To degas or not to degas? That is the question.

[robie]

I had to degas one wine in my life and it was only because I left it for a year without touching in glass carboy. Every other wine was fine and I noticed, that racking the wine from time to time is enough to keep it without gas. Usually I rack he wine every 2-3 months to remove the sediments. Having gas in wine depends of the temperature of the room where you keep you wine if it is cool then gas better dissolve in wine. When I had to degas that one wine I brought the carboy to the warmer room for 3 days then I rack it once a day for 3 days and then bottle it and it was fine. I never heard about degassing machine and I can’t imagine how it works but I guess it use some kind of pressure.

That's great that you don't have a CO2 problem! Wish I knew your secret.

Were your wines from kits or fresh/frozen grapes? Pressing the grapes eliminates lots of the CO2, I know. Reds or whites?

Your good experience has not been mine, at least with kit wines. I have had to degas everything and sometimes still end up having to decant the wine to get rid of CO2; especially those bottles left from when I first started making wine.

Now, my "degassing machine" is an electric vacuum pump. However, I still use a drill and stirrer first, then use the pump.

 

[mrpoland]

I make wine only from fresh fruit and sometimes flowers as well. Most of the time I make strong wine 14-16% so I keep my wine in the carboy for 8-12 months. I don’t splash my wine and I try to keep away from oxygen as much as I can. Before I bottle my wine I always take a sample in a glass and keep it in the warm room over night. I also put a little bit of sugar. This helps me to make sure that there is no CO2 left and also tells me that all yeast are gone and I won’t have second fermentation in the bottle, if I decide to add some sugar for flavor. If after 24h I see there are changes in wine like bubbles or wine is not clear then it means wine is not ready for bottling.
I have seen few videos on YouTube where people were talking about degassing and I was very surprise that I don’t need to do that. The thing is that the videos were about making wine from kits so maybe there is something about that. I asked my father about it, he is making wine all his life and he said that racking from time to time is enough.

 

[robie]

Pressing the fresh/frozen grapes gets rid of much of the CO2.

If you ever make a kit wine, you will need to degas, even if you leave your wine in a carboy under an air lock for a year.

 

[mrpoland]

Keeping the wine for a year is not a reason to help with degassing. I do it to let all fermentation go smooth in the cooler basement. It takes so long since I make stronger wine. I only talk based on my experiences and since I never made wine from kit I don’t know about that.

 

[robie]

Keeping the wine for a year is not a reason to help with degassing. I do it to let all fermentation go smooth in the cooler basement. It takes so long since I make stronger wine. I only talk based on my experiences and since I never made wine from kit I don’t know about that.

No, I wasn't implying that is why you would keep the wine unbottled for a year. I mentioned it because when a wine is left under an air lock for an extended amount of time, a certain amount of CO2, if present, will find its way out of the wine. However, I have left kit wine in an air locked carboy for 18 months and still had CO2. One of the reasons why mine didn't give off more CO2 is because my carboy aging area never gets above about 66F, most of the year not above about 62F. That's pretty cool to expect CO2 to come out of suspension on its own.

So, does your wine actually ferment up to a year? Or asked another way, once you start fermentation, your wine does not get stabilized with Kmeta for a year? Or do you even sulfite your wines? Some like to go without it altogether.

 

[mrpoland]

Robie, I agree with you about CO2. When you keep the wine for long time without touching it, it will contain CO2, especially when it is in cooler room. Slow alcohol and MLF fermentation produce CO2 and cool wine dissolves CO2 very well. That’s why I rack the wine from time to time, it realy helps to get CO2 out from the wine. Using a pomp you wrote before might work the same way, just the pomp does work for you. Maybe you can do an experiment, since you have the pomp, and rack one wine every month and see if it will still contain the gas at the end. If it will then just use the pomp and write it here then we all will know if racking the wine every month is enough or not. It does work for me.

I always set my wine for the % I am looking for and to get extra dry. More alcohol in wine you want, harder for yeast to survive till end of fermentation, less yeast makes fermentation slower, that’s why it takes longer to get high % wine. When I see there is no more sugar left in wine then I do use sulfite to stabilize the wine. That is the only time when I use sulfite. When it is done I use sample to make sure all yeast are gone. Sometimes active yeasts are hard to kill and I have to use more sulfite. After that I add some sugar since I like half sweet and sweet wine and I bottle it. After that I leave the wine in peace to let it age and use 1 bottle from time to time to check the progress.

Not all fermentation takes 12 months. It depends of how much wine I am making and how strong I want it. Few months ago I made 5L of hibiscus wine 12% and it was ready in 3 months. Very nice easy wine, great color, very tasty and it clears by itself very easy. Also the flowers are easy to get and not expensive.

 

[robie]

Yes, every time you rack, you will loose some of the CO2. I am sure that if you racked every month for a year, most of the CO2 would be gone by the end of that year.

However, in most cases, racking once a month is more than most of us would ever do, because, in the process of expelling CO2, you are also introducing oxygen; even if you don't splash rack. The oxygen, in such large doses will result in one's wine oxidizing much sooner, especially white wines. To me, racking that often is over working the wine... just my opinion, though.

If I were going to rack once a month, I would make sure my free SO2 levels are precise.

Kit wines are much different and require more degassing than non-kit wines.

I get rid of CO2 two ways: 1) I use a drill stirrer right after secondary; 2) I use the electric vacuum pump to rack and at the end of the racking, I pull a vacuum on the racked wine to suck out as much CO2 as possible. Right after racking the CO2 is stirred up and will come out easier. Even after two rackings, I still get some CO2; just much less each time.

 

[mrpoland]

Great to hear back from you. So it looks like we are on the same page! Racking does help with degassing. I also agree about oxygen access that’s why I rack around every 3 months. So I think you make 2-3 carboys of wine racking from time to time to time should be enough but if you make more and you don’t have much time then degassing machine will be a good idea.