"Warm-Up" Wine Step 2: Racking

After six days of primary fermentation, the wine's specific gravity--a measure of its density relative to water--had decreased from about 1.1 to less than 1, indicating that a significant fraction of the concentrate's sugar had been fermented to ethanol. That meant it was time to rack the wine. "Rack" simply means to transfer the wine to a new vessel--in this case, a glass carboy--to aid in clarification and settling. Between all the yeast we'd dumped in last week, the oak float, and the natural sediment present in the concentrate, there's a lot of junk in the wine you don't want to drink.

The easiest way to rack a wine is by simple siphoning. We put the fermenter on a chair to add some more hydraulic head, started the siphon, and let it go for several minutes.

Kierston's wealth of experience with fish tank siphoning proved valuable here.

This is why you rack: you don't want to drink any of this.

Here's what it looks like once it's fully racked to the carboy. Notice how turbid it is, in contrast to attractive, translucent mature wine. A combination of settling, degassing, and clarification will improve its appearance.

Forrest hasn't been hitting the carboy--he's (understandably) proud of our efforts!

The next step from here is to wait for the specific gravity to decrease again, to about 0.97. At that point, we'll rack again and begin to degas.