With wine in general I have always left it covered with a towel, in a bucket. Not airlocked.
Good points... the yeast needs air to ferment happily. Less stress.
I use fruits, not juice, so it needs to be stirred twice daily to keep the fruit moist and mold away.
Foam up is less problematic in an open pail. More space for the foam to go. If it does foam over no explosion of must, just a gentle slide down the side of the pail.
Daily stirring releases traped gasses from the fermentaion proccess. Some gass will escape on its own, but in a sealed carboy it will be very slow. Traped gasses can give a stinky smell. ( it will disapate with stirrings or over time with plenty of racking. )
Bad points... Slight risk of fruit flies playing in the must. Usually the towel keeps them out.
Airlocked. Good points. Keeps fruit flies out.
Bad points. Its a pain in the asss to snape a lid on and off twice daily for stirring of the must.
With plain juice I guess a swirl of the pail or carboy would work.
Not as much air to feed the yeast. They don't need much, but a little keeps them happy and smelling good.
Harder for bad gasses to scape. Resulting in off flavored or a gassy wine. Now you need to manually degass.
Foam ups happen. When the wine is airlocked it can clog the airlock and then the force of the foam up forces the airlock off. Causing wine must to shower the room and celing.
I think airlocked wine takes longer to ferment to dry. Probely due to less oxigen for the yeast or not stirring daily to release gasses. It may just be a day or two difference, but it is slower!
I am in the camp of not airlocking for primary fermentaion. Maybe someone who likes to airlock will chime in with more good point?
Sent from my iPod touch using Home Brew
