question on pumping during racking

A 200L tank!! 200L is not quite 53 gallons. You can siphon the top half of one tank, but you still need to raise the other tank to keep the siphon working!

No idea.

Dick

200 liters of wine doesn't take all that long to move by siphon. What's your hurry?

Red wines tend to be much more tolerant of a bit of air exposure than whites, and may even benefit from it.

The most gentle methods of moving wines are siphoning by gravity and pumping using inert gas counterpressure. Diaphragm pumps are also very good.

Tom S

I would siphon if i practically could, but raising my tanks high enough would not be feasible. also, because a filled tank is basically unmovable, sometimes the distance between the tanks would in itself necessitate pumping.

Is it primarily the risk of oxidisation that i'm facing? The pump itself is an italian model designed for wine use, i.e, stainless steel housing and HDPE impeller. Is it then sufficient to sparge the receiving tank with inert gas? Is that what you refer to as "inert gas counterpressure", Tom?

thanks again for your thoughtful responses. this newsgroup is truly a gem.

Darin Young

Just curious, where did you get the pump? How much did it cost?

The pump is actually a centrifugal 1/2hp Italian jes8 model. I bought it in Burnaby, British Columbia, for somwhere around $325 Canadian dollars (~260$US) from Bosa Grape and Juice - tel. 604 473-9463, and it came on a handy trolley. Saint Patricks, in Austin, TX, also has a fine selection of pumps

Darin

Hi Darin,

Oxidation is the major issue. But reasonble people will disagree about whether the simple pumping of wine, in and of itself, damages wine. I'd think that if you're using a centrifugal pump, rather than an impeller pump, you're probably not doing any real damage. On the commercial scale, there are relatively few wineries who move wine by gravity alone. It's just way too much of a pain and way too expensive to do.

But like I said, there are people who would disagree and claim that ANY pumping does damage wine. But there are also people who believe that the world is flat. :-)

Dave

**************************************************************************** Dave Breeden snipped-for-privacy@lightlink.com

If it's made for wine use you can assume that it's OK for that purpose as long as the seals are OK and you have no leaks at the connections.

Is it then sufficient to sparge the

No to the latter. Inert gas counterpressure involves using a siphon to direct the wine into another container and "pushing" the wine through the siphon by pressurizing the delivery container with inert gas. I use this technique to rack from oak barrels, but in principle you could use it on any container that can handle the gas pressure. For safety purposes I limit the pressure to about 3 to 5 PSI.

Tom S

The prevailing theory is that the wine is damaged by the shearing action and localized heating that occurs during pumping. That may very well be a case of picking the fly sh** out of the pepper though. ;^)

True, and there have been some improvements in what's available for the purpose. The winery I work out of has a bunch of plastic bodied, air powered diaphragm pumps that do a great job of moving wine in as gentle a fashion as possible. True, they don't have the volume to handle pumping a

100,000 gallon tank, but for us "micro-boutique" guys they're terrific!

Tom S

I have read arguments that pumps burse the wine. Then I have helped commercial winemakers use pumps to move wine. I will not get into the argument one way or the other but if you are concerned about it, then you should act on your concerns. Here is a description I posted on the Meadmaking group of a pump that would not bruse the wine. The description uses carboys. Could certainly modify the procedure to fit your containers.

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An alternate type of pump is to run your siphon wand down into your source carboy as you would when siphoning. Then put a rubber bung with two holes in the target carboy. Place the target carboy where you want it to be regardless of whether it is higher or lower than the original (within reason,

5 or 10 feet, not 1 story to another). Now run a plastic wand or tube that fits well down through one of the holes in the bung down several inches (at least 8 or 10 inches below the bung) leaving one inch sticking out the tope to connect a hose to, Connect a siphoned hose from the top of this tube to the siphoned wand in the original carboy. Then put a tight fitting short tube in the second hole of the bung, again leaving one inch sticking out the top. This tube should only go to the bottom of the bung. It should not extend down in to the carboy. Now run a hose from this tube to any air pump. The hoses should be strong enough to withstand the pressure of the vacuum you pull. You should not pull much vacuum.

The target carboy with the bung should now be a sealed unit. It is connected on one side to a pump that will draw air out of it to create a vacuum and on the other side to an open wine source from which it will draw wine to fill that vacuum. Wine never passed through the pump, only the tubing. Vacuum can lift liquid 32 feet. You do not need to draw that much vacuumed to lift it 3 or 4 feet to fill a carboy.

Many thanks for the wealth of information, gentlemen.

Darin

You should not pull much vacuum.

Hi Ray

How much is not much? My vacuum pump will pull 27 inches on a 1 cubic foot container. Obviously running it wide open would cause an implosion in short order. Are we talking an inch or two is safe or would it be a little more?

Regards

Frank

That might not be to much. You might try it. If you have to maybe you can cut it back to less than maximum capacity. You do not want to pull too much vacuum on you wine and you do not want to pull to hard of a streem through the hoses. Just a good steady flow.

Ray

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Hi Ray

This pump will pull 27 inches of mercury or nearly pull a vacuum on a one cubic foot container. It was formerly used to evacuate the air from silicone rubber molds. The cover used on that setup is one inch thick ballistic lexan. When we used quarter inch lexan the pump was strong enough to implode the cover.

Maybe it would be prudent to try an experiment using a couple of plastic carboys and water to see what the threshold is for that set up and then dial it back some for glass.

Regards

Frank

I have the need to rack between 150 L variable capacity stainless tanks. Wondering if I can replace the plastic airlock with a bung and do this. Also wondering if the stainless tanks can deal with the pressure. Anyone try this with SS tanks before?

thx, dan