I tend to make 5 gallon batches and use a stirring attachment on a drill to mix and aerate the must in the beginning and then to degas later during fermentation.

It’s very effective at both, but I have to be careful when degassing because it’s easy to degas too aggressively and bring CO2 out of solution very fast, at which point some of the must bubbles out of the fermenter and creates a giant mess.

I’ve made this mistake a number of times, including recently. One day I’ll learn…

Wine must is much more nutrient dense from my understanding. Honey is largely a sugar solution. The nutrients required are likely similar though the volume needed I imagine would be different.

-Matt

I think that degassing can certainly help keep a slow fermentation moving. This is something commonly recommended for mead fermentations.

When I make mead I usually make in 1 gallon jugs. Once every two days or so I’ll pick up the jug and give it a swirl. That seems to get the airlock going. You can have too much suspended CO2 which gives the yeast trouble. Anything to reduce stress on the yeast is usually worthwhile.

Thanks for pointing this out Dan.

-Matt

I’ve recently adopted the practice of degassing mead multiple times during initial fermentation after learning that several of the award-winning meadmakers do this. I haven’t isolated its effects, however, because I also adopted other practices (colder fermentation, staggered nutrient additions) at the same time.

From what I’ve read about degassing wine, it seems like it is generally done only once, after fermentation is complete.

I’ve never tried it with wine, but when I started routinely using staggered nutrient additions in mead, it improved my results immensely and helped keep fermentations going even as I pushed the temperature down to the low end of the recommended range for the yeast in question. I imagine wine must is a bit more nutrient-dense than honey must, however, so I imagine the nutrient needed might be different.

Another thing that improved my mead relates to your comment as well–tailoring the OG of the must to the alcohol tolerance of the yeast strain to end up with the right amount of residual sugar and sweetness without having to backsweeten. I use 71B a lot, and while it’s supposed to have a tolerance of 14%, I’ve routinely pushed it to 15.5% or so, so…practice and environmental conditions do matter.

I think that’s very wise to choose a yeast strain and get to know it. This is the same method I hear professionals using in order to make the best wines possible on a consistent basis.

Staggering yeast nutrients is a great idea! Again something I’ve heard from several pros to keep a fermentation moving.

Thanks for sharing! -Matt

I have been finding it beneficial to work with a specific yeast strain over and over in different conditions and with different varieties of wines. I have been doing this only because all my wine kits have included Lalvin EC-1118, but I am learning a lot about how this yeast works because of this repetition and from fermenting it at different temperatures. I feel that by knowing the temperature and alcohol limits of specific yeast strains through practice and also what the changing conditions of fermentation do to the aroma and flavor characteristics of the yeast in the wine can be a great help to us as winemakers.

One practice that is common with mead makers when dealing with yeast nutrients is to decide how much of the nutrient you need for the complete fermentation, but to stagger the additions. For example, you might add 1/3 of the nutrient up front, 1/3 when specific gravity falls to 1.XXX and the rest after your must ferments down even more. This, in theory, keeps the yeast active enough to deal with the sugars, but does not allow them to become too reliant on the extra nutrients. I am now wondering if this might be a reasonable practice with wine making.