Filtering and bulk aging

Harry, With all honesty, I should tell you that I do not do wine kits. However, I can answer you questions in a general way. Please wait until you hear from those who make wine kits.

I like to have a reserve top-up for my wines, so I try very hard to recover as much wine as I can from the sediment. There are many ways to do this, others talk about putting it into a soda bottle and running it through the spin cycle on the washing machine. Jack Keller talks about some different ways on his wine site. I pour the sediment into a glass container with as little head space as I can and put it in the fridge. Within 6-10 hours, you'll notice the heavier sediment falls to the bottom and the wine settles at the top. When the wine at the top isn't getting any larger in volume, then I draw the wine off into another container and keep it until the next time I rack.

I don't believe so. You're always going to lose some wine when you're racking off of lees. You can either make a bit more so you have a little wine to top-up with, or you can rack to smaller containers each time to reduce the amount of exposure to air, or you can add a similar wine to top up with, or you can drop marbles into the carboy to increase the volume to keep it topped up.

My rule of thumb is to rack 2-4 times in a 7 month aging period. It all depends on the wine. If a wine is dropping a lot of sediment, I will rack it (but I usually let the wine sit for at least a month). The amount of sediment a wine drops should lessen with time. Some wines clear up at 3 months and then I won't rack it anymore, some take longer. Hopefully someone will have some experience with your wine kits, so they can tell you what works best.

Thank you for a great post Darlene.

Do not understand how you can lose a gallon from sediment (you are talking a standard 23 litre kit?). That's 20% of your product gone.

I might lose a little from racking, but nothing like that. The most I have lost is a litre or so. I usually top up with a bottle from similar wine made before.

Lum, Thanks - I have learned a lot from all of you, which has helped me to respond to others. Darlene

Darlene,

I think we all have, at least for "those who have ears to listen!" Lum, Tom and of course several others are wonderful contributors to our knowledge of winemaking. Great group.

Thanks Lum and keep on posting,

Glen Duff

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Dar V wrote:

That's how much sediment precipitated out of the wine. I thought it was a lot too, but there's not much I could do.

Thanks Darlene, very helpful post!

One followup question...

Do you do anything to reduce oxygen exposure when racking? Racking 4 times must introduce a considerable amount of oxygen.

Thanks again, Harry

Harry, I racked 1 gallon of strawberry wine with morning from my primary to my glass secondary, and it took me a couple of minutes (or less), and then I put the bung and airlock on right away. Even if you have a big carboy, once you get the siphon going - this amount of limited exposure shouldn't hurt it. I'll admit the first time I racked it took me awhile, but I get it done pretty quick now. You should really only have 1 or 2 rackings where you have a lot of lees - and the other 1 or 2 times to rack should be used only if the wine isn't clearing. Since I like a bit sweeter wine, sometimes that final rack is to sorbate and sweeten; and then waiting a month before bottling. I've had a couple of problem wines which I ended up racking 5 or

You could have saved that gunk and allowed it to settle further over the course of months. Adding some bentonite slurry to it probably would have helped speed things up a bit.

Tom S