Degassing Wine
Pierre & Tara Bruno
I am curious to see how most handle degassing. I used to use a drill and
commercial degasser but now use a vacuum pump.
Are there any pros & cons to using a vacuum pump?
Thanks
Pierre
Ray
> Are there any pros & cons to using a vacuum pump?
>
The pro is that it probably works
The con is that it may work too well. You are probably removing a lot of
volatiles that you really do not want to remove.
My suggestion is to use patience. Given a couple of normal rackings and 6
months of bulk aging, degassing will not be a problem.
Ray
Jody
> commercial degasser but now use a vacuum pump.
>
> Are there any pros & cons to using a vacuum pump?
Pierre-
I try to let time degas my wines, however even after 16 months of
aging; many of my wines still have trapped CO2. I began using a vacuum
contraption in the 2001 vintage. I attach a two stemmed orange carboy
cab to the carboy, plug the long skinny hole with a plastic golf tee,
slip a vacuvin plug over the stubby end of the carboy cap and pump
away.
Since I just began using a vacuum pump, I can't testify to the long
term effect on wine. There was a discussion a while back on the
subject (try searching the archives) relating to loss of desirable
volatiles. I personally haven't noticed a difference, but it makes
sense in theory.
VA Tech recently released an article on flavor and aroma trapping that
might be of interest. The basic premise of their experiment is that
desirable volatile aromas and even flavor precursors are lost with
escaping CO2 during primary fermentation. They invented a filter
attached to a bung/airlock that *traps* the escaping volatiles,
condenses them, and drips them back into the barrel. According to
their trial results, the average consumer could differentiate between
the treated and untreated wines when tasted blind.
I suppose the theory could be applied to vacuum degassing as well.
Jody
Bill Reed
I used a vacu-vin to degas the wine.
The wine was very boring afterwards, most of the flavor and aroma had been
stripped out.
Now I am extra careful about degassing and use the drill and degasser.
- Bill
_______________________________________
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Charles Hutchison
would you do it? and do you degas all wines you make? I don't know, just
asking. Could someone explain in laymans terms.
Thanks,
Chuck Hutchison
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J Dixon
The purpose of "degassing" is to drive off/release Carbon Dioxide that
is in solution in your wine (think "carbonation".)
If a wine is racked several times, and aged for in the area of a year it
is often unnecessary. If you are on a shorter time frame then it is
definitely something you should be doing especially if you are making kits
and are anywhere near the time frame the directions suggest.
It is as simple as using a rod (a broken racking cane for instance) and
stirring vigorously for a couple of minutes. There are commercial degassers
such as the Fizz-x which goes on a drill that works pretty good. Others use
a vacuum pump such as on a Foodsaver machine to pull the CO2 out of
solution. It has been discussed that this could potentially pull out some of
the Volatiles that give you the aroma and bouquet and maybe some flavor, but
I cant say for sure if that is true or not, and must admit that I have used
the vacuum degassing method and was happy with it. Also the process of
pumping/filtering a wine will release CO2 from solution as will a counter
pressure vacuum bottle filler such as an Enolmatic which I use.HTH
John Dixon
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nsiox
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> Chuck,
> The purpose of "degassing" is to drive off/release Carbon Dioxide
that
> is in solution in your wine (think "carbonation".)
> If a wine is racked several times, and aged for in the area of a
year it
> is often unnecessary. If you are on a shorter time frame then it is
> definitely something you should be doing especially if you are making
kits
> and are anywhere near the time frame the directions suggest.
> It is as simple as using a rod (a broken racking cane for
instance) and
> stirring vigorously for a couple of minutes. There are commercial
degassers
If you were to do this, stirring it, at what point(s) during wine making
would you do this?
Guy
nsiox wrote:
>
> If you were to do this, stirring it, at what point(s) during wine
making would you do this?
When you have determined that fermentation is terminated (using an
hydrometer), you rack the wine off the sediments (usually) and add
potassium metabisulfite. Then you stir the wine to remove as much CO2
as possible, especially reds.
Degassing at this time is best as :
- the wine is full of CO2 (offering some protection from O2 oxidizing
the wine)
- the wine contains SO2 from the pot. meta. to further protect it from
O2.
HTH,
Guy
Richard Kovach
completely stopped. Any earlier, and there is no point -- the
fermentation or MLF will produce more CO2 into the wine.
Cheers,
Richard
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