How to Degas Wine After Primary Fermentation

continuing our discussion on winemaking we've established how to set up your primary fermentation today we've taken from a finished primary fermentation over to secondary and in that process we have to dig ass the wine what that is is of course getting the co2 out of solution of of your wine to improve its flavor and its longevity when you rack from your primary fermenter into the cleaned and sanitized 7.9 gallon bucket you want to make sure that you're leaving the yeast behind because you don't need that anymore and you want to make sure that you're getting it off the LEAs of whatever is in your your bucket remember in some of the kits you've added oak chips you've added elderflowers and some and you don't need that flavor anymore it's all in the primary now so you rack that from the primary into the clean bucket you de gas in there and then you go from the clean and sanitized bucket into your cleaned and sanitized secondary fermenter now that we've wrapped from the primary fermenter into our clean and sanitized 79 gallon bucket what you want to look for when degassing is large heavy meringue II bubbles coming out of solution at first and then eventually becoming smaller finer bubbles so that it looks almost like frost up dish soap what you're doing in this point is getting rid of co2 that is still trapped in the liquid because that will affect the flavor and the longevity of your beer of your wine see as a home brewer I'm still thinking beer you see all that bubble forming there that's not oxygen that's co2 coming out of solution and it takes some time with a mixture or with the wine wand here you're still looking at about fifteen to twenty minutes in a bucket this size however if you're doing this in a carboy it can take up to an hour there's more surface area here so more gases coming out once than it does to that tiny little hole over there you can actually smell the carbonic acid coming out in the air so it gets this very tart tangy smell you don't need that in your wine you want to make sure that that bubbling takes place in the bucket and not all over your floor so don't get enthusiastic with the wine one don't crank open the drill because even in that larger bucket where we're trying to get as much surface area as possible if you get a little too enthusiastic with the wine whip well you're going to get it all over your floor and that's not good that's wasteful so make sure that you see larger bubbles first and then smaller and smaller and finer bubbles generally with a drill with a wine whip it takes about twenty or thirty minutes to accomplish this if you are trying to stir by hand it is going to take an hour or more next we go from our cleaned and sanitized bucket that's now filled with degassed wine and we rack that into our secondary fermenter the secondary fermenter will fill up make sure that there isn't a lot of headspace in that this is about ideal next you'll be adding your metabolite and any other packets that your kit tells you to add at that point key thing to remember with the chemicals in the packets is to dissolve them in about 1/2 a cup of water and pour them in directly into your carboy you then want to stir for another two minutes to make sure that that's dispersed through the wine there will be a finding agent in your kit you will use that when your directions say to some say to add it when you add your metabolite or with a day or two or a week after you have added the chemicals you also want to make sure when you add your fining agent you do exactly the same thing once again mix it for two minutes so you make sure that it is established well throughout the wine you may have to add oak chips in a second okay on some kits there may be other additions to make there is usually a fining agent that you add in which we have added into eh and that's another reason why you want to dig ass because you want all of your gas out of there so the fining agent can do its job your instructions in your kit may tell you to go directly from a primary fermenter to a secondary carboy if you're going to do it that way be very careful this is a very narrow neck of a bottle and if you get enthusiastic with the the drill and it gets a little too overpowering you can end up with a wine fountain coming out at the top of your carboy and that's just not good at all this then goes into your secondary fermentation hydrometer to make sure that it's nice and leveled out and then in our next part of our discussion we'll talk about bottling you

Channel: NorthernBrewerTV

Views: 415,752

Keywords: how to make wine at home, home brewing, northern brewer, making wine better, wine wand, home winemaking, degassing wine, wine fining, minneapolis, wine fermentation, mix-stir, degas wine, wine making, instructional video

Id: w9G9zpYfMxA

Length: 5min 26sec (326 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 08 2012