I stand corrected.

Degassing from large stainless steel must be different from degassing from
small glass. We used to degass between 2 and 10 carboys at a time, on a
single pump over an 8 hour period to completely flatten the wine. In the
four years I worked at this place there was never even a hint of implosion.
I'm not there now, but they're still doing it that way with a 100 percent
success rate.

I'm not a physisist, and those with experience with higher volumes in steel
must be the wiser.

Personally, I've always been in favor of time and bulk ageing (as already
mentioned), in oak, or whatever. It's gentler on the wine anyways.

Even so, if you bottle with a simple enolmatic bottler which works on a
vacuum principle to draw the wine from the carboy, there is a certain level
of degassing taking place even as your bottle is being filled. But if the
wine is terribly gassy at bottling time, I don't think the Enolmatic will do
a thorough job.

In the long run, probably the best way to degas wine is the way everyone's
been doing it for hundreds of years. Just let it sit there for months and
drink beer while you'r waiting.

Jeff


"David C Breeden" > wrote in message
...
> Jeff Chorniak ) wrote:
> >135 gallons is a lot of weight already on the inside wall, pushing
outwards.
> >We're naturally assuming that the wall is thick enough to withstand the
> >pressure of that weight from within. Therefore, we're also assuming the
> >amount of low pressure on the upper air surface (created by the gentle
pump)
> >is minimal (just enough to draw trapped gasses to the surface and suck
them
> >out: it only takes a -1 lb/sq in. less than ambient over a period of
several
> >hours to do the trick), while the actual weight of 135 gallons of fluid
> >keeps the outward pressure on the wall to prevent collapse (implosion).
>
> >Even so, Lum's posting below probably has a point if you're already using
a
> >transfer pump. If you're racking or transferring with gravity (as some
> >wineries do), then a pump may still be an alternative option, in the way
Lum
> >mentioned.
>
> >Whatever pump you choose, it will be a good idea to research the physics
of
> >it all (and maybe experiment with a tank of water first).
>
> >Jeff
>
> I've seen collapsed tanks in wineries where the winemaker forgot to
> open the tank before pumping out of it. I wouldn't try to de-gas
> that way.
>
> In some instances I have had to de-gas large volumes of wine, in
> particular rieslings which were not fermented completely dry, and so
> were kept at 35F or so from the time they reached the residual sugar
> I wanted, normally in October or November until February or March
> when I bottled them. If the wines have too much residual CO2,
> they're really hard to bottle, so the way we de-gassed them was to
> open the top of the tank, run a hose from the bottom valve to the
> pump (with a rubber impeller moving the wine), and then another
> hose in the top of the tank and back into the wine. We'd then pump
> the wine until the impeller no longer drove CO2 out of solution.
>
>
> Dave
>
************************************************** **************************
> Dave Breeden