Making Wine is Fun Part II

Racking into the secondary

The next part of our Limited Edition Winexpert Cabernet Merlot kit involves racking into a carboy and this is called the secondary fermentation phase.

After 6 days in the primary bucket, fermentation has come to an end since there is little activity in the airlock. A SG reading should show 1.010 or less and that is what we have at this point. We are now ready to rack the wine into the glass carboy.

 Not a lot of fermentation takes place at this next stage but enough to prepare for the last phase in 10 days when the final chemicals are added to the wine. I will describe the chemicals and what needs to be done in Part III so stay tuned.

the primary fermentation container

 A little trick to siphoning that really works is this;  rather than try to suck the wine through the siphon tube by mouth into the secondary it is much easier to fill the siphon tube with water, clamp one end to keep the water in the tube and then viola it will siphon easily when one end is inserted in the primary given that it is about a meter above the secondary.

Naturally the first little bit will be water that you simply siphon that into a container and once the wine comes, transfer the tube to the carboy.

Make sure the primary is well above the secondary

The airlock

 The last shot is of the airlock which is tightly sealed to the mouth of the 23 liter carboy. In 10  days we'll come back and complete the next phase.

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