Has anyone considered or used one of the "drill-driven" utiltiy pumps
for racking or transferring wine? I've seen a couple on the web, but
cannot get any info on the materials of construction or what types of
lubricants, if any, are in these things.

Dave D.

Well, they will work.

The standard answer is that you should not use any pump where teh wine
will come into contact with NON-food grade materials and you shoudl
avoid pumps that agitate the wine to prevent oxidation.

The only pumps I like are peristolic pumps and vacuum pumps.

how 2 hole stopper about an aquarium pump that pushes air in the top
and you have a glass tube to allow the wine to come out.

"billb" > wrote in message
.. .
> how 2 hole stopper about an aquarium pump that pushes air in the top
> and you have a glass tube to allow the wine to come out.

Pressurizing your wine with air is really a bad idea because it'll tend to
promote oxidation. Gravity racking is much better as long as you can
arrange to lift the container.

Tom S
www.chateauburbank.com

>
> Pressurizing your wine with air is really a bad idea because it'll
tend to
> promote oxidation. Gravity racking is much better as long as you
can
> arrange to lift the container.
>

that's good to know. suppose instead we have some wine fermenting
somewhere and instead of an airlock, we have a pressure gauge and a
valve and thru practice we figure out how much pressure it takes to
get the CO2 to push the wine out of another bottle using that instead
of the air pump?

That would work wouldn't it?

Why not do it in reverse. Get an stopper with two holes drilled in it,
and use your pump to create a vacuum in the recieving carboy, then
vacuum transfer the wine.

You could use one of these too.
www.wortwizard.com

It uses water though, so if you are into conservation, you may not want
to.

but there again, you are exposing the product to air on the supply
side.

I suppose you could buy a tank of CO2 and use that to push the
product around.

--
billb
I really believe that the most important contribution you can make to
life on this planet is to present a clean smelling and clean tasting
mouth to the person you kiss. And how many of you "religious" people
have done that? I bet less than 12%.
"Droopy" > wrote in message
ups.com...
> Why not do it in reverse. Get an stopper with two holes drilled in
it,
> and use your pump to create a vacuum in the recieving carboy, then
> vacuum transfer the wine.
>
> You could use one of these too.
> www.wortwizard.com
>
> It uses water though, so if you are into conservation, you may not
want
> to.
>

No, not really. Just enough to take the airlock off and put the rubber
stopper in.

Anyway, the amount of air exposue is minimal. People make award
winning wines with greater air exposure than that.

It is not beer. Wine can handle a tiny bit of oxidation, which can
actually add complexity, as long as you do not treat it roughly and
overdo it. Plus sulfite does a wonderfull job of protecting wine from
oxidation.

"billb" > wrote in message
.. .
> suppose instead we have some wine fermenting
> somewhere and instead of an airlock, we have a pressure gauge and a
> valve and thru practice we figure out how much pressure it takes to
> get the CO2 to push the wine out of another bottle using that instead
> of the air pump?
>
> That would work wouldn't it?

Yes, but it'd be painfully slow. Pushing the wine with inert gas from a
cylinder is a lot more practical, but you need to be careful not to apply
too much pressure or you may have a very serious accident. I would never
pressurize a glass carboy e.g. Stainless steel kegs are safe up to ~30 psi
and barrels are good to 3 to 5 psi.

Tom S
www.chateauburbank.com

another issue is that the vessel you are transferring to also contains air.
I suppose optimally you would would fill that vessel with CO2.

--
"For several months, our nurses have been baffled to find a dead patient in
the same bed every Friday morning," a spokeswoman for the Pelonomi Hospital
(Free State, South Africa) told reporters. "There was no apparent cause for
any of the deaths, and extensive checks on the air conditioning system, and
a search for possible bacterial infection, failed to reveal any clues."

"However, further inquiries have now revealed the cause of these deaths. It
seems that every Friday morning a cleaner would enter the ward, remove the
plug that powered the patient's life support system, plug her floor polisher
into the vacant socket, then go about her business. When she had finished
her chores, she would plug the life support machine back in and leave,
unaware that the patient was now dead. She could not, after all, hear the
screams and eventual death rattle over the whirring of her polisher."

"We are sorry, and have sent a strong letter to the cleaner in question.

On Thu, 12 Jan 2006 12:28:25 -0800, Droopy wrote:

> Well, they will work.
>
> The standard answer is that you should not use any pump where teh wine
> will come into contact with NON-food grade materials and you shoudl
> avoid pumps that agitate the wine to prevent oxidation.
>
> The only pumps I like are peristolic pumps and vacuum pumps.

The simple answer is :- if your containers are small enough that you
can elevate them without injuring yourself or disturbing the
sediment, then rack by syphoning otherwise use a small purpose built
pump. I have an Italian made 35020 Polverara pump, it is
bi-directional, self priming and made of brass. Remember brass? Thats
the stuff that minimised H2S (in shiraz in particular) before stainless
steel was introduced. It was quite inexpensive, about AU$160.00, rated at
0.5 hp and tranfers the wire at a convenient rate.

My answer is tempered by the fact that I rarely make white wine, only reds
and the tiny amount of air contact when priming the pump is not
an issue.

Before I bought this pump I messed around with a drill pump for a couple
of years. It worked but not very well. Don't bother to go down that path.

Regards
Ian

"billb" > wrote in message
.. .
> >
>> Pressurizing your wine with air is really a bad idea because it'll
> tend to
>> promote oxidation. Gravity racking is much better as long as you
> can
>> arrange to lift the container.
>>
>
> that's good to know. suppose instead we have some wine fermenting
> somewhere and instead of an airlock, we have a pressure gauge and a
> valve and thru practice we figure out how much pressure it takes to
> get the CO2 to push the wine out of another bottle using that instead
> of the air pump?
>
> That would work wouldn't it?
>
As long as you did not exceed the pressure that would cause your vessel to
explode. Most vessels are not made to contain pressure well and you may end
up making a bomb causing death.