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I received the following email this week from J.V.:

Scott,

I recently bottled my wine after 28 days of secondary fermentation. The wine was clear of sediment and had a good underlining taste, however it was very gassy. Can you tell what I did wrong? Or should it be like this?

Thanks - JV

Here’s my response:

Hey Jason,

Good question. If you find that your wine is very gassy then my question to you is what you did to degas your wine after the secondary fermentation was finished and you moved to the clarifying and stabilizing stage. This is typically when you and a clearing agent and sorbate to kill the fermentation. This is also when you should be stirring for several minutes to get all of the carbon dioxide out of your wine must. You can either use a spoon or a “Fizzex”, which is a tool you attach to your drill. It looks like this.

One step I also use is introducing a vacuum in the carboy and sucking out the CO2 that way. I have found that it works really well and really smooths out your wine.

I also did a video on this method that is worth checking out:

At this point if you find that your wine is too gassy (and you’re not enjoying it) then you might considering dumping it all out and degassing it, let it sit then re-bottle. Ultimately you need to let it go flat in the same way you would if you left a bottle of pop/soda over night and let all of the CO2 escape.

Make sense?

- Scott

If you have some advice for J.V. feel free to include it in your comments below!