Degassed my first kit wine (VR chianti) today...here's what I did...

Got me one of those drill driven degassing paddle deals, the one that fits
through the carboy mouth. Got it all sanitized, the full length of it.
Also sanitized a 2L E-meyer flask. I pulled off about 1.8 L of the wine to
make room for the turbulence, used some of it for the gravity check (which
was -1.9P). I was careful not to aerate this wine. I dissolved the #2 and
#3 packs like the kit said, in 1/2 cup water (used a sanitized measuring
cup). Added this solution and began stirring "very vigorously" and
wondered...at what point does this start to aerate the wine? Since this was
a reversible drill, I decided to change the drill direction everytime a
funnel started to form. Once or twice it did worry me. This kicked up
quite a storm in the carboy. No sediment was left undisturbed. I then
added the other pack, something about chitosan, and mixed it all again, for
about 2 minutes. I then topped it up with the wine that I had removed
earler (except for the gravity sample) and gave it a few more spins.

After I had everything back together in the carboy, I sampled the progress.
The remainder of the flask was obviously a little gassy, but it tasted fine.
I then poured the gravity sample into the flask and sloshed it around to
degass it and to see how much it would foam. Quite a bit. I let it settle
out and then tried it. It seemed to lack something. Not alot of body, not
much fruit. It seemed that it tasted better and had better body before I
degassed it.

Everyone has said and written that these wines improve with age, about 6 to
9 months is what I'm expecting. What improvements should I expect? Better
body? Better fruit? More rich flavor?



--
Buy a man a beer and he wastes an hour.
Teach a man to brew and he wastes the rest of his life.