Degassing

So last night I tried to degas my wine before adding the chitosan and sulfites and whipped the crap out of the wine with a wine whip. It never seemed to fully degas. I am going to bulk age for several months to help it degas more naturally but if whipping the wine how do you know you got all the co2 out? It never seems to stop creating bubbles.

It will never stop creating bubbles, the trick is to determine when those bubbles are just air and not CO2. The easiest way is to put some wine in your test jar and shake it hard with your palm over the top. When you release your palm, if there is a hard pressure release (like a warm 2 liter bottle of Dr. Pepper) there is still CO2 in the wine. IF no pressure, its only air. Its kind of a learned thing.

Some people can taste the effect of CO2, but they know what it tastes like.

Ageing for a few months will help, as will warmer temperatures.

I seemed to have whipped the crap out of it so I am guessing that most of the gas is gone. I do plan on bulk aging this batch of wine because I still need to empty some bottles. I will make sure to do the test jar thing the next time I rack into another carboy.

I have stopped degassing with my drill whip. All it did was make me feel like I was oxidizing the wine and making a mess.

I now do 2 different things. One, I leave my kit wines alone and do an extended 90-120 day schedule before bottling. Second, I use a vacuum pump to transfer between carboys which helps to degas.