Puzzling differences between wine and beer making

[shearclass]

urm, not sure which forum to post this in

I have recently been looking into making country wine, as well as kit white wine. i have been brewing kits since the start of the year, so I am still new to the game, however there seem to be differences between wine making and beer making which are confusing me.

Beer - pitch yeast, leave in FV untouched until fermentation complete (unless double dropping)
Wine - pitch yeast, leave loosely covered, stir every day for 5ish days

Beer - don't mess abotu with it, transferring it from FV to FV could introduce oxygen or infection to the beer
Wine - rack, rack, rack and rack again before bottling

Beer - don't splash brew, don't want to introduce oxygen
Wine - pick up DJ and sake like made to de gas. rack rack and rack again.

Plus a couple of other smaller points that I've forgotten about at teh moment. Can anyone explain these to me?

 

[Marrsy86]

Are you refering to AG or kit beer ?

I think the most I have racked it twice with wine but im still new to this so might be doing something wrong :p When your racking your using syphon tube to try keep exposure to the air as low as possable to reduce the chance of infection and after degassing I then put the brew into either a DJ or bottles with Campden Tablets to try stop anything that did get into the brew kicking up.

So even though it may look like there is alot of air/oxygen getting mixed into the brew with wine making you always try keep threat of infection to a minimum :)

Cheers

Marrsy

 

[oldbloke]

Wine - pitch yeast, leave loosely covered, stir every day for 5ish days

That's only for stuff where it needs loads of stirring to extract the flavours from the base material, and often then you leave yeast pitching until the next stage (and whack in some Campden so nowt else starts going...)

Wine - rack, rack, rack and rack again before bottling

Never racked more than three times, and that was exceptional. Once is the norm. As the process is so much longer, you have your product sitting the the lees (trub for beermakers) for a long time - racking gets it off that.

Wine - pick up DJ and sake like made to de gas. rack rack and rack again.

You wouldn't de-gas until after the last racking - no point if you have live yeast producing more.

My overview of winemaking is:
Extract flavour (and sugars) from base material; initial fast ferment; rack to get it off the lees; ferment to finish (racking again only if lots of sediment thrown); bottle.
Essentially the same as mash-ferment-bottle with beer, except for getting it off the lees after the first few weeks.

I usually add a Campden at each racking and at bottling, to minimise infection/oxidation risk. Good syphon technique also keeps the risk down.