De-gassing?

[JPD]

Hello,
I've made a couple wine kits, and de-gassing was a very important step in the process (with the wand and a drill, etc). Now I have a couple batches of fresh juice going from a winery, and their instructions say nothing about having to de-gas? Just wondering why it was so crucial in the wine kit instructions, and non-existent in the fresh juice directions? Thanks!

 

[Johnd]

Hello,
I've made a couple wine kits, and de-gassing was a very important step in the process (with the wand and a drill, etc). Now I have a couple batches of fresh juice going from a winery, and their instructions say nothing about having to de-gas? Just wondering why it was so crucial in the wine kit instructions, and non-existent in the fresh juice directions? Thanks!

It's important in any kind of wine, kit makers are pretty focused on getting from start to bottle quickly...........so you can buy another kit. For the most part, the things included in the kit are focused on that, particularly clearing agents and degassing instructions, intend to get the wine degassed and cleared quickly. The reality is that grape wines (and grape juice buckets) will clear and degas on their own given time and patience, it's a natural process that needs no help. I should say that there are some exceptions, some fruit wines contain a lot of pectin, making them difficult to clear without pectic enzymes, but that's the exception.

Many, but not all, of the folks here that make wine simply rely on time to do the work for them, after all, wine gets better with age. I'm currently bottling some of my 2016 wines, 2017 is still sitting in barrels for bottling some time in 2019, 2018 won't go to bottle until 2020, no clearing agents, no degassing, just good old Mother Nature at work.