How many carboys can you degas with a medical pump

[Arkansan07]

Hey guys I know alot of people use vacuum pumps to degas wine. My family grows blackberries and Im thinking of making a 30 gallon batch this summer and it would be nice to be able to degas all those carboys at one time. Will one of the medical pumps handle multiple carboys? If not, what kind of pump should i get to handle 5 carboys or so at a time?

 

[sour_grapes]

I don't see any problem with this plan. It may take a little longer, but still better than doing it individually 5 times.

The limiting factor is not only the pumping capacity of the pump but also the conduction of the tubes you use to hook all the carboys together. Use a larger size tube if you can.

 

[Arkansan07]

Lol physics is not a strong point of mine. So will the vacuum eventually reach a high point and maintain the pressure? Im using the 3/8 hose but I could bump it up to 1/2 or even larger.

 

[jamesngalveston]

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CZUkY8T4CY[/ame]

 

[Arkansan07]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CZUkY8T4CY

yea i saw that video, but I dont think he ever said how powerful of a pump he was using. He said it was expensive though and I know you can get the medical pumps for a reasonable price.

 

[Turock]

Can I ask you a question? WHY do you want to manually degass a fruit wine? I am not a fan of manual degassing unless you are making a kit or an early drinking wine. Blackberry isn't an early drinking wine. It needs to spend some time in bulk aging in order to get the sediment out of it. Proper bulk aging does a whole lot of things for you, one of which is to stabilize the wine. And a bulk aging time of 9 months to 1 year really helps in firming up the flavor. In the 9 months or so spent in bulk aging, the wine is naturally degassed. Manual degassing really runs an oxidation risk, as well.

 

[Arkansan07]

Can I ask you a question? WHY do you want to manually degass a fruit wine? I am not a fan of manual degassing unless you are making a kit or an early drinking wine. Blackberry isn't an early drinking wine. It needs to spend some time in bulk aging in order to get the sediment out of it. Proper bulk aging does a whole lot of things for you, one of which is to stabilize the wine. And a bulk aging time of 9 months to 1 year really helps in firming up the flavor. In the 9 months or so spent in bulk aging, the wine is naturally degassed. Manual degassing really runs an oxidation risk, as well.

Im a newb lol. You think all the CO2 will be gone in that time span?

 

[jamesngalveston]

since your a newbie, i will fill you in.....Turock,Runningwofl,and a few others are the best at what they do...Make wine.
Anytime they give you advise, take it....I do.
just saying.

 

[RegionRat]

I do it all the time. I have done as many as 5 at one time. Just dont over think it.


Here is a video I shot a while ago.

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QuGYD7FwTA0[/ame]

RR

 

[sour_grapes]

Lol physics is not a strong point of mine. So will the vacuum eventually reach a high point and maintain the pressure? Im using the 3/8 hose but I could bump it up to 1/2 or even larger.

The physics of degassing is surprisingly complex. Here is some info, but I think RegionRat is right -- don't overthink it too much.

Your vacuum pump has two important specs: how low a vacuum it is capable of creating, and how much gas it can take away per second (i.e., how fast the pump is). You could have a very fast pump (can pump lots of gas in a short time) that cannot get to very low pressure (because it stops pumping so well at low pressures). Or you could have a pump that can get to a low pressure, but it takes a long time to get there.

As you pump on a carboy of wine, there are three flows of gas that we must consider. The flow OUT (caused by the pump), the CO2 that is evolved from the wine, and any air that leaks IN around your fittings and stoppers. If the leaks are significant, and the pump is slow, you will never reach a low pressure, no matter how long you wait. (But I don't expect this will be the case for most reasonable setups.)

Then there is the problem of CO2 getting out of the wine. As you lower the pressure, it becomes favorable for the CO2 to leave. However, there is a barrier (an "energy barrier") preventing a bubble from forming. There are several ways to foster the development of a bubble. One is shaking or stirring. (Think about shaking a can of soda or beer.) Another is providing nucleation sites for the bubbles. (Think of the bottom of a champagne glass, where the bubbles emanate from the same spots over and over; there are probably scratches in those spots.)

What I have taken to doing is to have a carboy only half full, pull a vacuum on it, and then shake/rock the carboy. Lots of gas is released in this way.

 

[Arkansan07]

i appreciate all the advice, i have learned alot by reading threads on this forum in the last year


Sent from my iPhone using Wine Making

 

[grapeman]

You can either let the wine degas naturally or use the vacuum pump (aspirator in your case). If you do one single carboy at a time all you need is one bung with a hole in it to hook a hose to (a barbed fitting will work - or I use one of the orange carboy caps with the double outlet and caps). Degassing time will likely be about 10 minutes. Change to another carboy and repeat. All combined, about an hours work. If you try to do 5 at a time, it might work with your pump and it might not. Then you need to spend more money buying bungs with two openings to connect them all together. Next you need the connectors and more tubing. This will take hours and then you still need to degas. Do you see where I am going with this? I recommend you just do one at a time and avoid the headache of setting up the other rig.

 

[richmke]

You could do it with all single hole bungs, and lots of T's to connect all the tubing to the vacuum line.

As long as the medical pump is rated for continuous use (and you have minimal air leakage), it should work. Like Paul said, if the pump is slow, it may take a while to build up the vacuum, and all the carboys, more or less, will feel the same vacuum. The more tubing and head room you have, the longer it takes to build the vacuum. Note: The carboys farthest away from the pump may feel a lower vacuum (tubing loss). Put the line to the vacuum pump in the middle of all the T's (3 carboys on each branch). That would add one more T, but should improve the vacuum at the last carboy.

 

[Turock]

Well, just remember---even if you degass manually, you STILL need to allow the wine to sit and bulk age. And in that time, the gas comes out of it all on its own. So why risk your wine degassing?

I'm OK with degassing wines that are designed for early drinking---and for kits because you have to follow their instructions exactly. But for all other wines, bulk aging for 1 year is always the way to go. In the 1 year's time, the CO2 will be out of the wine, the flavors very firm, the wine clear with no sediment or haze, and the wine will be stabile for bottling.

If you're interested---Google bulk aging of wine. If the link comes up from UC Davis on this subject---this is the most definitive white paper I've ever found on the subject. It will open your mind to comprehending all the magic that happens in bulk aging, and why you should always do it. This link was part of the winemaking course online from UC Davis.

 

[olusteebus]

splash rack everytime you rerack. that will take out a lot of gas.

 

[vacuumpumpman]

I agree ^^^. It is really the easiest thing to do. You have to rack no matter what - so if you use vacuum to transfer you are automatically removing the CO2

 

[WVMountaineerJack]

You could use a gasgetter (winegasgetter.com) to do multiple carboys. We usually try to let ours age a year, but we have a bunch, until you build up a stock of wine you of course are not going to bulk age everything, you want something to drink. So how about set 2 carboys back out of the way and let them bulk age nice and slow and degass the others and drink up! We still run the degasser pump on each carboy before we bottle just to make sure its degassed, even after a year you can still have a surprising amount of gass in some wines, age alone doesnt always take it out. After you get started and have a few batches under your belt then you can start paying more attention to what some of the radicals have to say, its much easier to listen to them while you have a glass of blackberry wine in your hand WVMJ

 

[Turock]

In 25 years, I've never had a wine not degass in 1 year's time. Splash racking at every racking is not recommended as it injects too much oxygen into the wine.

 

[vacuumpumpman]

In 25 years, I've never had a wine not degass in 1 year's time. Splash racking at every racking is not recommended as it injects too much oxygen into the wine.

If you are racking under vacuum - how can you get too much oxygen into the wine - when you have a negative pressure ? (vacuum )

You will have more contact with oxygen doing it traditionally, because of the surface area and contact time during transfer rate.

 

[Turock]

Are you sure he's racking under vacuum? Many people who use just a racking cane and gravity can see this advice and think it correct. Splash racking should only be done when there's a purpose for doing it, and CO2 is not reason enough.