Degassing yet again

[redwineleo]

Okay, I know it's been beaten to death, but can I ask about degassing again? I have a Chilean Merlot that I bottled 9 months ago. Of course I thought (operative word being thought) I had it degassed. I utilize the old paddle and break your arm method. I opened a bottle last night to check the progress and it had somewhat of a sulfite type of taste, not real strong, but noticable. In reading prior forum posts, I decided to put my thumb over the bottle and shake to see if it fizzed...of course it did. I poured some in a glass and swirled, swirled and swirled some more. After about 45 minutes or so, the wine in the glass tasted okay. Now...what to do to remedy? I have about 25 bottles of it. Do I open them all, put them back in a sanitized carboy and go buy a brake bleeder? Any suggestions?

 

[PolishWineP]

If that were my wine, I'd just leave it. I'm assuming that you haven't had any explosions. When you want to serve a bottle of this wine, open it, give it the shakes, decant it, let itexhale for a while, then serve.
If this sounds like more trouble than it's worth, I'd be glad to make a road trip to relieve you of your anxiety and your wine.

I'm glad to be of help in this way.

 

[WineNewbie]

Maybe buy the brake bleeder for future batches. I have the same issue, and have been thinking of getting the brake bleeder.


For the Chilean Merlot though, I would just pour it into a decanter and give it a swirlan hour before you're going to drink it. Others have suggested doing this and it has worked well for me.


If you dump all the bottles back into the carboy and try to further degas, you may risk oxidizing the batch.


If you give any bottles away, just tell them to decant before drinking.

 

[Mr Robusto]

What is a Brake Bleeder?

 

[masta]

A simple and inexpensive solution for now is to get yourself a Vacu-vin and then you can degas these bottles before serving. The device is also very useful to store unfinished bottles for a few days with less oxidation since you are pulling out most of the air.


http://www.finevinewines.com/ProdDetA.asp?PartNumber=4317


A better solution for future batches is to get a drill powered stirrer and if used correctly will eliminate future batches with excess CO2.


http://www.finevinewines.com/ProdDetA.asp?PartNumber=15262Edited by: masta

 

[redwineleo]

Sounds like decanting is the best method for the currently bottled fizzers. Guess I need to get a Fizz-X from George before starting the next batch which is a Crushendo Castellina SuperTuscan. I've read here that I should not try to create too much of a vortex when degassing, correct? How do I know when I've degassed enough?

 

[Wade E]

For future reference this is a brake bleeder.

This is a great tool for degassing carboys after using the fizz-x
drill mounted stirrer. The vacuvin is a good tool to but is a little
strenuous for carboys but is great for wine bottles and is awesome for
saving wine bottles since you can use the removable stops to keep on a
wine bottle.