I was able to get 29 bottles of each wine this time around.  I’ve found that I’m not in favor of topping off the carboy before bottling.  I think that adding even a slight amount of water thins the body of the wine out too much.  I’d rather sacrifice one bottle per batch to get a more robust wine.

Both wines had gone through fermentation and reached dryness.  They were both settling quite nicely and aging away in the basement.  This coming weekend I will be bottling the remaining 2 batches of wine that are fining…the Merlot and the Riesling.

Regarding the degassing. I received a response from my latest YouTube video about over-degassing. One person suggests that over-whipping can introduce too much oxygen into the wine and cause it to oxidize. I’ve not yet had a problem with this, but would be interested in hearing what others thought on the matter.

After degassing, I re-racked all of the wine into their respective carboys where they will sit and settle (fining) over the course of the next month or so until they are bottled. Instructions tell you that you can bottle within a couple weeks. I find that it is much clearer after a month. So… I wait.

I racked the wine into a carboy and fitted the airlock for about 10 days of secondary fermentation.

As usual, the primary fermentation from a kit is very easy to set up. In a large 6 gallon food-grade bucket, I added the first round of ingredients, including the bentonite, juice, water, and yeast. Of course, we sterilized everything prior to touching the juice.

The starting specific gravity was 1.085, after I added 2 pounds of sugar to the must. It initally came in at 1.070, so the added sugar brought it up to a good beginning SG. The temperature of the juice was exactly 75 degrees F at the start, perfect for activating the wine yeast.

Covered the primary and now wait for the perking to start. Next Sunday, the juice ought to be ready for racking off the lees into a carboy for the second step of the process.

What I figured out during this racking is that I could get a better “whip”, or more agitation while degassing if I kept the degassing wand toward the top of the wine in the carboy.  Intuition told me to submerge the wand as far into the bottle to stir up what was on the bottom.  However, it did not agitate the juice on the bottom nearly as much as when I kept it toward the top.  Who knew?

I reattached the airlock and moved the Riesling into the cellar, where it will settle for the next month or so before bottling.  Tastes great by the way.  Looking forward to drinking the first LaClair Riesling.

Here is some video I took and the tip about keeping the degassing wand toward the surface:

The sediment on the bottom was a nice thick, gooey mash of dead yeast and grape lees.  I fit an airlock to the carboy and set aside for some further fermentation.  I will take another reading in around 2 weeks when the fermentation should be complete.

No rush on the bottling anyways…it gives me time to clean more bottles. 

Per the instructions, I added Potassium Metabisulphite and Potasium Sorbate to the wine and whipped the gas out of it after racking into a bucket.  I also added the Isinglass solution that aids in clearing the wine, and continued to vigorously stir the wine.  There was very little gas left in the wine, resulting in very little foam, as compared to other batches that I have done.  I racked the wine back into a carbuoy and reattached the airlock.  In 2 weeks, the chardonnay will be ready to bottle.

Just like the other kits, we start off by mixing up the packet of bentonite and some hot water.  The bentonite serves the purpose of soaking up proteins in grape juice, essentially aiding in the clearing of the wine.  The grape juice was also poured into the primary vessel and topped up to 6 gallons.  The starting gravity was only 1.078, a bit low, so I added 3 full cups of sugar to the mix.  That brought the SG up to 1.082.  I prefer to raise the SG at the beginning, because I feel it gives me some tolerance for adding water later.  Plus, I prefer a bit higher alcohol content, for all the right reasons. 

I added the wood chips and the yeast, per the instructions and covered the primary.  Apparently, the juice provided in the kit has all the right levels of tannins, pectic enzymes, and nutrient at the start so you do not have to add these ingredients, like you would with a fruit wine, or other wine from scratch.  Apparently, the juice is also sulphited and clean enough to start the fermentation without having to wait the usual 24 hours before adding the yeast.

The Chardonnay will ferment for 5-7 days, and when it reaches SG of 1.010, it will get racked into a secondary fermentor.