Zinfandel Degassing & Racking Grenache
April 6th, 2009 | 
Author: First, I’ve had suspicions for some time that winemaking kit instructions are a bit off when it comes to degassing wine. Most kit instructions advise, after adding Potassium Metabisulfite (and please please make sure you add the sulfite BEFORE you attempt to degas!!), to stir vigorously a few times for at least a day or two before adding the fining agents. The most recent set of instructions advise that it is vital that the wine be degassed or it will not clear adequately.
Here’s my problem with these instructions: I have yet to be able to stir a wine vigorously for five minutes, three times a day for a couple of days, and have it anywhere near to being fully degassed within those two days. I’ve had a Zinfandel sitting in a carboy for the past week, and today, it continues to give off lots of CO2 when it is vigorously stirred, with lots of tiny CO2 bubbles rising. I am not introducing that much air to it while I’m stirring because most of the action is way down below the surface of the wine.
Here’s another reason why in my opinion, even a kit wine will profit from bulk aging before it is bottled. Much of the CO2 will have time to dissipate on its own. Whenever I let a batch of wine, kit or not, bulk age, (which is most of the time), I have little CO2 problems. However, I have seen others who follow the instructions of a kit wine to the day, and their wine can have excess foam when poured. I once had a bottle with a man who was very proud of his wine he had just made and wanted to share a bottle with me. He poured his into his glass, gave it a swirl, and the foam on top was nothing like I’d ever seen before. To say that he had made the wine is a bit misleading – he sprinkled the yeast on it in a “ferment on the premises” shop. Obviously the shop staff did not do much degassing, if any.
One does have to be careful not to overdo it when degassing too. That’s one of the reasons I’m not so keen right now on the Fizz-X tool. That thing can create a whirlpool with a deep vortex at the centre. That’s a lot of surface area that’s coming into contact with air. And I’ve found that even using that tool does not seem to really degas wines all that great. Unless I’m mistaking all those tiny bubbles rising from various depths of the wine and all that foam on top for something else – but beats me what it could be.
No, I think time is the best degasser. Not that some degasing isn’t a good thing to help the process along. But that’s just my opinion and I’m certainly open and welcome other thoughts on this as well.
Another observation after racking the Grenache that I started about two weeks ago to the secondary carboy: I really dislike the original 5 Gallon (6 US Gallon) carboys I purchased. They seem to have more capacity than 5 Imperial gallons, which leaves too much ullage for my liking. Quite a bit too much. I much prefer the “Mexican” 5 gallon carboys.
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