avoiding sediment

[berrycrush]

Say you are using a auto-siphon to rack wine in a carboy, and there is fair amount of lee at the bottom. What do you do to avoid sucking in the sediment? raise the cane a couple of inches from the bottom? add some kind of filter at the end of the cane? I'd like to hear some ingenious solutions.

 

[Deezil]

Keep the racking cane up out of the sediment, and stop racking before any sediment is siphoned. Take the remaining liquid and lees and pour it into a quart jar; allow this to settle for several days and pour off the clear wine on top. No need to make it any harder than it has to be.

Some folks tilt the carboy during settling with a 2x4 or something, causing the sediment to settle more to one side and allowing them to initially rack out more wine the first time, but I find it makes very little difference in the end.

 

[bkisel]

There is an inexpensive siphon holding clip that you can use to keep your cane tip lifted off the bottom. The clip can be used on your primary bucket or your carboy. They sell for as little as $4.25 US on ebay.

 

[GreginND]

If you buy a racking cane, it will come with a sediment cap for the bottom. So the wine is not drawn up from the bottom of the vessel but it must flow downward into the cap. This works well on the bottom for thin layers of sediment. You can always raise the cane up off the bottom for thicker sediments.

 

[vacuumpumpman]

When using the Allinone - I like to use a siphon tube holder - It is fully adjustable, just lift up and adjust your cane and push down and it will lock your siphon cane in place.

I also will tilt the carboy near the end and manually bring down the racking cane -
note all the racking canes I was referring to - had the sediment tips installed on them
They are typically only 3 dollars or so at your LHBS

 

[garymc]

If there's a lot of sediment and you get some in the new carboy, you'll leave it behind the next time you rack.

 

[mmadmikes1]

I try not to leave much wine behind, so unless it is my last Racking before bottling some sediment comes along with the last of the wine. No big like Gary said"get it next time"

 

[ffemt128]

As someone else mentioned I use a 2x4 to tilt the carboy which puts the heavy sediment to the low side. I generally used a vacuum pump with a racking cane vs the auto-siphon. If anything gets sucked in, it will be racked off at next racking. I never bottle if there is any sediment at all on the bottom of the carboy.

 

[richmke]

What Deezil said.

If it is the first racking, I will use a filter (permanent coffee filter that I only use for wine making purposes) or strainer to remove the large debris before letting the rest settle in the quart, or other sized, container. The filter doesn't work on 2nd or other rackings because the sediment is too fine.

For settling, a wine bottle works well. Something tall and thin. I'll store it next to the Carboy, and rack it when I do the Carboy. At that point (after racking), you will have a really small amount of clear wine on top of the sediment in the wine bottle. I'll pour that out into glass, give that time to settle (in the fridge), and sample the clear wine sitting on top.

 

[Rocky]

Here is something that I have done which helps. When I insert the Auto Siphon, using the clip that Bill shows above in his post, I lower it slowly until it is about 5 inches from the bottom. At the last moment, I lower it with a fast movement straight down to the bottom. This causes a "dish" to form in the sediment, kind of like the tip is inserted into a cone. With the Siphon in place held fast by the clip, I carefully start it with a steady but forceful downward push on the insert tube. The "dish" stays in place and you can avoid a great deal, but not all, of the heavy sediment. That is removed in subsequent racks. The tip of the Auto Siphon has an end cap which is about 3/4" or so, and this also helps.