Carboy cracked; question about salvaging wine

My friend and I made 15 gallons of wine from about 200 pounds of California grapes. Tragically, the 54 liter demi-john cracked while he and his wife were carrying it down the stairs to the basement. We racked about half of it into a new container. My question is, when we rack this wine months from now, can we "filter" it in some way to make sure that we screen out any glass chards? There were no visible glass chards when the demijohn cracked. But I certainly don't want to take any chances. If so, what would we use to filter it?

That sucks. Wow, I can't believe it.

I don't know the right answer here. I guess if it were me, I'd use a filtering system- the kind designed for wine. It filters out yeast, so it would definitely filter glass shards if there were any. Homebrew stores sometimes rent them out, if you don't have one.

Without a safe way to filter, I woudn't risk it though.

If it is still holding liquid there is honestly very little chance that it has sent shards into the wine. I would rack carefully now and several more times and I guess I would filter it if I had easy access - my lhbs does rent them, for free - but if I didn't filter it I would feel secure that the racking had left behind any glass that probably wasn't even there in the first place.

Could we pass the wine through a cheesecloth or something? By the way, when the carboy cracked some wine leaked out. So it's not out of the question that glass is somewhere. I'll check out the filtering idea though, thanks!

By the way, at least this happened the SECOND time we made wine, not the first! Also, I went out and got another 100 pounds of grapes so we could erase the memory!

T-rags said:

Could we pass the wine through a cheesecloth or something? By the way, when the carboy cracked some wine leaked out. So it's not out of the question that glass is somewhere. I'll check out the filtering idea though, thanks!

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People have been telling me that using coffee filters or cheesecloth will aeriate the beer, I still run it through a coffee filter (every time) it sure makes my beer clear! My next batch of wine I will do the same and check it out for aeriation. My beer gets drank pretty fast so it will be interesting to see what it will do to a wine. It is pretty slow, I leave the screen in the funnel to give the coffee filter the same shape, and have to be patient so as not to go over the sides of the filter. Someone filling your beer glass, sure helps at this part of the procedure.:rockin:

Wait a minute, I just noticed that you're in Philly. Head up to Keystone Homebrew. They have a wine filter for rent and I remember it being free. If not free, certainly worth the $10 or so to save a batch of wine.

And wine is more at peril from oxidation than beer. You want to minimize contact with air as it will be months before you drink it. Luckily the filtering is an easy solution.

I've been to Keystone Home Brew. I will check on the wine filtering rental. Great idea; thanks again