degassing

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zipmont

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Having read that degassing helps to facilitate clearing, I've been toying around with degassing my mead, metheglin, and loganberry melomel. However, I have heard many people state that there can be no end to the c02, no matter how much degassing is done. 5-10 minutes solid, repeated 2,3,4 times ... And some say their wines still taste gassy after degassing. It seems like quite a bit of extra work/cleaning/transferring, especially if the results are negligible. So I'm wondering if there might be any sort of consensus on this. Does anyone find that they notice a significant difference after degassing?

Personally, I like the very slight gassiness I sense in my meads at a few months of age. But we're selling them at the local farmer's market, so I'm contending here with the tastes of the general public. I'm leaning towards just waiting it out in bulk storage, since wines need that time to develop anyway. But the degassing component, supposedly, can take upwards of a year. While the maturation and development of complexity can too, that can happen in a bottle, whereas the degassing cannot. Does anyone find that their meads consistently clear and/or degas sufficiently, say, in 2-3 months? Or is the year plus ... thing pretty common?
 
I like using vacuum to degas. Eliminates risk of ozidation that stirring can create. I bought a medical vacuum device on Ebay for 60 bucks. It has a built in regulator and gauge. I set it to about 20" of hg and let it go.
 
I've only made and degassed two wines and each was a PITA using the drill bit attachment. Not sure if I was using it right or what but it took forever and still didn't get it right. Am I supposed o whip it fast or slowly?
 
I like the vacuum method of degassing. Then I don't have to worry about oxidation and whether or not I'm agitating too much. Of course the disadvantage is you cannot do it in plastic containers which, as a rule, tend to implode under vacuum pressure.

In reference to my original question, I think I'm leaning towards NOT degassing before bulk storage, even if it does facilitate clearing. Clearing generally isn't a problem anyway with 3-4 rackings and 2-3 months of storage. There's a very good chance that degassing (and filtration) will be unnecessary after all that. How nice to skip the associated hassles when I can, ie; when they wouldn't help the wine anyway, and might even hurt it.

I believe my thinking here is in keeping with the consensus, at least with what I've read in this blog and other places. In short, give time a chance first, at least what time you feel comfortable with. If that doesn't work well enough, then perhaps it becomes necessary to assume the inherent risks of degassing, fining, filtering, etc ...
 

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