I recently learned that you can remove gas from a carboy by fitting a VacuVin vacum pump to it. So I did just that. Mind you, this is a wine to which I previously added potassium bicarbonate to reduce the acidity, so it had A LOT of CO2 in it. So anyway, I started pumping a lot of gas started coming out. The thing is, it never seems to end! No matter how much I pump, there is always more gas. Has anybody tried this? How do you know when to stop?
Yeah, I figured this out, but I've now gone to doing it at the time of bottling, since the VacuVins are really bottle-friendly.
I pump until the mad rush of bubbles stops, and I just get an occasional, lazy, larger bubble. One other reason to do it in the bottle is that when you do a carboy, that's 30 bottles worth of degassing! It can take me 5-7 pumps to clear a bottle, so you're going to be pumping for quite a while!
Rob
Franco wrote:
So, what kind of a stopper do you use that fits in a carboy and fits the vacuvin?
And does this really remove gas from the liquid itself, even in a bottle? I didn't think the vacuum would be strong enough to remove anything but the gas in the airspace.
Yes it will work but it will take time. Be aware that it may also remove some of the volitiles in the wine.
Also be sure that it is really finished fermenting and there is no MLC going on or iw will never end.
Ray
miker:
Yes, it gets a lot of gas out of the wine. Start with a regular rubber stopper (the ones with a hole). Put one of those racking canes in the hole. Some people cut a few straight inches off of a racking cane and just use that. On the other end of the plastic tube, insert a short piece of 3/8" (inside diameter) hose. Finally, fit the VacuVin ruber thingy around the 3/8" hose.
miker wrote:
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