Degassing Wine

Degassing wine can be a cumbersome task depending on the tools or techniques you use. I have tried a few things and I found that I always go back to the basics. I have tried drill mounted devices that use a bung to center it. The problems I found with it was the rubber on the bung will crumble and leave little floaters in the wine. Then someone will say just lube the center with something to keep that from happening. Well I am sanitary freak and I fear that microbes will contaminate the wine, or give it an off flavor. I also worry about the dust, dirt and electrical dust expelled from the drill finding its’ way into the wine during use. I stick to the basics of swirling the carboy and using the backside of my brew spoon to remove unwanted carbon dioxide gasses.

I did however find a new technique that seems to fit into my world not contaminating my wine with microorganisms from various devices. I saw a video clip from Scott “the wine making guy” at YouTube (an ingenious way to degas wine) that uses a wine bottle pump. The pump preserves a partial bottle of wine by creating reverse pressure vacuum removing the oxygen that can cause oxidation, discoloration and bad taste in the wine. The pump he used is quite common and requires the use of an oversized bung plug. It was very cool and simple to set up. I started to think about what he said and used and I realized I had a Houdini wine saver set in my bar. I went digging to find it as I have yet to use it, because it seems when the bottle is opened it gets drank fairly soon thereafter. I looked at the Houdini and I thought how I could make this work the same way; so I grabbed an air-lock and saw the outer diameter of the neck was close to the inner diameter of the Houdini plug. My first thought was to cut the neck off with a fine hacksaw blade and attach the plug to the existing bung. Then I thought why waste an airlock (I am cheap), it fits in the top of the airlock just fine and the seal was great. Now that I had my new setup I was eager to try it. Today just happens to be the day for me to degas my World Vineyard California Trinity Red.
Degassing the Trinity Red:

I started by adding the clearing agents and swirled the carboy around with the bung removed and a paper towel wrapped around the top to prevent splashing during the whirlpool stir. I then used my brew spoon and stirred it vigorously for a few minutes. I then put the Houdini set up on it and pumped it about 50 times until I saw the bubbles rise. I burped it a few times and repeated the process about three times. I left the Houdini on it and two hours later I burped it and pumped it back up again.  As I look back on the Houdini degassing process I did not see any real benefit using it to degas 6 gallons of wine. I did see some bubbles rise up and it did look like it worked to some extent, but not like I had hoped. I am sure it needed a much larger type of vacuum device to be more effective. I then burped it and removed the Houdini and stirred it vigorously again with my brew spoon. I placed the normal air lock back on and plan on stirring it one more time.

So the idea sounded good and looked good on paper, but the basics are what worked best for me in this situation.  The Trinity red turned out great; it had nice color and was very clear. So for now I will stick to the basics and see what the next G-whiz thing has to offer.