Got a problem.....

All but one of my carboys are filled :rockin:, and I backed myself in to a corner. I have all my 3-gallon carboys filled with wine; however, I need to rack them and don’t have a third. What I do have is a 5-gallon better bottle that is empty. While it will suck having to do double cleaning, is there any reason why I could not rack to the 5-gallon better bottle, clean my 3-gallon out, and re-rack into the 3-gallon after it has been cleaned and sanitized? It is a little more work than racking to another 3-gallon; however, it will save me $40 having to buy another carboy (for now).

If you are careful with your rackings, you should be OK.

But, if you are going to do this, can you rack them all on the same day?

1st batch into 5gal.
2nd batch into freshly cleaned 1st carboy.
3rd batch into freshly cleaned 2nd carboy.
1st batch from 5gal back into freshly cleaned 3rd carboy.

That way only one of the batches has to go through 2 rackings, the other two batches get racked once.

Actually, that was my plan; however, I didn't write it because I thought it might get too confusing.

I have had to rack into an empty Primary bucket before when carboys are not empty. Dont let it splash at all if you can avoid it and some wine saveer on top in airspace might not be a bad idea either

barracudamagoo said:

Actually, that was my plan; however, I didn't write it because I thought it might get too confusing.

Click to expand...

sure you were!

JesseRC said:

sure you were!

Click to expand...

I was gonna make a smart-@ss comment; but I'll leave Yooper alone this time!

What I've done in the past is rack to a bottling bucket - clean your carboy than drain (with a long hose to avoid splashing) thru your bottling bucket spigot. It also helps to eliminate some of the lees that you racked.

The downside is you do lose some due to the design of the bottling bucket, so be careful with your head space.

OR - buy another carboy

Worked out just fine. Emptied into the 5 gallon, and then piggy-backed the rest of them. Topped them up, and put them in my outside closet (max temp is 70 in there, and temperatures are dropping) for bulk aging, and as the temperature drops over the next few months, maybe to facilitate cold stabalization.

Another suggestion is to head over to the local County Recycling Center and pick up some free 4-L glass wine jugs. You just gotta clean them out good...

Rack off into those, then transfer back.

Which reminds me... I gotta make a trip this week and pick up a couple more.

Thanks

John