Apple juice wine volcano

So, normal racking day, I'm putting my apple juice wine into a clean sterilized glass carboy. Throw in 4.5 teaspoons of bentonite to get her cleared up and start racking my mostly fermented wine (OG 1.090, SG now at 1.000) on top of it.

Halfway through the siphoning, I remembered I wanted to put some oak in to condition it and should have put that in the bottom. 'no prob' says me, I'll put it on top and wash it Down with the juice I plan to top off with. Apparently this was a bad idea.

The thing started fizzing like a science project volcanoe and spewing like a freshman in rush week. Well as wifey isn't too fond of wine spewing all over her floor, I shove a bung in it (bad idea #2).

So I go to grab some tubing to make a blow off hose and come back just in time to get a bung in the forehead, wine and oak chips in the eye, and a very unhappy wife.

What the hell happened?

My guess is the CO2 suspended in the wine started releasing when the dry oak chips began absorbing liquid and resulting in the foaming. Something similar happened to me a while back while degassing a merlot. I went to fast with the drill and I had a merlot volcano. Sucks.

"Nucleation points" happened.

Anything with co2 will do that, when you add a solid. Even if you added a little pectic enzyme, for example. I also know this from experience, if that helps you feel any better!

Yooper said:

"Nucleation points" happened.

Anything with co2 will do that, when you add a solid. Even if you added a little pectic enzyme, for example. I also know this from experience, if that helps you feel any better!

Click to expand...

Ditto

This is good to know. Won't happen again. 2 questions:

1) Do I need to wait until fermentation is complete before adding my oak chips?

2) I'm not terribly worried about an infection, overall it was a pretty short exposure time, but has the fizzing screwed up my hooch somehow?

It now looks like an appletini... After it has come back up

You can oak before or after fermentation.

Degassing your wine as you did will have no affect.

Thanks, folks. I guess i'll wait and throw some oak to it in a few weeks.

Like the new avatar btw, Yooper.