Racking Wine

The most fun part of the waiting game of winemaking is racking.  Its just a term for siphoning the wine off the lees (sediment).  When the yeast has lived its productive life of transforming sugar into alcohol it dies and falls to the bottom to join all the solids from the mashed fruit.

This is the 2nd or 3rd racking of a mixed berry.  A closer look.....

Its just a thick bunch of unwanted solids that will cause your wine to go "off" if you leave it in there too long.

Here is a better picture of some white wine I most likely made from a concentrate of white grapes and peach....

If you look closely you will see a little cup embedded in the dead yeast.  This keeps most of the gunk from being siphoned into the new bottle.  It isn't a must (pardon the pun) but it keeps the waste of the good wine at a minimum and makes life a lot easier.  So if you are serious go and buy you one of these......

And the hose to go with it.

The hose has a clasp so you can stop the siphoning in midstream...

When you pinch it together it stops the wine flow and allows the bottom to drain.  Then you can put the hose in another bottle, release the clasp and keep siphoning.  This is a very important tool when you begin bottling your wine.  It allows you to keep as much oxygen out of the wine as possible once it has "fermented out". 

Lastly, there is no magic number of days or weeks to know when to rack wine.  As a general rule I rack the first time after at least a month, or when the wine stops fermenting.  You can tell this when the water levels in the airlock are equal.  If you give the bottle a vigorous shake and it only ferments for a short while it is ready to rack.  Once you  rack the wine begins a nice slow ferment again.

I will be racking my wines in the next few days or so and will add some more information about racking with that post.  I may even be bottling some soon!  Til then....

Cheers!