Recycle wine from reading

Just wondering if people pour the wine from hydrometer reading back in the primary / secondary? Everything cleaned and sanitized of course. Or do you even draw sample (drop the hydrometer in the bucket when possible). Sanitized of course.

vNmd said:

Just wondering if people pour the wine from hydrometer reading back in the primary / secondary? Everything cleaned and sanitized of course. Or do you even draw sample (drop the hydrometer in the bucket when possible). Sanitized of course.

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I drink my sample, and don't pour it back. I take very few samples, though. The "loss" of wine is negligible.

If it's in the bucket, I soak the hydrometer in starsan and just float it. If it's in a carboy, I sanitize everything, test, and pour back in. Most samples take ~ 100 mL of wine. Over the course of ttime 3-6 hydrometer readings amounts to about a bottle of wine if you don't pour it back in. I suppose I'm greedy

Thanks both. I used to do 1 gal batches a long time ago. It always seemed a lot to use for a test. I am on the 6 gal kits now. I guess I still hate to waste it. I did a racking tonight and siphoned some off. I am glad I did. So far so good. Now I will probably enter no patience mode. And of course Greed is good as the movie says

Thanks again

The problem with returning samples is the oxidation from pouring it back in (although I do it with my 1gal batches anyways).

For larger batches, I have a wine thief that is made especially for returning samples. When you touch it to the bottom of the carboy it pushes a stopper and fills the thief. Once you've taken your reading, you touch the stopper to the inside of the carboy's neck and the sample flows down the side of the carboy. Like a giant bottling wand. Very little oxygen introduced.

KBentley57 said:

If it's in the bucket, I soak the hydrometer in starsan and just float it. If it's in a carboy, I sanitize everything, test, and pour back in. Most samples take ~ 100 mL of wine. Over the course of ttime 3-6 hydrometer readings amounts to about a bottle of wine if you don't pour it back in. I suppose I'm greedy

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I've never seen a sample jar that used 100 ml. That's wild, but still not all that much. You figure, take one SG when racking from primary, and then maybe one more before bottling. Even if it was 100 ml (mine isn't), that's not all that much to prevent bottle bombs, and worth it.

If your cylinder is as clean as your hydrometer dump it back in, if its not why are you using it then? You can easily make a gallon of concentrated KM, like 2 tablespoons of KM powder, a half teaspoon of acid blend and keep a lid on it, when you need to take a reading just fill your cylinder with like 25 mls of the concentrated KM solution and the rest with water and soak your hydrometer in there a few minutes also to get it nice and clean to. I keep clear plastic disposable drinking cups around for tasting samples, keeps your lips off of the testing cylinder WVMJ