Newbie brewing wine, have questions on secondary fermenter size.

[BDRJ]

Hello,

I have several years of brewing beer, and this year my dad and I decided to try our hands on making some wine. We picked up a few WineXpert kits, his had the grape skins addition and mine was just the concentrate.

We are currently primary fermenting both in buckets, his bucket is larger due to the grape skin addition and mine is a standard beer brewing bucket.

I currently have 4 glass carboys, of unknown size, my guess would be 6.5 gal. They were given to me from my father in-law who got them from a friend.

I filled one of them to 6 gal exactly and this is where the water came up to.

Here is a side by side comparison of my 5 gal carboy on the left.

Question 1.
Now seeing as though I have to do secondary fermentation on one batch and then degass and clearing on both, will the amount of head space in the carboy be too much for both batches?

Question 2.
Pulling from primary to secondary and then from secondary to tertiary I can see not getting 23ltrs exactly since there will be sediment on the bottom each time. Would you recommend topping up with water or using a similar wine to reduce the head space?

Thanks in advance for all the help and insight.

 

[hamiltonkiler]

I hear a lot on here about minium head space.
I always end up with head space. Doesn't bother me and doesn't seem to bother the wine.
But yes you can top up with what ever you want to. Juice and Brandy are common to me.

 

[Yooper]

You want a minimal amount of headspace in any secondary. If you're making kit wines when you degas, you leave a bit more so you can degas them. Otherwise, I don't degas any wines at all and top up to within an inch of the bung, at the narrowest part of the carboy.

You can top up with a similar wine when you need to top up, but if you are topping up more than a quart or so, you will just want to rack to a smaller vessel. I often use the correct sized carboy, but put excess in a wine bottle or growler, or one gallon jug with a bung and airlock (they make stoppers for all sizes), and then use that for topping up.

Oxidation is the death of wine, and changes the flavor and color pretty quickly if you don't take care to avoid it wherever possible. You can help avoid oxidation by using sulfites as appropriate, and avoiding splashing or stirring, or excess headspace once fermentation ends.

 

[BDRJ]

Thanks for the replies Hamiltonkiler and Yooper

I ended up topping up with about 2 cups of distilled water to bring the level to about an inch or two to the bung. My thought is that 2 cups of water in 6 gals is not going to make a big difference in the wine.

As well the wine is still fermenting so the co2 that is being released has pushed any o2 out of the space.

My next stage is to degas and stabilize so hopefully with the addition of the half cup of water and chemicals it should bring it up to very close to the bung.

Another question I have is once you stabilize the wine and clear it. Do you bulk age for weeks to a year or bottle and then age?