Splash rack?

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DConnolly

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My 6 gal. of rasberry has been in the carboy for 6 weeks with one rack about 3 weeks ago. It's been stable for almost 5 weeks. The one racking was done with a siphon. I took a sample this weekend and it has just the faintest smell of sulphur when you put your nose in the glass. It tastes very good and the sulpher was so faint it didn't bother me much, but it was there. Would a splash rack help with that? Thoughts?
 
Like Wade mentioned, hope you added kmeta already.
If it is setting on sediment now, having a sulfur smell I would definitely do a splash rack. There are special cases where setting on sediment can actually improve some types of grape wines. To do so you really have to know and understand the process.

In most wines and in most cases, if left on the wine too long, that sediment can impart some not so nice characteristics to your wine.
 
It was stabilized with kmeta and sorbate when the fermentation was complete. It sat on the sediment for about 3 weeks as it cleared and I racked it. There has been no additional sediment since then and it's very clear.

So is the advice to splash rack it? If so, should I pour it from the carboy into a bucket, then from the bucket into a new carboy? Or just poor it directly into another carboy?
 
Have you degassed it yet? If not I would do that first.
 
You say there is no sediment now and the smell of sulfur is very faint, which you say you can deal with as is. That says to me you might have only a very slight sulphur problem. It could be that you still need to degas some more, which might take care of the slight problem.

As mentioned already, you need to make sure the wine is degassed well. If it is not, you should degas it before you rack it.

Doesn't sound like you need to literally pour the wine from one container to another, just use your siphon. The process of pouring really splashes the wine but it also lets in a lot of oxygen. Since your case is very slight, I wouldn't pour it.

I would rack it from one carboy to another and let the wine splash into the receiving carboy. Splash, as in - don't let the hose tip go under the surface of the wine in the receiving carboy. It will also get rid of some of any remaining CO2.
 
I need to buy one of those stirrers to attach to my drill I guess. I have just used a long spoon to degas as best I could before racking - stirring as hard as I could for a couple minutes. That probably didn't do a good enough job. Thanks for the help!
 
George at The Wine Maker's Toy Store sells a small vacuum device that is intended to remove some of the air from a partially filled bottle of wine. It is called a Vacu-Vin, I believe.

It can be used on a carboy to produce a reasonable enough vacuum to help get rid of that last bit of gas left over after stirring. Yes, get a drill stirrer to do the bulk of degassing and maybe a Vacu-Vin to do the rest.

George has a video in which he shows how to attach a Vacu-Vin to an air lock.

Good luck with your wine.
 

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