Help! How long can this wine sit with this much airspace in the Carboy? Opinion please

[mrbeachroach]

Hello all! I bottled last weekend and ran out of corks so I had to stop.

How long can I leave this much airspace in the carboy before I have to bottle and still get quality product?

The only reason I would wait is I thought about throwing some oak chips in, but I don't know how long it would take to impart the flavor and if it would be worth it.

 

[bernardsmith]

If the yeast is not producing CO2 then you have a blanket of air atop the wine and that is pretty much like having a raw iron sit exposed to rain. With iron the oxidation is called rust. With wine we just talk about it as oxidation. Generally speaking, like rust , it does not improve the quality of the materials being affected. I would see if you can transfer this to smaller containers with no headroom stat.

 

[mrbeachroach]

Will do tomorrow.

 

[S-Met]

Kind of like decanting? Maybe label or otherwise mark these bottles to tell from the other bottles. These may develop differently. Maybe ready sooner with shorter shelf lfe. Only guessing though.

 

[hambiguous]

Next time, if you know this may be an issue, couldn't you purge the carboy of O2 before racking?

 

[gregbathurst]

It is the same as leaving a half full bottle of wine with a cork in. It will be ok for a few days but pretty soon it will start to taste foul. there are things you can buy to inject inert gas etc, but they have never become popular because they don't work very well.

 

[jgmillr1]

I've had a carboy like that before. I hit the wine with a hefty dose of sulfites and purged the headspace thoroughly with CO2 & capped with an airlock. It lasted fine for months until I was able to get it bottled. Of course the best bet is to not have any headspace, though that is not always possible.

 

[z-bob]

If the air lock hasn't been removed (or dried-out) since it was bubbling actively, that's not air in the headspace, it's CO2 with maybe a little oxygen that diffused in. It's not the same thing at all as an opened bottle of wine.

 

[mrbeachroach]

Tasted fine after set for 1 week. Bottled.

 

[Yooper]

If the air lock hasn't been removed (or dried-out) since it was bubbling actively, that's not air in the headspace, it's CO2 with maybe a little oxygen that diffused in. It's not the same thing at all as an opened bottle of wine.

Sure it is. Opening the carboy and siphoning out some of the wine leaves a huge headspace, and since air is 20% oxygen, there is a ton of oxygen in there. Gasses readily mix, and don't separate so there is no such thing as a c02 blanket in headspace.

 

[z-bob]

I missed where the carboy was opened and some siphoned out.