Cheap and easy degasser

Hi All,

I usually let my meads or wines sit for a year to naturally degass. This can really tie up a carboy and recently I looked into different ways to degass my meads and wines. Vacuum sealers are fairly expensive but there are some which are handheld that are cheaper. I finally found one which I got on sale for $5.47, retail is $11.00
Pictured is the reynolds wrap vacuum seal hand held model, again it only costs a few dollars. It does a really good job, and allows mead or wines to be in and out of a carboy in a matter of months instead of years. I really like it and am impressed with its ability to do the job for so cheap.



And in action on a 2 month old mead, which has already cleared.




Degassing is necessary, whether time does it or you use a handheld. This thing will keep your still meads and wines from going sparkling like many of mine have.

Very cool where did you buy it at and how really does it work? I mean it is light enough suction to pull up the gasses but not the liquid?

bet you could pick that up at the grocery store, drug store, or wal-mart/target.

I've not degassed either of my meads, but I think I'll pick this up and give it a shot.

Any idea how long per gallon to leave it running?

jezter6 said:

bet you could pick that up at the grocery store, drug store, or wal-mart/target.

I've not degassed either of my meads, but I think I'll pick this up and give it a shot.

Any idea how long per gallon to leave it running?

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You will be able to see when it is done, only small bubbles rising at the rate of 1-2 per 2-3 seconds.

As far as how long it takes? Depends how long the mead has been sitting, the pom mead I did took about 5 minutes total, i alternate off and on because you will notice when you stop pushing the butting bubbles are still coming to the top. The pom mead was already 5 months old. You will be shocked at how much CO2 you can pull out of a young batch.

You can pick this up at Safeway or Frys. Basically any grocery store. Retail is $11.00 and I got mine on sale for $5.47. I never degassed before and didn't mind the hint of sparkling in the final product. I figure for a few bucks you can't go wrong.

bubbachunk said:

Very cool where did you buy it at and how really does it work? I mean it is light enough suction to pull up the gasses but not the liquid?

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It works great man. YOu won't pull any liquid up if you are working with a glass carboy, haven't tried out a BB tho. If you are doing a mead with only a month or so age on it you may get a lot of bubbles but you can just let go of the button and let them die down.

Good idea but I took it to the next level and use this aspirator pump to degas, rack, and filter when I need to. I never have to pick up full carboys ever as this set up will rack up hill no problem and i have a bad back so that important to me. This set up cost me about $85 on Ebay and degases a wine like no ones business and it has a gauge and adjustment.

I just bought a refurbished foodsaver off ebay for $15.. didn't have the mason jar attachment but a friend had the hose for the vacuum port which I cut in half and installed a check valve. Made a mistake the the first time I tried it.. the bubbles rose up all the way to the bung and into the hose.. but besides that, it works great! get the vacuum going and turn the valve, walk away and the bubbles just keep coming.

[wade] Nice setup... the shape of that cleaning brush made me laugh

Oh could any vacuum work as long as they have a hose attachment?

I actually have one of those for my hops, good idea!

Hey Brandon O...is there any other way to degass the wine...like maybe sitting it in the fridge and opening the cap every few days or so? Cheers

Wade E said:

Good idea but I took it to the next level and use this aspirator pump to degas, rack, and filter when I need to. I never have to pick up full carboys ever as this set up will rack up hill no problem and i have a bad back so that important to me. This set up cost me about $85 on Ebay and degases a wine like no ones business and it has a gauge and adjustment.

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I do medical supply and those negative wound vacs HAVE TO BE DECONTAMINATED!! I have a stack here that came off of patients and contain bodily fluids.. Make sure it's new or cleaned properly..

gramps said:

Hey Brandon O...is there any other way to degass the wine...like maybe sitting it in the fridge and opening the cap every few days or so? Cheers

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You can just stir the heck out of it. It will fizz up, let the bubbles dissipate, and repeat until the bubbles quit forming.

Thanks Brandon...I guess I will be here for awhile shaking this stuff up...maybe a1000 times. Cheers

Found it pretty cheap on ebay

http://cgi.ebay.com/Reynolds-Handi-...emQQptZLH_DefaultDomain_0?hash=item2ea732d437

This is how my brother and I do it for meads and wines.









That is an air compressor with the intake connected to the carboy hood. It is amazing how much CO2 is in solution.

We run that for about 30 minutes. It really takes a long time to remove the gas via suction so I would suggest a prolonged time like that.

I do not believe that a wine degasses itself in time under an air lock. I have tried several times and even aging under an air lock for 2 years was unsuccessful. Still had entrained gas.

Wade E said:

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I'm thinking you could use Brandon O's little battery powered suction pump and a setup like this to rack gallon jugs. Don't know about anyone else but to me racking from a gallon jug with an autosiphon is a bit of a pain. Too easy to stir up the lees and with a gallon it's too easy to mess up your whole batch and have to give up on racking/bottling for the day.

For those interested in Brandon O's method, be aware that Reynolds has discontinued making that item. I couldn't find it locally in any store, but ordered one from Amazon, for a little more than Brandon paid for his.

Here's a link to Reynolds' product page for the item: Handi-Vac

Brandon O said:

YOu won't pull any liquid up if you are working with a glass carboy, haven't tried out a BB tho.

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As long as there's space between the liquid and the vacuum pump nozzle it won't pick up any liquid. You're not going to pull a full vacuum in the bottle anyway with that little pump, just lower the air pressure inside enough to let the dissolved gas bubble out. (OOTR: that's how deep sea divers get the bends.)

You could probably use that pump on a plastic bottle if you don't run it continuously, but instead run it for a couple of minutes at a time, or until you notice the bottle start to deform, and let the bottle breathe in between.

That's a really cool idea! Thanks for mentioning it.

Dave