Degassing

Looking through my stats functions i see there are more folks who are interested in degassing (through searches) than  anything else. So a few words about this topic probably won't go amiss.

During the process of fermentation lots of carbon dioxide is released. (sound bad for the planet? well what you make in your house will be more than made up for by the transport of commercial wine to your door). Anyway, that carbon dioxide is mostly bubbled through your airlock into the atmosphere. However a small amount get's trapped, or is dissolved, in the liquid that will become your wine. Eventually that liquid will become saturated with dissolved gasses (mostly CO2). If you don't get active with degassing then it will stay dissolved.

So what?
"Well quite!" is my answer, the result is a wine that fizzes on your tongue. Some call it a frizz.
Personally I love it. It's very gentle, nothing like the intensity of a champagne or sparkling wine. But you know it, dancing on your tongue. But this seems to be something that contemporary tastes frown upon. My response, as always, is to say if you like it then go with it. We, at Critter wines, love it. But if you enter this kind of finished wine to a competition it will be marked down as a fault. Sad but true. So to please them, or to please you, the full-on still wine, finished result, is required.

This is going on a bit eh! So how do you lose that frizz? You degas. In practice this means you either shake your wine or you use a tool like a whizz stick. A whizz stick is something you attach to the end of a common or garden household drill.... and then you drop it in your wine and spin it. But i prefer just swirling/shaking a demijohn on my lap. It feels like burping a baby to me (but i don't have kids). You'll see the airlock bubbling away. If you use a whizz stick then you'll see foam! It's genuinely astounding how long you can do these things for.

So, how long do you continue? well as long as you can be bothered to be honest. Sometimes the airlocks, or whizz stick foaming, will stop bubbling in minutes. but sometimes it just goes on and on .. and on. However long you persist will pay dividends. Personally i'll give it a few minutes per demijohn, per day, for a few days and then give up. The good news is that frizz comes and goes as far as poncey fashion goes.

When is enough ... when you've had enough unless you can't stand frizz, in that case buddy, just keep on going until you get no flow through the airlock when manually shaking and swirling etc. A good deal of brewing is patience and stamina. but set aside you preconceptions etc and you may just find that you actually love that frizz on your tongue. Then you, like me, can give the finger to the ponces and say you like a frizz! long live frizz. Or, equally valid, can say "i like my wine frizz free and will shake it baby!" no matter how long it takes.

It's in your hands, do it how you like it.