Airlock bubbles?

[jbullard1]

I have 4 gallons of different fruit wines that have been in secondary's for 4 weeks. They are stored in my utility room on top of the freezer where the temp is usually 70 -75 degrees. I have noticed a marked drop in bubbles from 2 and a complete stop of bubbles in the other 2, what I'm concerned about is this morning I saw a bubble go the wrong way, ie back into the secondary.
We have also had a drop in outside temps and this room doesn't warm up as much as the rest of the house with central heat. I just shot the temps on the secondaries and all 4 are at 74.5
Should I worry about the stray bubble going the wrong way?

Jerry

 

[wingnutooa]

i would definetly be worried. but i would not drive my self crazy over it.

the reason for the airlock is to prevent anything from getting in but let everything out that needs to get out.

there could be a couple explanations for this,

it could be temperature. if the temperature dropped enough it could cause a suction. given your 74* temp i would rule this out because it would have to have come down from a guess of 90* +.

the other could be a drastic change in atmospheric pressure. not sure how much of a change it would take to cause this. but if you had a streak of overly low pressure IE: 27.75 or somewhere (rarely does pressure get this low, and only in some areas like the carolinas) and then pressure went up to say 31.1, (dakotas) also an extreme. you could have some issues.



there may be another explanation for this but i do not know it.

 

[Wade E]

Barometric pressure changes will cause this airlock reversal as will temp changes. No big deal at all. There have been times when I had a good 1/2" from airlock in a finished wine 1 day only to go down there and discover wine in my airlock the next morning. This is why we keep something like vodka or k-meta solution in our airlocks and not plain water as that can contain bacteria.