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 degas 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 fermentor 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 lees of whatever is in 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 degas in there, and then you go from the cleaned and sanitized bucket into your cleaned and sanitized secondary fermentor.
Now that we've racked from the primary fermentor into our clean and sanitized 7.9-gallon bucket,
what you want to look for when degassing is large, heavy meringuey bubbles coming out of solution at first
and then eventually becoming smaller, finer bubbles so that it looks almost like frothed-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 homebrewer, 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 the -- the -- these -- mix stir 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 gas is coming out at once than it does through 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 wand.
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 just 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 fermentor.
The secondary fermentor will fill up. Make sure that there isn't a lot of headspace in there. This is about ideal.
Next, you'll be adding your metabisulfite and any other packets that your kit tells you to add at that point.
The key thing to remember with the chemicals in the packets is to dissolve them in about a half 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 disbursed through the wine.
There will be a fining agent in your kit. You will use that when your directions say to.
Some say to add it when you add your metabisulfite or with -- a day or two or a week after you've 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 oaking. On some kits, there may be other additions to make.
There's usually a fining agent that you add in, which we've added in today, and that's another reason why you want to degas 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 fermentor 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 drill and it gets a little too overpowering, you can end up with a wine fountain coming out of the top of your carboy,
and that's just not good at all.
This then goes into your secondary ferment for however long your instructions say to go.
Keep an eye on it. Take measurements using your hydrometer to make sure that it's nice and leveled out.
And then in our next part of your discussion, we'll talk about bottling.