When do you rack off of sediment?

[karrlot]

I have had two batches of Chokecherry wine in the secondary fermentor for about 8 days. I am trying to figure out when to rack them to get the wine off of the sediment.

The 1 gallon and 3 gallon are out of the same batch so I want to do those at the same time.

There is a 1 gallon jug, 3 gallon carboy, and a 5 gallon carboy. The one gallon jug has about an 1 1/2" - 2" of sediment on the bottom. The other two have about 1/2" - 3/4" on the bottom. At what point should I rack them?

 

[SmallTown]

Go ahead and rack them wait a couple of week rack again. Rack about every two months after that.

 

[karrlot]

So how do you decide when to do it?

 

[Julie]

karrlot

Is this still on the fruit? Normally you would rack off the fruit after a week. Actually what I do is have my fruit in a bag, I get paint bags from Lowes 2 for $5, about a week larer I squeeze the fruit out to get as much juice as I can and discard. I leave my wine in a primary until sg is 1.010 or a little less, then rack to a carboy. You can also snap down the lid on the primary and add a airlock when sg gets this low and rack when dry.

 

[karrlot]

No, this is not on the fruit. I started these two batches on 8/3 and 8/8. I left them in the primary with the fruit until 8/25. I poured them through a funnel with a strainer into the glass carboys. So some sediment got in. They are still bubbling but I haven't checked the SG in about a week.

In general how do you know when to rack it? After a certian number of days or after a certian amount of sediment is in the bottom?

 

[Julie]

Once I have removed the fruit, I will let it go dry then rack and add k-meta. After this I wait 3 months before racking again and add another dose of k-meta at this time.

 

[BobF]

By your description, your sediment is at least partially *gross* lees - lees still containing bits of fruit. You should rack off of gross lees right away. Extended time on gross lees is favorable to H2S development and other off flavors and aromas.

As to deciding when to do this? I let things settle for no more than a few days, a week tops, before racking off of gross lees.

After this racking, when the sediment is primarily spent yeast, I give it another month and rack if there is a significant amount of sediment. Beyond this, the times between racking get extended, but I never go more than 3 months or so if there is visible sediment.

I'm sorry there aren't more exact racking signals to pass along, the racking protocol varies from winemaker to winemaker.