Degassing and oxidation for wine kit

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Sadu

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Hi everyone, first time winemaker but brewed lots of beer.

I have finished fermenting my 1 gallon Young's peach wine kit. Per the instructions I added the stabiliser pack, took a gravity reading, and added the finings pack.

The instructions say to "agitate the container" at least 6 times over the next 24 hours to assist with clearing. I assume this is the degassing part of the process.

I'm not sure what this actually means though - from a beer brewing background the concept of shaking / oxygenating the fermented beverage is something you would never do.

Do they mean to "gently swirl the container to minimise oxygen exposure" or do they mean to "shake it blind and give no thought to oxygen getting in the wine"?

And one more question if I may.

The kit says that fermentation is done when it's under 1.004 for 2+ days. I finished at 1.002 which seems in the expected range. Then they go on to say that you can sweeten if you want to 1.004 - 1.010 using their sweetner. Seems weird that they first say that gravity needs to be under 1.004 then tell you to sweeten it but don't provide any sweetener in the kit. I was just going to skip the sweetning since I don't want to wear an extra courier charge - unless this is setting myself up for failure.

Thanks :)
 
The wine is in a 5 litre demijohn with airlock. Seems to me that by agitating the wine it's releasing CO2, which would fill the headspace quickly. If this is correct, it should be safe to give it a good hard swirl since there shouldn't be too much oxygen in the headspace?
 
Stir the wine fast but do not form a vortex some use a degassing tool and a drill 30 sec -1 min one way let rest for a min or two repeat in opposite direction. thoughought the day -3 days till you have a low level of bubles forming. My sister who is downsyndrme played with both of my degassing tools and broke them. So I had to find another way I keep it sealed and shake lke you said relese the seal a bit afteer it setteled some and repete the process same over the next 1-3 days a few times each day till low level bubbles I dont relees the last set of CO2 for another full day or 3 (till I do the Clearify witch is how my kits say) and it seems to be good for me the last 2 batches Ive had to do this for.
 
Its really hard to ruin a wine kit.

Degassing is a violent and extensive action that can take hours if not days. Don't concern yourself too awful much with oxidizing because the CO2 will blanket the wine.
 
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