Use of 6.5 gallon carboys for wine?

I use my 6.5gallon carboys for making wine. I start my wine in a big bucket for the first 3-7 days then rack over to the 6.5gallon carboy. I have heard of people using there CO2 to purge the air out of the carboy, racking, then with low pressure purging the air again. Since the yeast is still active it will just push it right out. I racked a strawberry wine today from the bucket to the carboy and i didnt use my co2. Within 5 minutes of attaching my airlock it was active again. I started out at 1.090 and racked at 1.010 (a little late) but it is still active as hell. I went all grain so i am using carboys for wine and beer kegs (15.5 & 7.75gallon) for beer.

Hope this helps ya, Joe Romero Panama City, FL

thanks for the reply. I am going to jsut go ahead and use the 6.5 for the wine. I just wanted to make sure the little .5 gallon of headspace is as unimportant in wine as it is in beer brewing. The blanket of CO2 keeps everything inline. :)

I'm probably going to start with a $90 kit with some oak chips in my Cabernet, Merlot, or Cabernet/Merlot. I have yet to buy the kit but will after my next two brews.

I did a 5-6 gallon batch of strawberry wine and it cost me mess than 30 bucks. I did have all the chems i needed though. Check the farmers markets for great prices on fresh fruit. just my 2cents.

joe

Nothing wrong with fermenting in the 6 1/2, but once you start aging and such you'll need to eliminate that air space. If you have a 5 gallon carboy you can use that and a 1 gallon apple juice jug or something similar. You'll find as you make more and more wine you'll want lots of different sizes including plenty of 1 gallon jugs and some 3 gallon carboys as well. I don't have a 6 gallon myself and don't really miss it.

That's good advice regarding that 1 gallon jug...thanks. However, I still do not understand the reasoning behind .5 gallon of space being a problem if it's filled with CO2.

people dont like using a blanket of co2 for wine.

other than that, dont know.

Once your fermentation is complete and you are aging your wine, there will be little, if any, co2 produced by the yeast, therefore you will get oxygen in the headspace to oxidize the wine.

Al

Al,

Are you assuming that the carboy will be opened a few times? I do try to age in carboys of an appropriate size to allow me to leave only an inch or so of headspace in the neck, but there have been times when I simply didn't have an available containers of the correct size. In that case, I just leave the wine be, properly sulfited, until I can rack it into a carboy of a better fit. With the headspace filled with CO2 and an airlock affixed, there should be no worries about oxygen entering the carboy or oxidizing the wine.

Beer and wine are different, you really do not want that headspace after fermentation is complete with wine.

Wine ages much longer than beer normally, especially reds. That makes it more suseptible to oxidization over time. You do not want to depend on CO2 from fermentation as a gas blanket since it really has to saturate the wine to be effective, once you rack it gets a bit of air in it. You rack a few times with wine, usually once with beer.

If you have a tank of CO2 from beer making that can work, but I can't really advise you on how long to bubble it through. Most people use an inert gas, I see nitrogen and argon used. Anything that displaces all of the oxygen should work. They make gas dispersion tubes for this if that is the route you want to go. I am not speaking from experience since I top up.)

6 gallons to start will work out to 5 to 5.5 gallons of finished wine once you rack a few times. Most winemakers either top it up with other wine (you could use a bag in the box) or use smaller containers. I top up to 1/2" from the airlock. I use 3 - 6.5 gallon carboys, but most of mine are 5's.

Regards, Joe

Ken, When I bulk age my wines, I usually sample it every few months just to make sure that all is OK. So, I'm assuming that any co2 will escape and not be replaced - I don't have a co2 dispenser. So I always make sure there is little head space just to be safe. Al

Thanks to all who've helped. I will attempt to use my 5 gallon and an additional 1 gallon jug after my primary fermentation to limit any of these issues.