Closed Transfer Wine Making

[aero-spaced-out]

Hello all

One of the things I'm keen on getting into on my homebrew journey is wine making.
Specifically using a closed system such as a pressure fermenter to do so.
I've seen several posts about and pretty much all of them are saying that it isn't overly practical and CO2 is something that shouldn't be used as it will ultimately affect the flavour and smell of the wine.
I get that wholeheartedly and it put me off wanting to try it for a couple of months but I'm revisiting the idea.
I found a local gas supplier that I was going to get my gas for my beer/ciders also can provide pure argon which they advertise for hobby welding purposes which after some digging, argon seems to be the go to for wine storage.
it's making me wonder why I can't go down this route once I figure out a decent setup for all my equipment to have it flow appropriately through each step of the process.
I'm not really concerned about how much it costs me as I have a fair few items already so it would be just a few extra bits and bobs to add to it.
My first step of this though is determining the feasibility of the argon from this supplier.
I've attached a screenshot of the spec on the data sheet from the supplier.
Any help/advice?

 

[aero-spaced-out]

So done a bit more digging and came across the SDS for the product.

Used the CAS-no from that to compare it against BOC to see what applications they use the same product for and it appears that it should be suitable for what I want to use it for...

Guess I'll come back with an update once I get the extra kit.

Could be a minute though as I am focusing on making my beer and cider brewing cheaper per pint than if I were to buy some in the town. (Currently at around £6-6.50 in my city)

 

[MashBag]

Waste of time and money.

Spend the money on a good winemaking book & potassium metabisulphite. You will get a much better end product and save a fortune of unnecessary & ineffective kit.

 

[aero-spaced-out]

Waste of time and money.

Spend the money on a good winemaking book & potassium metabisulphite. You will get a much better end product and save a fortune of unnecessary & ineffective kit.

Hello Mash!

I've made a 6 bottle beaverdale kit and a mead before and both came out well but curiosity is nipping at me surrounding this one.
Have some Na-Meta and K-Sorbate on hand

I do very often see this type of response but I've not actually seen or come across anybody doing it so I'm wondering how much worse the end product could be?
Is there anything you could point me in the direction of to help pull me away from this idea?

 

[MashBag]

If its something you want to try go for it. No offense meant, but if no one does it, that's a clue for me.

Different beverages behave differently, is response to and the management of oxygen.

Red wine needs to breathe. Think of it like hanging beef, it's a bell curve trying to hit the right time.
K-meta.

Most gain (if any) would be with white wine, but I doubt, as a practise, it would produce anything any better than a classically made white... With more K-meta

Professionally Na-Meta is used for cleaning. Never added to wine. I personally think it contributes to the homebrew twang.

K-Sorbate I have never needed or used with accurate use of K-meta.

CO2 does affect the taste, but not as a despense / transfer gas.

Under pressure it will dissolve into the wine, so for dispense, use of mixed gas is the norm.

Flushing with co2 gas has not be taught for years because it just mixes and doesn't saturate.

I didn't say it would be worse. Have a go, but my training suggests there won't be a benefit.

 

[An Ankoù]

I'm all for experimentation, but the reasons for pressure fermenting and closed transfer with highly-hopped beer do not apply to wine-making (as far as I know). I'm with @MashBag in thinking that this would be a complete waste of time and money. Why does CO2 spoil the taste of wine? Does it spoil the taste of champagne? Don't we get rid of it by de-gassing? Argon is only about a fifth as soluble as CO2 at 20C, but does it have a flavour? Is it desirable?

I've probably missed the point, of course, and I wonder if you could tell us what you hope to achieve.

 

[Nicks90]

Orrrrrrrrr, do what they have done for centuries and not use anything but yeast and time to achieve a wonderful bottle of wine.
I rarely use anything at all in my wines, other than zapping nasties in the fruit during the first 24hrs before adding yeast.
If you want a fast turnaround, then yes you need to stun/kill the yeast after primary fermentation, fine/clear it, degass it and then bottle it. Never heard of purging the bottles before bottling, but happy to be educated....

But I always see wine as the long game, so keep it stupid simple and natural

 

[aero-spaced-out]

No offense taken Mash, you've been incredibly helpful on previous posts of my own so I do appreciate your advice and input.
As with yourselves also Nick and Ankoú. I'm a newcomer to this side of things so I appreciate you both also have the experience and knowledge in this process.

It really is just a curiosity and experimentation thing more than anything. I've seen it mentioned in previous posts but I can't see anything about it actually being attempted. If I am wrong please link me as I could easily have breezed over it in my search. It's the lack of people trying it that makes me really want to more than anything.

I get that it works using the traditional method of using carboys and airlocks and if it works then there's no need to fix it but my deeply rooted curiosity can't help but look at it can wonder how else it can be achieved.
The mead and wine I made were done with the standard approach of using the 1Gal demijohns, airlocks and syphons, I know I can get results doing it this way.

The idea really popped up to me when I started the 6 bottle Beaverdale kit and I was just observing the process and steps that I had to take it through to get it to the end point.
It made me wonder how I could utilise my existing equipment for this.

Having to keep an airlock on it to allow gas to escape but all I can see is a barrier that is isolating it from the outside air while it blankets itself in it's own gas produced during the process. So that posed the question of why not use the equipment that I have which is capable of achieving the same results?

My idea wouldn't be to ferment under pressure but just to use the vessel with a blowtie spund set on a low relief pressure to allow it to off gas and prevent anything getting in. In my eyes that's similar to how the airlock works in the traditional method, no?
It would still allow itself to create the blanket of gas and vent off through the blowtie, should I get a crazy ferment I can still hook a blow off tube to the vessel via a disconnect or use another product such as fermcap in an attempt to control it.
I wouldn't be adding gas until such times as I was transferring it to whatever vessel was my secondary.
The degassing I'm still trying to figure out if I'm being completely honest. I have had some ludicrous ideas for this but nothing that seems like it could be a steadfast solution to that hurdle right now.
Adding the finings could really be as easy as adding them to the secondary I wish to transfer them to and purging it it the Ar to get rid of the oxygen. Again, setting a blowtie spund on a low pressure to allow it to vent while filling and also allow any gasses that are generated during this process to be vented too.
If I wanted to filter then connect an inline filter during a transfer.
For bottling I had a the idea of using a beer gun, purging the bottle with argon and low pressure transferring the wine into the bottles using this before corking.

It really would just be a bit of craic to experiment with the idea to be honest.
I have the equipment, why not try to use it for the purpose?
If it ended up proving to be a complete flop then heyho I can only really see me losing the money on the Ar which I'm not overly worried about to be honest.

It sounds ridiculous aye, but somewhat feasible in my eyes. Although, that could be my naivety and inexperience talking there.

 

[MashBag]

It is feasible. You probably will make wine.

Have a go. You have an itch, that you need to scratch.

 

[HeartOfGold]

Na-Meta is fine for stabilization when used by correct amount. The amount of sodium in campden tablets when adding them by the instructions (1 per gallon) is below of what is the amount for the minimum threshold that can be tasted in water. So the issue is not with using it for stabilization, but when bulk aging and sulfiting multiple times, then the sodium could an issue. I use Na-meta campden tablets as K-meta tablets are not available here.

 

[MashBag]

K-meta all the way. The difference it makes is stunning.

Campden tablet use (either) is optional. I opted out a long time ago. Prefer to get a big healthy, warm, yeast load going, quickly which clean up or out perform anything else.

I don't even buy Na-meta for anything.

Is you don't titrate to establish total and free levels, use 8g in 50l as a guide.

 

[An Ankoù]

Never used any kind of wine stabiiliser. Never added any source of SO2 to the must, EXCEPT when I can't deal with the fruit immediately. So, I bought 2 Kg of peaches recently and they went into the fridge, in a freezer bag with a sprinkling of Na Meta too keep the sweet. I certainly don't add it to the fruit before fermentation.

 

[An Ankoù]

It really is just a curiosity and experimentation thing more than anything. I've seen it mentioned in previous posts but I can't see anything about it actually being attempted. If I am wrong please link me as I could easily have breezed over it in my search. It's the lack of people trying it that makes me really want to more than anything.

The way I see it, it can't do any harm except that for every additional complication, you add an additional risk of infection. But there seems to be a contradiction: you;re going to ferment under pressure, which will increase the amount of dissolved CO2, and then you're going to transfer the wine using argon top-pressure. How will the wine lose its dissolved CO2 (become degassed)? I think you're going to end up with fizzy wine whichever way you look at it.

And it might be delicious fizzy wine.

 

[MashBag]

The pressure may strip / stop some flavours.

@An Ankoù
Of this isn't fermentation under pressure, this is a lot of fiddling about for is just racking.

 

[MashBag]

Specifically using a closed system

Can I ask, what do you think is the benefit of this?

 

[MashBag]

seen it mentioned in previous posts

For wine? Or for lager?

 

[aero-spaced-out]

you;re going to ferment under pressure, which will increase the amount of dissolved CO2

The blowtie would be set to relieve at basically atmospheric, making it a one way valve. I see there is potential for CO2 to dissolve into the wine but I don't see how that's any different from an airlock that's been appropriately filled with sanitising solution, the pressure build up in a demijohn/carboy with an airlock would be directly related to the volume of water in the airlock, with the relative pressure units being the non-SI in.H2O
Albeit a small amount of pressure, it is still present and produces the same potential for CO2 to dissolve ad would a blowtie set at a very low relieve pressure, no? Both still offer protection from nastys entering.

For wine? Or for lager?

I have seen previous posts regarding pressure fermenting wine.

https://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/threads/anybody-tried-fermenting-wine-under-pressure.83683/

With the CO2 buildup that is associated with pressure fermentation potentially dissolving in and causing sparkling or affect taste and amora, I understand that it shouldn't be done under pressure.
The suggestion of it raised an eyebrow about the use of the equipment to transfer and bottle and the idea kinda snowballed from there as I was making the wine kit.

Red wine needs to breathe

I may be misunderstanding here but what I'm thinking of when I read this is an open ferment?
If there's an airlock on it then that surely changes the system as the airlock would close the system and act, for lack of a better phrase, as a low pressure PRV. Allowing slight pressure build up to displace the water in the airlock around the bend so relieve the pressure but prevent anything getting back in as the pressure inside the demijohn is ever so slightly higher than that of the environment outside it.

Can I ask, what do you think is the benefit of this?

Remove any chance of oxidation by complete isolation from oxygen. It seemed that when I made my wine kit and my mead, it was about minimise exposure to oxygen, reducing headspaces to ensure that any introduced oxygen would have minimal to no effect.
Ofcourse it would need to be there for the initial fermentation but after that it, I could help but feel that, when I looked at just the process as a whole, I was doing a balancing act to prevent oxygen ingress or introduction of a nasty at every stage.

How will the wine lose its dissolved CO2 (become degassed)?

Yeah... this is probably the biggest thing stopping me from just going ahead and trying it lol I don't really have a steadfast solution or idea to tackle that part yet.


Just to be clear, I'm not saying that it's a better way to do it or that the traditionally accepted way for making wine is wrong or anything like but the theory behind it is adding up in my head and would theoretically allow for wine that could have quite a shelf life (if it lasts that long) and should have little to no issues with oxidation.
I know theoretically could make wine this way and see no reason I couldn't produce a good wine this way. I do also see the potential to make bad wine this way.
It's really more a question of are there any glaring issues that would genuinely prevent it from working other than the added potential for infection and a bit faffy etc. which was rightly brought up but I don't see how that would be any different than when you're using a system like this to make a beer/cider either.
It would just be ensuring that precautions are taken and a different product going through the system.
And again, just a bit of craic and experimentation, as I say if it works, it works, if not then oh well

I'll probably give it a go at some point and post the results for sake of completeness, and I may end up doing two of the same 6 bottle kits side by side in as much if the same conditions as possible and also for financial damage control lol. My overall aim with this was just to clarify if there were any reasons why I couldn't, or more importantly shouldnt, try to approach it this way other than wasting my time and money, which for the sake of a bit of craic, I'm not concerned about as I could definitely think of worse ways to spend them.

 

[MashBag]

Give it a go. Perhaps stick to white kits and not grapes.

I find the degassing issue ironic as commercially cheap fizz uses a pressure priming system to put the fizz in , but not for the primary fermentation of still wine.

Thinking out loud you might find the wine too pure (bland almost), with little fruit expression.

I will be genuinely interested to know what happens.

 

[An Ankoù]

The blowtie would be set to relieve at basically atmospheric, making it a one way valve. I see there is potential for CO2 to dissolve into the wine but I don't see how that's any different from an airlock that's been appropriately filled with sanitising solution,

Quite so. I saw your reference to pressure fermenter in the first post and thought you were going to ferment under pressure as some lager-brewers do to increase fermentation speed and accommodate a higher temperature. As that's not the case I agree that you won't get any increase in dissolved CO2.

As for degassing, I've never done it. My wine invariable sits in a full demijohn for weeks or months after racking and it doesn't get bottled untiil it's perfectly clear. Is degassing something done by those who make "wine in 7 days" kits or similar? Never had the slightest hint of fizz at bottling time and never opened a bottle before it's been in there for 3 months anyway. Any gas would diffuse through the cork,, I would have thought.

 

[MashBag]

As for degassing, I've never done it.

Nor me, pointless operation.