DK and I were working on step 3 of the homemade wine, yesterday - degassing and clarifying.
The kit we're using indicated that you needed to vigorously stir the wine and several additives for a total of ~4 minutes to remove excess CO2. Since the secondary fermentation step, the wine has been in a glass carboy, so stirring with a spoon is pretty difficult. There are several different tools that you can get to achieve the stirring with the help of a power drill (and they're fairly inexpensive), so I got one. To test that enough of the CO2 has been removed, you put a sample of wine in a tube and shake it - it can bubble, but if the top pops, there's still too much gas in the wine. After ~30 minutes with the drill, and the cap still popping across the room, I went online and found a method where you could rig a vacuum sealer to pull excess gas. The effect was very cool. I don't know if we've removed enough, but we're going to try again tonight, and we'll see how it goes. I may just end up calling it "Caution: Sparkling Wine." If you're FB friends with me, I posted a short video of the drilling last night. I may try to get one of the vacuum method, tonight.
@GBCK - if this wasn't wine related, it would be awesome for your kids' science days between the chemistry and physics concepts involved. Wolverine got a kick out of watching.
We should be able to bottle the wine in ~2 weeks and start drinking it in ~6. (Although the recommendation is to age it for at least 3 months in a bottle for best flavor - we'll probably open one or two sooner.)