dogman
Active Member
Dito. :hat:
Whether you rack off the lees before degassing depend on your prior method and the wine style you are making. With the cheaper kits it is generally advisable.
However some of the more the more expensive high juice volume kits for big body reds recommend the procedure I follow. I start fermentation in an open bucket with a loose lid - when the gravity gets down to about 10 or thereabouts but fermentation still going strong I rack of the main more "trubby" lees and the oak chippings. I then track off to a vessel under an airlock. When fermentation finishes I degass and stir up the the remaining cleaner lees and leave a day and then fine. It clears brighter than doing it after racking and the flavour is better. However this is usually with wines i am going to store.
With cheaper kits for more immediate consumption or with whites I would usually rack of the lees before degassing and fining.
I'd never heard of degassing when I did my first wine (blackberry) and it was fizzy on the tongue when I started drinking it 6 months later
I'd already bottled it by that point, so now I use one of them winer saver rubber caps and hand pump the day before I want a bottle and it seems to be effective at dear fizzing it
Learnt my lesson though and I properly degass before bottling now.
Shaking a DJ to get rid of the CO2 takes time and effort and using a big spoon to degas a bucket of wine is not the most efficient way to do it, a degassing wand makes degassing a minute job.
You can also use it to mix all your ingredients meaning you dont have to heat water to dissolve the sugar, this saves time and cleaning pans etc.
How to make a degassing wand from an old coat hanger, watch click tricks video -
When using the wand start in forwards for 5 seconds then switch to reverse for 5 and keep doing this for a minute.
This is mine -
(I cut the part i have blacked out in the picture off as it made it hard to get it into the DJ)
All your wine should be degassed for the reasons below -
Suspended carbon dioxide prevents wine from properly clearing.
White wines are especially sensitive to the amount of suspended carbon dioxide. An improperly degassed white wine can have a haze to it that won’t clear through fining.
Carbon dioxide increases the sensation of acidity in wine. While the acid isn’t really there it tastes like it is.
Despite all these reasons to remove the carbon dioxide you don’t want to remove absolutely all of it. This can leave a wine tasting flabby and boring. For the amateur winemaker, however, this is rarely a problem.
Even sparkling wine is first made as a still wine and must be free of carbon dioxide prior to making a sparkling wine.
Usually not being able to remove enough carbon dioxide to avoid the three negative effects listed above is what gets us in trouble. So, let’s look at the best ways to degas your wine.
http://winemakersacademy.com/degas-wine/
There are a couple of things that put me off trying this, modern DJ's seem very thin walled compared to older ones and vacuum cleaners are not designed to create a vacuum in a container I imagine they need airflow to cool the motor so you may damage it if you do this, you then face SWMBO, I will stick to the degassing wand. ;-)
Let us know how you get on if you decide to try it.
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