Winegasgetter

[DoctorCAD]

Anyone ever tried this CO2 removing device?
My wife bought me one for Christmas and it seemed to work perfectly. No labor involved.

An air compressor is attached at 65 psi and the vacuum generator easily sucks the CO2 off of the carboy. The inventor was at a wine contest last fall and I asked him about it. It creates appx. 21 inches of vacuum, not too much to "boil" the wine, but enough that a shake every couple of minutes releases lots of gas.

The Pinot Noir that I tried it on seemed very flat, so in a few months I will open one to see how it works.

At the wine contest, the inventor had 2 small carboys, one he was degassing and one just sitting with an airlock. He would give tastes from the gassy one then from the degassed one. the taste difference is huge, as you would expect. In fact, he took this device to a Napa valley wine show and has a few small winecrafters buying his large (8 carboy) set-up.

 

[CandleWineProject]

I haven't been degassing any of my wines. Should I be?

 

[SSteph2747]

Yes. There are many benefits to degassing - the number one reason (IMO) being reduced chance of corks being blown after bottled. Degassing releases the CO2 build-up - overtime, this CO2 will release naturally and create a pressure in the bottle. As the OP mentions, and as can be found on the website winegasgetter.com, there are other benefits regarding tastes - degassing helps mellow younger wines.

Many people degas their wines by shaking them - I've heard of people putting their carboys on the washing machine (although, what a mess that would be to clean if it fell!). You can buy something called a "Whip" which attaches to a drill. The problem with these 2 methods are they can stir up sediment. The Winegasgetter (and other vaccuum/suction things such as Food Savers) pull the CO2 out of the wine without stirring up the sediment.

Of course, if you like your wines gassy, that's your perogative.

 

[Vinic]

I haven't been degassing any of my wines. Should I be?

For me, this is a matter of style. My dry reds and barrel fermented whites are much better without carbonic acid, but pretty much everything else is actually accentuated by a slight spritz. It adds a bit of life to the wines in two ways: displaces 02 so that the wines live longer, and the little zip on the pallet makes them livelier.

It's always been interesting to me that the wine styles tend to lend themselves to carbonic acid level. All my dry reds are barrel aged, and degassing is one of the side effects produced by a barrel. With the slight evaporation that takes place in a barrel, a negative pressure builds and the wine loosed any dissolved CO2.​