Degassing with brake bleeder

[dburling]

I just purchased a brake bleeder to use to degas my wines. Can anyone tell me just how long the process takes? I hooked everything up earlier today and have pulled a vac um up to around 17lbs three times today. I am still getting bubbles. How much longer?

 

[jzabron]

I personally haven't any experience with this, but from previous reading, make sure your temperature is in the low-mid 70's as the solubility of gas decreases with warmer temperatures. Read: Warmer liquids can't hold as much gas in solution.

Continue applying the vac cum until you stop seeing CO2 being released.

 

[Geronimo]

It all depends... it goes pretty fast at first. You pull the vacuum and bubbles sort of "boil up". The vacuum will drop almost immediately. Let the bubbles subside and pull the vacuum again. If you're in a hurry to degas, you can stay and keep doing this until the "boil" slows... which is a decent indicator that you're CO2 is mostly gone.

In my experience, the wine doesn't have to be perfectly flat. If you can pull 16 in Hg (inches of Mercury) with little CO2 bubbling up, you're good to go.

 

[Dale1978]

I am using the mini-vac brake bleeder - I pull mine to 26hg - it will lose vacuum as small bubbles C02 comes up - I will keep pumping it back up until it holds 26hg - usually takes 12 hrs for the the vacuum to hold steady

 

[olusteebus]

with a brake bleeder, you will always get bubbles. At some point, the bubbles will not be due to c02. They are larger bubbles and not fizzy like soda.

 

[bkisel]

I use a VacuVin pumping it many times a day, maybe 20 or so sets, doing perhaps 50-60 reps. If the temperature is up in the 70F range it generally takes 2 days to where I'm no longer pulling up the small bubbles and start pulling up large bubbles out of the sediment.

 

[chris400]

I have the same vac as Dale1978 and I'll pull a vac 2 or 3 times a day until it holds about 15 or 16 inches vac for 8 to 12 hours so far so good I haven't blew a cork yet and I tried to on the first few bottles I did like this