Vacuum assisted racking ...

I can't see any reason this shouldn't be OK - especially for wines that have dissolved CO2 that you'd like to degas anyway.

Don't get me wrong; wines under partial vacuum are still exposed to oxygen. It's just not as much as at standard pressure.

Tom S

I've been using my ENOLmatic for years now to rack from carboy to carboy, up, down, left, right, cutting down on the sulfite thanks to less oxygen, and also to bottle my wines. Great machine. Simple to use. Works with all sizes of carboy and all sizes of bottles. Just doesn't work with plastic, for the vacuum will wreck plastic carboys in stead of racking them (grin).

Ed Susteren, Holland.

"Analogueman" schreef in bericht news:IyCjc.25447$i61.3940@clgrps13...

Thanks Ed; I Googled ENOLmatic. Notice that their advertising says the bottle filler function will fill to a pre-set level automatically. How does ENOLmatic detect when the bottle is full and turn off ? Maybe I can incorporate the turn off function in my home-made system. LOL !!! Yes, makes a plastic receiver look very different...

TKS, Roger

It doesn't turn off. It starts sucking wine up through the overflow tube into the receptacle. You are expected to pull the bottle off when it reaches that point, or ideally just before to minimize... well, you can't call it wastage, but at least wine that needs to be drunk up that day.

BTW, I do not believe for a second that vacuum assisted racking or bottling is free from the threat of oxidation. You are indeed creating an area of lower pressure which allows air pressure to force wine from one vessel to another. However, nobody has yet given me any information on the level of vacuum created in a bottle or a carboy. I believe there is still air in there, and that it will cause premature degradation of wines that receive this treatment.

My Enolmatic now sits largely idle, other than for occasional degassing use. I have gone back to manual bottling with a racking tube and bottle filler.

Brian

"Cannot introduce air" seems to be a bit strong. Wouldn't there be some oxygen pickup due to the temporary headspace in the container being racked? In addition, some oxidation would be introduced in the receiving container unless the pressure was extremely low.

Lum Del Mar, California, USA

Allright, Brian, that's the way it works. Try the following: place an empty bottle - start your enolmatic - wait untill you see the wine (or water, as it is only for trying out) coming - shut the enolmatic down - look how the bottle fills up anyway - conclude that the vacuum had to be almost complete when it fills the bottle even without a working enolmatic - believe me when I say that with glass carboys it is almost the same?. We (my brother and I) make pleasant use of the fact that some wine ends up in the receptacle; we use it to fill up the last bottle or, better still, drink it as a reward after all that "hard work" (LOL). You are right of course: the enolmatic is perfect for degassing! It deserves a better fate than sitting on your shelf, unemployed though.

Ed Susteren, Holland. No flowers, no bees, no leaves on the trees, no wonder, november.

"Brian Lundeen" schreef in bericht news:c6p4vl$e8nba$ snipped-for-privacy@ID-202290.news.uni-berlin.de...

There should be very little air pickup in the carboy receiving the wine as the pressure would be tending to cause gas to leave the wine rather than enter it. But in the carboy that the wine is coming from, you would still have the normal air contact as it must be open for this to work. Normally you would have air contact in both so maybe this would tend to cause less air contact than normal. Of course you would have some lose of volatile molecules due to the vacuum. There are always minuses to go with the pluses. Still it sounds to be a very viable way of moving wine as I am getting old and my back is not aging well. Be aware that a 3 lb pressure drop would only lift water about 6-7 feet but that is more than enough to be very useful to the "home" winemaker.

Question: Do you have any trouble with the hose collapsing under the pressure?

Ray