Degassing

[wineview]

I want to avoid the tedious task of degassing with a wine whip. How long do I need to keep the wine in bulk storage to make sure all the C02 has dissipated ? I realize that all wines are different. I'm looking for ballpark. Nine months........one year?

Thanks

 

[Rembee]

This is not a one answer fits all wines. It depends on the type of wine and the strain of yeast used.
I predominately make country wines and from experience I can attest that most wines take from 9 to upward of 18 months to degas naturally. I usually wait until the airlock has become to a neutral state, meaning when the level in a 1 piece "S" shaped airlock has equalized.

 

[KCCam]

I want to avoid the tedious task of degassing with a wine whip. How long do I need to keep the wine in bulk storage to make sure all the C02 has dissipated ? I realize that all wines are different. I'm looking for ballpark. Nine months........one year?

Thanks

Two words: vacuum pump. It's not necessary, I know, but it saves a huge amount of time and effort racking and bottling (you rarely need to lift a full carboy). Degassing is a bonus. It's a pretty cheap tool compared to what you need for many other hobbies, and for the cost of a decent wine kit or two, if you can afford it (~$200 I think), you won't be sorry.

 

[Rembee]

Believe it or not, the Vacu vin hand pump actually works very good and only cost $20 from Amazon, if your looking to go that route. Not only is it made to degas or pull a vacuum on open wine bottles but it also fits inside the opening of a 1 gal carboy. You can also use a piece of racking hose and rig it to fit into a drilled out bung that any airlock will fit into. It will pull a vacuum very easily and in turn, pull out C02 from solution.
https://www.amazon.com/Vacu-Vin-Bla...jbGlja1JlZGlyZWN0JmRvTm90TG9nQ2xpY2s9dHJ1ZQ==

 

[KCCam]

Believe it or not, the Vacu vin hand pump actually works very good and only cost $20 from Amazon, if your looking to go that route. Not only is it made to degas or pull a vacuum on open wine bottles but it also fits inside the opening of a 1 gal carboy. You can also use a piece of racking hose and rig it to fit into a drilled out bung that any airlock will fit into. It will pull a vacuum very easily and in turn, pull out C02 from solution.
https://www.amazon.com/Vacu-Vin-Bla...jbGlja1JlZGlyZWN0JmRvTm90TG9nQ2xpY2s9dHJ1ZQ==

Agreed. Before I could afford my AIO, I used something similar. I'm sure it is a Vacu-Vin too, The one I have is actually the perfect size for a #7 1/2 bung, which is just small enough for my carboys. Put the bung in, pump the air out and wait. Pump again when no sign of bubbles. Repeat. There’s a little tab on the rubber piece that acts as the check valve. Lifting it gave a very good indication of how much vacuum remained, and thus how well degassed it was. Now that I have an AIO, it’s gathering dust, and my shoulder thanks me.

 

[Rice_Guy]

* first of all a practical definition of being degassed is that the wine will maintain a vacuum for half an hour. We really don’t care if every gram of CO2 is out and a fair percentage of the small wineries have gas in the product.
* From experience if I am actively pulling a vacuum as with the VacuVin or my 12 volt vacuum pump roughly every fifteen minutes a twelve hour treatment is enough. A Vacuvin does 15 inches Hg and the 12 volt does 22 inches. Henry’s law (below) says you need driving force, ie your common household vacuum cleaner which can pull five inches Hg would also do it, the key is that it provides some driving force to get the job done, I haven’t tried but would guess in twelve hours again. ,,,, another one some of us have is the small pump for air mattresses
* temperature is part of the equation since solubility is related to temp. If you raise the temp to the high for summer in your area and hold it a week it should be done,,, I ought to set up a brew belt to check if it is faster as a day. One implication of this is if you hold in a fifty degree cellar for five years and always serve at a comfortable 75F it will never have degassed. A second implication is that for those of us holding wine at ambient temperature our wine will become degassed in summer when the wine gets warm, ,,, and it wouldn’t matter if it was three or nine months old just that it was warm.
* your original post was how much time? Another way to answer is the time for natural turbulence in the carboy to mix it up,,,, BUT this can only start after you provide some slight driving fonce.

The technical answer is that the CO2 is in equilibrium with the wine.
If I went to Henry’s law the solubility = K(constant) X partial pressure

Partial pressure = atmospheres X percentage

* Therefore on a new wine which is degassing there is back pressure on the air lock and the percent of CO2 could be close to 100 percent and we could guess that the the wine is saturated with 1 atmosphere of CO
* the magic of any vacuum pump is that it will decrease the atmospheres of pressure and we push the equilibrium lower (linear with the % vacuum, per formula above).

There was a thread “degas prior to racking” last month with photos and more about degassing.

 

[WillShill]

I’ve used vacuvin type products on one gallon jugs but any idea for a PET carboy which would suck it’s walls in under vacuum

 

[Johnd]

This is the little dude you need to degas, it’ll degas a 6 gallon carboy in a few minutes. I use mine for racking as well. I also bought an AIO, which is better for controlled racking and bottling. 2.5 CFM Vacuum Pump

 

[Rice_Guy]

* If you are sucking in the side wall you are pulling more vacuum than you need (or generally speaking is safe - glass carboys are not vacuum rated)
* vacuum degassing is a bulk material mass function: 1) the mixing of wine (any liquid) controls how fast degassing happens, a tank will stratify and the bottom contains more CO2. 2) degassing absorbs energy (cools the wine) which slows down the action as it happens, it speeds the activity to have the wine warm or do it in a warm room- yes we can trade higher vacuum for warmer wine but that gets you back to risk
* a vacuum gague (about $12 from HomeDepot on line order)is essential for degassing, yes I can pull foam into the trap when I start if I am over 5 inches Hg. I have check valve on my setup and turn the pump on and off three or four times an hour to stay where it is safe (by the way a VacuVin is a readily available check valve) my preferred set up uses a two hole cork with a gague in one and a check valve in the other, about $18.

First of all, thank you for posting photos of how to put things together, , this has gotten me looking through parts on how I could use the VacuVin check valve to degas.

View attachment 71437
this has been sitting for a month, the VacuVincheck valve is down to 14.7 inches Hg.

I’ve used vacuvin type products on one gallon jugs but any idea for a PET carboy which would suck it’s walls in under vacuum

 

[WillShill]

This is the little dude you need to degas, it’ll degas a 6 gallon carboy in a few minutes. I use mine for racking as well. I also bought an AIO, which is better for controlled racking and bottling. 2.5 CFM Vacuum Pump

That looks great but they quite expensive in UK , double that price, I had thought of a small 12v pump instead or a hand pump brake bleeder type pump , any thoughts on these options, your pump would be great if I could justify cost and if it had other uses.

 

[Wayne Freeman]

Believe it or not, the Vacu vin hand pump actually works very good and only cost $20 from Amazon, if your looking to go that route. Not only is it made to degas or pull a vacuum on open wine bottles but it also fits inside the opening of a 1 gal carboy. You can also use a piece of racking hose and rig it to fit into a drilled out bung that any airlock will fit into. It will pull a vacuum very easily and in turn, pull out C02 from solution.
https://www.amazon.com/Vacu-Vin-Bla...jbGlja1JlZGlyZWN0JmRvTm90TG9nQ2xpY2s9dHJ1ZQ==

I would second this suggestion as well. It takes a few manual pumping sessions a day for a few days but it saves the AIO for more important jobs.

 

[Jbu50]

I got two 23L carboys of new wine from this past fall that is very gassy. In the past when I've had this problem I splash racked them vigurously. In this case I'll probably just racked each carboy into a pail, then splash rack them back and forth between pails a few times, releasing lots of bubbles, then put them back to sleep. Haven't experienced any noticeable oxidation doing this, but you never know...

 

[Rice_Guy]

The head space in a carboy could be 0.1 liter, or if large .5 liter. Buying any pump which is rated at 2 liters per minute is overkill for the purpose of degassing and must not be operated without a trap for foam! @Wayne Freeman is correct that the hand ones will do the job, ,,, come on guys wine making is an excuse for more toys.
> This pump caught my eye yes since its uses are sampling devices, I would assume that you could get a few years of use out. ,, At 2 liters per minute/ 420 mm Hg (8 inches) it is more than needed for degassing
https://www.amazon.com/Pump-Vacuum-...eywords=12v+vacuum+pump&qid=1615141975&sr=8-8> This is the first pump I used in the basement and I can pull 17 inches Hg, again overkill for degassing and lasted four years years/ letting it spin hours at a time
https://www.ebay.com/itm/3132055275...1V9_VBJWy6vFG0snBi9teelWJqQ7wOZhoCiLwQAvD_BwE> currently I use a two head 12 volt which will pull 25 inches Hg, in the photo in the link below, have seen it on Amazon but can’t find it today

* first of all “static” degassing can be done with a five inch Hg vacuum, it will be time dependent which basically means if I pull 25 inches on a FULL glass carboy in the photo below the pump just hums waiting for turbulence to bring more gas out, ,,,, it really won’t degas faster than the safer five inch vacuum. Expect it to take about twelve hours to reach the low CO2 equilibrium.
My feel is that you can’t do reliable vacuum without a vacuum gague and considering Home Depot will get one to their service desk for $12, ,,, it is cheaper than a busted carboy and the set up below has one for the pump and a two hole check valve & gauge setup on the carboy. This morning it is at about 5.8 inches Hg after being “stabilized” three weeks ago.
View attachment 72145
* degassing follows Henry’s law, that is the soluble gas is proportional to the partial pressure in the 125ml of head space. The functional definition of a degassed wine is that it will maintain five inches Hg of vacuum for half an hour. ie it doesn’t matter if it is squeaky clean, what matters is if you vacuum cork or vacuum transfer you don’t create a foam that sucks into the pump. To control the vacuum I am collecting parts for an on off timer to cycle the pump rather than letting it humm, ,,, (got a spare octal socket handy/ I have the timer on the work bench)
* there are a variety of food grade containers on the market and if you look enough you will find several choices in the two gallon range. The glass on the left was sold as a “pickle jar” by Wallyworld, it holds two gallons. The cover on it is a 120mm food grade silicone “bowl cover”. The container on the right is my plastic vacuum chamber which consists of a flexible 1/4 inch plastic round with a neoprene round for a gasket and a brass 1/8 NPT fitting tapped through. When I build the next one it will have a food grade silicone “baking sheet” instead of neoprene. Yes it flexes inward, look for “Lexan “ which will flex.
If you want more details PM me.

AGAIN DO NOT OVERDO THE VACUUM WHEN DEGASSING! If you want to pull over ten inches pulse your AIO pump for one or two hours till the foaming stops, ,,,, and hope the container survives the vacuum load.

 

[Scooter68]

If you cut out that inner nub inside a drilled "Hollow" bung for a carboy, the vacu vin cork will fit nicely inside that bung and seal. Then you can pull a nice vacuum in your carboy. My vacu-vin itself will actually almost seat itself in the drilled hollow bung without the cork and probably would do it nicely if I first dropped the bung in a glass of hot water to soften it. That trick works wonders for those bungs that want to slide/pop out of my carboy top. Once you get that bung to conform to the shape you need, you can pull plenty of vacuum on the carboy with no special connectors.

 

[WillShill]

If you cut out that inner nub inside a drilled "Hollow" bung for a carboy, the vacu vin cork will fit nicely inside that bung and seal. Then you can pull a nice vacuum in your carboy. My vacu-vin itself will actually almost seat itself in the drilled hollow bung without the cork and probably would do it nicely if I first dropped the bung in a glass of hot water to soften it. That trick works wonders for those bungs that want to slide/pop out of my carboy top. Once you get that bung to conform to the shape you need, you can pull plenty of vacuum on the carboy with no special connectors.

View attachment 72307

Hi have seen these for sale and have never seen them on a carboy, don’t want to sound stupid, which way do they fit on top of carboy.

 

[Johnd]

That looks great but they quite expensive in UK , double that price, I had thought of a small 12v pump instead or a hand pump brake bleeder type pump , any thoughts on these options, your pump would be great if I could justify cost and if it had other uses.

I’ve done it all. Vacuvin pumping til my shoulder hurt, brake bleeder til my hands cramped, nothing was more satisfying than the first time I sucked the CO2 out of a carboy of wine in a few minutes.

 

[Rice_Guy]

They are called “universal” carboy bungs. They do not seem to seal as well as rubber so I do not use them long term.
Being universal put em right side up in a carboy, put em in 1.5L bottles up side down, remove the center for more space, I will put one on a carpet vacuum for a low pressure high volume vacuum, I hooked one to a pump and suck the VacuVin rather than hand pumping, , , , , and there are more uses yet to be discovered

Hi have seen these for sale and have never seen them on a carboy, don’t want to sound stupid, which way do they fit on top of carboy.

 

[Scooter68]

All of the universal bungs I have used seem to be working fine. I can see the results of barometric pressure changes in the airlock so if it is leaking it's a mighty tiny leak for me.

 

[WillShill]

I’ve done it all. Vacuvin pumping til my shoulder hurt, brake bleeder til my hands cramped, nothing was more satisfying than the first time I sucked the CO2 out of a carboy of wine in a few minutes.

Well spill the beans,

 

[heatherd]

I use time and test for gas by tasting the wine. There's also a test you can do where you shake the wine in a bottle with your thumb over it, and if there's suction there's gas.