Removing floating skins from primary - technique

How big are the skins? I can see taking a small mesh bag and tying it to the delivery end of the siphon, capturing all the skins (assuming they're properly sized to pass through the racking tube. Then, if you're racking into a carboy, pulling the bag through the neck of the carboy is likely to squeeze out a lot of the juice trapped in the skins. The trick is to not have a little filter attachment, but a big one, big enough that the skins don't become a dam for the wine moving through. Big enough bag should handle that...

I like your skimming idea, that may be a start, followed by the racking into a bag idea. That should get the most out of it.

Now, a wise crack, and this is absolutely true. I'm at a grocery store, where the checker has passed around to the other employees a list of jokes wherein the joke is aimed at people with lighter colored hair. One of which was "did you hear about the blond who was trapped for 4 hours at the mall during a power outage? She was riding the escalator at the time." OK, so the joke wasn't funny, but... and I swear this is true... I know this was one of the jokes because she was

*explaining* it to another employee who happened to be blond. And no, the second employee wasn't playing dumb.

Gratuitous, but I swear it's true...

Rob

Dave Allis> Hi all.

Rob, I like that idea, I'll have to see if my hose is big enough for the size skins, it may not be. But the concept of trapping after makes more sense than prior to getting into the hose, since it clogged so much last time. I think I'll go from primary bucket to another primary bucket so i can use the bag at the end trick. Then put into carboy.

Married to a blond, I am careful about these type jokes, especially since she is incredibly smart (top of class, always top performer at work, etc.) but since she doesn't read this newsgroup - ROFL! I loved it. And blond jokes can be modified....

...did you hear about the terrorist that was sent to blow up a car in the market? He burned his mouth on the tailpipe!

ok, so that's the best I can do. haha.

Buy a fine mesh bag, put the skins in that, tie the bag closed and then drop them in the must? Squeeze the juice from the bag at the end and then rack?

hi, Alien,

Actually, I've done that with fruit wines, but when I contacted the wine maker (WinExpert), they suggested for their skins, having it contained in a bag would reduce the complexity given to the must, thus making the wine less complex. But I DO do that with pumpkin, cranberry, etc. Since those are less likely to be complex.

I'd be interested in your input and others on the "bag the skins" technique against getting complexity from the skins. thanks for the input.

I'd go with Alien in the future - can't imagine how it would "limit the complexity" since what you're pulling out of the skins are molecules smaller than a fine mesh bag. It may be that they're concerned about circulating the liquid of the must through the skins to assure that there's not a high chemical concentration in the bag preventing further extraction. But I'd doubt it being a real effect, and certainly if you occasionally swirled the bag around the fermenter during fermentation the point would be moot. Don't forget that during fermentation of regular grapes, most of the time the grape bodies are floating at the top (or even above!) the liquid, so it's not as if this would be terribly different than regular winemaking.

Thinking more now, I'd say in a mesh bag with the occasional swirl (acting almost as a cap punch), I'd go for in a minute.

I have a sister-in-law who's very blond but also smart, so we've tended to drop the blonde jokes. It was just that it was a blond asking for the explanation of the joke that made it so funny!

Rob

I would treat it the same way I would a fruit wine. Fermint on the fruit (in this case the skings) then when going from primary to secondary, pour it through a fine mesh bag and squeeze th eback by hand. If you are doing large batches you may want a press, but for small batchs just do the above.

Ray