Korzy, Im not liking that idea as you are forcing 02 into your wine to do so, right? My model is the CGI but Invacare is another good brand. Dont buy an oiled unit as they are nasty and blow oil and smoke into the room and require lots of maintenance. Dont go above 22" when degassing as any more then that and you might have a possible implosion of carboy. I dont use more then 10" when racking especially when starting off cause that would be an empty carboy which would be more susceptible.
Siphoning Question
- Thread starter kyleb
- Start date
Help Support Winemaking Talk - Winemaking Forum:
- Joined
- Mar 1, 2009
- Messages
- 20,302
- Reaction score
- 2,222
Rawlus, please tell me if I am wrong. I watched both of those video's which are very good if you never used a vacuum to degas before. But it looked like his wine was already degassed and he was jut sucking air bubbles. If there was gas present the bubble's would have been much smaller. Also at the rate of speed they were coming up he would of overflowed over if he had gas.
I'm forcing O2 into the carboy, which displaces the wine into the other carboy and wouldn't force O2 into the wine. I started with this system before I knew of the vacuum option. It's cheap and it works. I do like your system though
runningwolf.. well, it sort of depends on the type of wine and how much co2 is dissolved in it. [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJZhnlEwREg"]this vid[/ame] i posted earlier i believe is typical of vacuum degassing and i am not of the opinion that these are air bubbles...i usually bulk age after secondary and degas prior to bottling so i can't say i see too much foaming and activity when i degas as i expect the wine is pretty well degassed by then.. for me, it's a precautionary measure and since i have the vaccum out for racking and at time bottling it makes sense to run a quick vacuum on the carboy too just to be sure.
as to foaming, because my pump has both a gauge and regulator, i can pretty easily control the inches of vacuum so as not to overflow if need be.
Last edited:
I agree with rawlus on this but also agree with Runningwolf. This is why i bring the vacuum up to around 18" and then shut it off and crank the knob all the way down which on mine prevents any vacuum from leaking, I do this a few times after running the pump a little and keepm doing this until my wine can hold a vacuum of 16" for around 1/2 an hour. I learned this method 1st with my mityvac when I used to use that and that vacuum always gives me a non gassy wine.
Korzy, you may not be pushing 02 through your wine but beware as that is introducing a lot of 02 onto your wine so make sure your wine is well sulfited as a white wine or light fruit wine is very vulnerable to browning due to this method.
Korzy, you may not be pushing 02 through your wine but beware as that is introducing a lot of 02 onto your wine so make sure your wine is well sulfited as a white wine or light fruit wine is very vulnerable to browning due to this method.
Wade, you're right. You are exposing the wine to slightly less O2 by creating the vacuum in the destination carboy but you're also drawing O2 into the source carboy. The slight vacuum still has O2 so in my opinion, not a big difference in exposure. But yes the wine should be sulfited properly either way.
i think one of the advantages of vacuum racking is that splash racking into a vacuum carboy will generally be less O2 exposure than splash racking with either gravity or pressure racking... O2 exposure is about the same for all three on the source carboy.
i tend to sulfite the destination carboy with my planned sulfite addition for that racking prior to drawing a vacuum so that what oxygen may still be in the destination carboy has a good opportunity to bind with the sulfite and its gasses as the wine is being introduced... though not scientific, i like to think this too is a good precautionary step in minimizing O2 exposure.
i tend to sulfite the destination carboy with my planned sulfite addition for that racking prior to drawing a vacuum so that what oxygen may still be in the destination carboy has a good opportunity to bind with the sulfite and its gasses as the wine is being introduced... though not scientific, i like to think this too is a good precautionary step in minimizing O2 exposure.
