The art of racking/transfer...

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M38A1

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I've been staring at my five gallon secondaries in awe of the rolling action still going on bring lees and 'stuff' from the bottom up to the top and then watching it fall. It's almost like a lava lamp from the 70's for those of us in this season of life. Which got me thinking about racking...

I have simple plastic 5gal primaries and 5gal carboys I use as secondaries. When I transferred from my plastic buckets, I used my siphon and hose. The siphon has about an inch standoff base on it as to not pick up anything closer than that from the bottom of whatever vessel it's inserted. I racked the entire contents the siphon would pick up which included a lot of gross lees/yeast/particulates. That's all in the secondary now boiling&rolling around and is a couple inches deep which will be considerably deeper than that 1" standoff on the siphon.

First question, is this normal going from primary to secondary in picking up and transferring so much 'stuff'? Or do you try to hold the siphon up just a bit off the bottom and not grab it all? I know it sounds silly to those who have done this a million times, yet I can't be the only newbie wondering if it's normal to transfer all this material. I'm guessing that once the dry point has been achieved, that's when you again rack to a clean carboy - gross lees and all - and the true settling process begins.

Which brings me to my next question. When it comes time to rack off to a clean carboy, there's a good chance the gross lees will still be considerably deeper than the standoff of the siphon. Do you raise the siphon base to do reduce this, or suck it all up again?

Or do you suck up all those intentionally to a smaller bucket to get them out of the way?

Edit to add:
I'm basing this question off of the use of grapes I harvested and pressed, not just straight juice or a kit.
 
You want to get rid of as much of the lees as possible. I keep the end of the siphon/racking cane just above the lees. I lower it down while it's actively siphoning until I just start to see a wisp or two of lees start to get sucked in, then go back up 1mm or so.
You end up losing a bit of wine, but it's better to have a bit less of good wine then a bit more of bad wine :) too much lees exposure for a long time can create bad flavours.
 
Thank you! As a side note I keep going back to your strawberry rhubarb thread and am trying to convince myself to give a 3gal batch a try. :)
 
WIth smaller carboys (1 gal) there are clips you can attach to the siphon wand to adjust where it stops. I haven't seen on that would fit bigger wands or bigger carboys. I would suppose that a piece of hard closed cell foam could be cut to restrict the wand's depth.

To answer the real question, as green envy says, the sooner you get rid of the gross lees AND the finer lees, the better. What you describe suggests a lot of activity (Fermentation still ongoing) and thus one more reason to be rid of those gross lees when you rack to those secondary carboys. Sometimes you just have to hold the wand up and watch what's going through the tube. As soon as the color turns from transparent to semi-transparent or to solid, life the wand out.
 
The quantity of lees you have in your carboy is from transferring too early, and transferring everything in the primary fermenter. When you wait til the wine is close to 1.000, lots of the gross lees have settled as fermentation slowed, and you leave that mess behind. At the end of your wines stay in the carboy as fermentation finished, the fine lees are what accumulate. You’re dealing with both now.
 
In doing all grape you do get a lot of initial sediment. I was wondering how you did the initial racking or pressing. I'm sure people do it differently but I wait 2 to 3 days after pressing to rack the first time then rack again in 2-3 weeks. I use a pump rather then a siphon but do raise the racking cane 1-2 inches above the sediment until I get close to the bottom. Another thing I do to help reserve wine is I stop the transfer when I start to get sediment, then using a funnel and small container pour the wine that is still somewhat liquid into it, put it in the refrigerator and let it sit for a few days. There will be a good amount of clearer wine on the top which I pour back into the racked wine or save it for topping up.
 
The quantity of lees you have in your carboy is from transferring too early, and transferring everything in the primary fermenter. When you wait til the wine is close to 1.000, lots of the gross lees have settled as fermentation slowed, and you leave that mess behind. At the end of your wines stay in the carboy as fermentation finished, the fine lees are what accumulate. You’re dealing with both now.

Ah! Again, makes perfect sense that these are all downstream issues from the early racking. I can see how this happened now. Thank you.

In doing all grape you do get a lot of initial sediment. I was wondering how you did the initial racking or pressing. I'm sure people do it differently but I wait 2 to 3 days after pressing to rack the first time then rack again in 2-3 weeks. I use a pump rather then a siphon but do raise the racking cane 1-2 inches above the sediment until I get close to the bottom. Another thing I do to help reserve wine is I stop the transfer when I start to get sediment, then using a funnel and small container pour the wine that is still somewhat liquid into it, put it in the refrigerator and let it sit for a few days. There will be a good amount of clearer wine on the top which I pour back into the racked wine or save it for topping up.

My initial pressing was cleaned/sorted/de-stemmed grapes placed in a mesh bag then placed in my newly made bucket press. That yielded juice but these grapes are slimy at best and it kept plugging up the mesh bag. So I macerated the grapes in a plastic bucket and then put them in the bucket press and all that did was generally plug up the holes in the press. That gave me the juice which I had in the primary and added a ton of sugar and water for the most part to get the SG and acid under control. I went back to putting macerated grapes in a mesh bag and hand squeezing the bag, wiping the slime off, and repeating the process.

I'm about done with these types of grapes. It was fun the first year and this year still fun but the fun-factor has been reduced. These are not ideal grapes for easily making wine from what I gather based on several factors to include their general lack of juice, high acid and low sugar content right off the vine. Don't get me wrong, people make wine from these grapes. It's just a lot of work to get to the starting gate.
 
As JohnD stated. The lower the SG when you make the first rack, the less lees you are likely to have transfer. Some folks let their wine finish in the bucket others rack at 1.020 or below. I am of the latter - I normally rack based on two things. 1) SG at or below 1.020 and 2) When foaming is minimal to non-existant.
When you rack too soon not only do likely transfer more lees, you also run the risk of a "Foam Fountain" an experience that can range from annoying to very wasteful of your wine. It takes a while to learn the signs for point 2, so you if you wait for the SG to be at 1.000 or below you 'should' be safe, but it depends....
 
It's a lot less lees than it looks like. Mine likes to collect up the bottom side of the carboy, like snow on a window sill, but there isn't much inside the bottom of the carboy.

I let my wines finish in the bucket because they ferment really fast in this heat, then I rack off into a bucket, degas and stabilize, then clear in the carboy. Always love the lava lamp action. As for where to put the cane, I just lower it slowly to the bottom of the carboy and let it sit. (I have kids, standing there holding the cane isn't possible) If it picks a little something up, oh well, it'll get racked out again. I don't bottle on the kit's "bottling day," I rack, add potassium metabisulphite, then let it sit another 3 months. More sediment always drops, no matter how careful I was not to get any lees during transfer.

If you plan to bottle on the day the kit says, then I would rack into a bucket first. Hold the cane and lower it with the wine level (rest the end of the cane against the side of the glass you can see), then if you're steady of hand tilt the carboy slightly when you're coming to the bottom.

I'll be using Fred's method of refrigerating lees from now on. Waste not!
 

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