Really thick fluffy lees

Hey everyone I have a question about racking with a thick layer of lees. My batch in question is 1 gallon of Apricot wine made with Oregon fruit puree. I racked it from the primary to a glass carboy on 1/29/11 (19 days ago). The fermentation is complete and I want to rack it off the sediment, but if I do I will be leaving ~1/3 of the wine behind (about 3 inches of the fluffy stuff). Any suggestions on how I can compact the lees down? My only Ideas are to maybe put it in the cool garage, to bentonite it, or (as a last resort) hold it by the neck and spin around real fast. Wish I had an industrial centrifuge but alas I don't have $100K to spare . I would add a pic but cant seem to figure out how yet, if I can at all. Oh by the way I used Red Star Montrachet yeast.

Ryan

Rack it then put the remainder in a smaller container and it should settle.

If you were going to bentonite do it to the entire batch so to pull out the proteins in suspension -- apricot has lots.

Fruit puree in general leaves a big pile 'o muck in the bottom of your fermenter.... Just take a look at a bottle of Apricot Nectar in the store - the bottom 1/3 of the bottle is a big orange blob of puree that you have to shake up into the juice.....

This is one of the reasons we usually start with Fruit chunks that are smooshed rather than ground up.... it's much easier to strain when it isn't ground to dust.

Thanks

John

I'd wait a bit- sometimes those big fluffy lees compact down over the course of 30-45 days and make racking easier. Also, chilling it helps compact the lees a bit.