shouldn't most of it be driven off during the restarted ferment? P
Reply to
pp

Reply to
ernie

I'm not surprised at ernie's scenario... The CO2 has to dissipate by diffusion through the airlock. This is a very slow process; petulance in my wine takes about 1-1/2 to 2 years to dissipate under similar conditions in a glass carboy. If this process wasn't so slow, you'd also enjoy detectable oxidation of the wine during this time. The process will occur more quickly in an oak barrel because of the higher gas permeability of the wood compared to through glass.

(For you science nuts, both the CO2 leaving and the O2 entering the wine through the airlock occur by equimolar counterdiffusion. Plus there's a small boost in dissipation rate by expulsion during thermal expansion of the wine.)

Gene

ernie wrote:

Reply to
gene

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