Degas question

[WestMIBlueberryguy]

It has been a while a I missed an important step before taking out of primary and putting in secondary. I did not degas the wine. I have three five gallon batches that I just recently (all within two weeks) transfered to the secondary carboy.

Should I siphon back out into a bucket, leave sediment behind, degas, and then put back in carboy? Or, should I wait a month or two and siphon into bucket, leave sediment behind, degas, then put into another carboy?

I am also a little confused.... When making fruit wine I feel it is impossible to leave all sediment in primary. Overall.... Do I do it after primary or before final rack or somewhere in between? Thank you for any help or answers.

 

[garymc]

Once it's dry if it sits in the carboy long enough, it should degas itself. Especially when you rack it to the next carboy. I have never degassed a wine and never had one with gas in it. However, if you're in a hurry to get it bottled, then maybe you need to do something. How do you rack it? Oh, I see you used the word siphon. I use an Allinone pump.

 

[bkisel]

With my limited experience... Degassing going from primary to secondary is not an important step. It has not been in any of the instructions I've used for kits or recipes that I've done. Now, I don't believe it hurts and I'll often sheet rack going from primary to secondary but again I don't believe it is an important step in the primary to "secondary" racking. Half or more of my fermentation has been finished in the primary with just a vigorous stirring before airlocking for "secondary".

 

[richmke]

Should I siphon back out into a bucket, leave sediment behind, degas, and then put back in carboy? Or, should I wait a month or two and siphon into bucket, leave sediment behind, degas, then put into another carboy?

Option 2b. Let it be. rack off the sediment on a regular basis. Only worry about degassing when you are close to bottling.

 

[Turock]

I detest manual degassing unless you're doing kits or making early drinking wines like skeeter pee or dragon blood and its varients.

Fruit wines need 1 year of bulk aging for sediment fallout and to bring the flavor forward. The wine degasses naturally in that time period. Manual degassing has the risk of oxidation---and since it needs that bulk aging in the carboy, manual degassing is redundant.

You never degass at the primary. When you siphon from the primary, hold your racking cane just above the debris layer and as soon as you see sediment coming up the cane, stop siphoning. All that debris has the by-products of the ferment and you don't want the wine sitting on it. In a few days you'll see lots of sediment in the carboy--get it racked off or you can have problems from the lees if you let the wine sit for a long time on them. You may need one more racking after that. If you see lots of debris, rack it off. But once you get a light dusting of lees on the bottom, let the wine age on those.

 

[jethro]

With my limited experience...
That's the reason you put wine into the secondary fermentation vessel under 1-way airlock. So it can burp itself while you do other things.
Let it sit for a year, as Turock says.