De gassing help?

[pts]

I am making a 5 gallon kit wine for the first time and have reached the degassing stage. I am using a whiz stick with an electric drill and the wine temp. is about 70 degrees. It seems to be taking a long time to de gas - I have been doing it now for 4 days but there is still plenty of CO2 coming out of it - is this normal and how long should it take to de gas? The wine is a Californian Sauvignon Blanc.

[goldseal]

Make sure you are not confusing CO2 with aeration.

When you stir the wine, it will foam. This could be because there is CO2 escaping, or it could be because you are mixing air into the wine.

The easiest way to see if there is any CO2 left is to sanitise a wine bottle and transfer about 300ml of wine into it. Put your thumb (also sanitised ) over the end and shake. Remove thumb. If there is a 'fffffffffffffft' of escaping gas, you still have CO2. If you get nothing, or just a minor escape (a 'fft' ) your wine is degassed.

In my experience (and I fully expect to be contradicted), the foam takes longer to clear when the wine is degassed. When lots of CO2 is escaping it tends to disperse the foam rapidly.

[rjb222]

I am making a 5 gallon kit wine for the first time and have reached the degassing stage. I am using a whiz stick with an electric drill and the wine temp. is about 70 degrees. It seems to be taking a long time to de gas - I have been doing it now for 4 days but there is still plenty of CO2 coming out of it - is this normal and how long should it take to de gas? The wine is a Californian Sauvignon Blanc.

Part of your problem is the temperature. You should be up around 75 to properly degas you can be up as high as 80 I would not go higher than this though. The higher the temperature the easier the gas is to beat off the wine. It is the cavitatation of the tips of what ever you are using that causes the CO2 to release it's self from the wine. Is your whiz stick got blades or is it a fermetech hook type? Personally if it is the fermetech hook type I would use it to hold up the lid on your trash bin not much good for anything else.

[wisp]

Make sure you are not confusing CO2 with aeration.

When you stir the wine, it will foam. This could be because there is CO2 escaping, or it could be because you are mixing air into the wine.

The easiest way to see if there is any CO2 left is to sanitise a wine bottle and transfer about 300ml of wine into it. Put your thumb (also sanitised ) over the end and shake. Remove thumb. If there is a 'fffffffffffffft' of escaping gas, you still have CO2. If you get nothing, or just a minor escape (a 'fft' ) your wine is degassed.

In my experience (and I fully expect to be contradicted), the foam takes longer to clear when the wine is degassed. When lots of CO2 is escaping it tends to disperse the foam rapidly.

What a tip!

[Darren]

Each wine is different some need degassing a lot more than others i can normally tell there is still gas in the wine by the smell but i would say don't go mad with degassing get the wine drunk and start another and move on

[pts]

Many thanks guys - I think I must have been mistaking cavitation for escaping CO2 - I have just sampled the wine and it tastes great - so on to clearing and drinking!!

[Cellar_Rat]

Just a thought, could you not make a vacuvin fit a demijohn and use that to draw out the CO2

[lockwood1956]

Yes you can...

see degassing tutorial for details

regards
Bob

[Cellar_Rat]

Yes you can...

see degassing tutorial for details

regards
Bob

bu**er I thought I had had an original idea there - lasted for two mins hey hoo!

[rjb222]

Each wine is different some need degassing a lot more than others i can normally tell there is still gas in the wine by the smell but i would say don't go mad with degassing get the wine drunk and start another and move on

Darren when doing kit wines it is absolutely necessary to degas. A kit wine holds onto much more CO2 than scratch wines.Temperature is super important to this process. When properly done your wines will display better nose and flavor characteristics.

[forgotten]

Just a thought, could you not make a vacuvin fit a demijohn and use that to draw out the CO2

this is the cheap way that i do it...


get a rubber bung with a hole in it and make a vacuvin top fit the hole (may take some delicate persuasion by making the hole bigger) and after the air lock has come of use a combination of shaking the demijohn and sucking the gas out for the next few weeks or till clear....



works a treat..

[solly]

I am using a whiz stick with an electric drill

Thats all I use is a Wizz Stick with a battery drill - normally run the Wizz stick for a few minutes, since using the Wizz Stick never had a problem with De-Gassing - One of the best Wine Making items that I have ever brought and it only cost about £8 on Ebay