Degassing interesting problem

Winemaking
1

Hi,
Long time brewer. First time wine maker.
I’ll try and keep this to a novel. My wife bought me a 5 gallon cask and I would like to use it to cask a beer, but I thought it might be nice to mellow the cask a bit and use that as an excuse to try my hand at wine making.
My first wine is a Pinot Gris (Vintner’s Reserve). So far things have gone wonderfully. I really think I have yet another hobby.
My second week in the secondary and I have hit all my numbers and the wine has cleared perfectly.
I decided to try and use a wine saver to degassing. I am using a six gallon Better bottle. I was able to fit the stopper over the hole in the bung. When I started to pump the bottle began to collapse and the wine was getting close to being pumped out.
I have read around that this method of degassing works well and I will ass/u/me that it is probably more geared towards using a glass carboy (?)
I don’t have a problem using a stirrer with a drill at this point I am just curious if I am making too tight a seal or I should just use another method.
Also while I am rambling on… Another question…
I will need to top off and was wondering what method is preferred… Top with water or wine. I am slightly over my target and would like to have a final gravity that is close to the destructions (0.996)
Is topping with water going to kill my gravity?
Thanks for reading and hopefully your comments

—>Jim

2

If you are going to vacuum degass it has to be a glass carboy.

According to Winex using a drill (wine whip) is the prefered meathod anyway. Though I really don’t think it makes a huge difference as long as you do a thorough job.

The new Winex kits no longer recomend topping up with water (assuming you made it up to the full 23l originally)

Your pinot Gris is not made for long aging, so as soon as it clear and removed from the sediment go ahead and bottle. Don’t top up with anything.

Not sure I would recomend putting this wine in your cask if that is what you were planning on doing. I’d hold off and put something more appropriate in there.