Any suggestions on how to rack red wine from a 53 gallon barrel. ? I have only one barrel and don't want to expose to much air to it.. People are telling me to siphon the wine into my fermentation bucket.. clean my barrel and siphon back into the barrel .. thoughts?
Tips for racking with 1 barrel
- Thread starter rino
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The act of racking exposes wine to air -- unless you have some type of high tech vacuum system, it's going to happen. The treatment is K-meta to address any O2.
Rack into a primary and rack back.
Why are you racking the barrel? Do you have gross lees? If it's fine lees, you can ignore it until bottling time.
Rack into a primary and rack back.
Why are you racking the barrel? Do you have gross lees? If it's fine lees, you can ignore it until bottling time.
Yes its my first rack
I used to be very paranoid about oxidizing wine during racking. I use carboys and very carefully avoided any unnecessary exposure. This made racking a ***** because that means I need to have a few empty carboys at the ready. I have recently started racking into a bucket, adding my K-meta or tannins, rinsing the carboy and then racking back into the carboy. I do not detect any degradation in the wine and the added oxygen exposure is probably helping. I am not splash racking when I do this, just trying to be careful not to bubble the wine too much. In my view it is not all that different from when I am blending wine just before bottling. Essentially the same process. I am not someone who does a lot of racking anyway, but if this was done 4 times in the life of the wine maybe there would be noticable oxidizing.
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