Found last night that a carboy of Reisling well past the secondary lost its airlock. Don't know if it was the kids, the dog or what. Potential time exposed is 1 day to worse case 6 days. (The last racking.) Carboy was topped off well into the neck. I immediately inspected, no visable contamination of bugs or junk. Hit with a dose of SO2 and capped it.
Can I do anything else?
Tom
If you've got access to Nitrogen gas you could give it a sparge for a few minutes, this will push any remaining O2 out of the wine.
Watch your SO2 over the next week, it takes time for the O2 to be scavenged and your free SO2 will drop while this goes on
I think any of us who have made much wine have had this happen. I have several times. I always worry about it but I cannot say that it has ruined any of the batches it has happened to. Well except for the batch that I let the air lock dry out for a couple of years. But I turned that one into sherry.
Ray
Don't worry about it. If there was nothing growing on it and it isn't fruit fly heaven there's probably no damage done - especially if the wine is high into the neck of the carboy.
Tom S
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