Info on Carboy Purchase

[blackfin1]

Hi all: I am in need of some advice. I am in the process of buying carboys to begin making wine and I need some clarification.

Do I need two 5 gallon carboys to make one batch of wine? Or can I get away with one? When I rack from time to time, can I rack into a bucket, clean the carboy, then rack back into the same carboy, or will this expose the wine to too much o2?

Please help.

Thanks,
Sal

 

[winemaker_3352]

It is better to rack from carboy to another - but you can rack to a bucket, clean the carboy, rack back to the clean carboy.

 

[Airplanedoc]

Just a note you want 6 gallon carboys for wine. Most kits make 6 gallons not 5.

2 is more convenient than 1 but I find that I also end up making more wine not keeping a empty sitting around for racking so I usually do the carboy -- bucket -- back to clean carboy thing

 

[davewaz]

Too add on to Airplane's point, most fresh juices are also sold in 6 gallon amounts. Do yourself a favor and buy a 6gallon.

 

[Charlietuna]

I agree that you can rack to the bucket & back to the carboy, but much easier to have the extra carboy. Cleaning / sanitization are the most time consuming areas of wine making.

I also with the 6 gallon carboy statement. At this time I have 3, 6 gallon itallians which are slightly over 6 gallon & 2, 5 mexicans which are closer to 5 gallon.

I find myself wishing I had a couple 4-4.5 gallon carboys due to the sampling affect of the wine & skeeter pee I've made. I tend to drink the samples I take for sg & have found myself racking more often & loosing some along the way.

Brian

 

[Arne]

The folks have answered that make the kits and such. I usually just use fruits and the five gal. work fine. You should have a gal. jug and maybe some 1.5 liter ones around to hold some excess for topping up. I ususally get between 5 and 6 gal. when making the fruit wines. Put the extra in another bottle or two and you can top up with it or maybe sample. Hope this helps, Arne.

 

[WVMountaineerJack]

Go ahead and get 3 or 4, maybe you can get a bulk discount, you are going to end up getting them anyway. The problem with racking to a bucket is that then you have it setting around open to the air as you clean your carboy and then you rack it again, all the time you are exposing your wine to extra air, you dont really want to do that if you can help it. We started off with one, then get 2 after having to go through racking into a bucket, now we always try to keep at least one empty carboy around to use for racking, it makes everything a LOT easier. Crackedcork

Hi all: I am in need of some advice. I am in the process of buying carboys to begin making wine and I need some clarification.

Do I need two 5 gallon carboys to make one batch of wine? Or can I get away with one? When I rack from time to time, can I rack into a bucket, clean the carboy, then rack back into the same carboy, or will this expose the wine to too much o2?

Please help.

Thanks,
Sal