Fizzy stuff....

Hi

A friend of mine is convinced that keeping a silver spoon in a part used bottle helps it keep its fizz.

Is this true? If so how does it work?

Can't really see the science behind it myself!!!

Cheers

Steve

It's bollocks. The way to keep the fizz in sparkling wine is to make sure it's well chilled before opening (chem 101, the colder it is, the less gas that the liquid will give up) and treat it gently when pouring, you want minimal sloshing inside the bottle. Keep it in the coldest part of the fridge overnight and you'll have plenty of bubbles the following afternoon or evening.

"Ian Hoare" skrev i melding news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...

Urban? Never in the country? Anders

Sorry, but your Chem 101 is a bit rusty it would seem. The issue is the solubility of carbonic acid (hydrated CO2) in water-ethanol. Solubility does not generally increase at lower temperature; quite the contrary, in fact. Additionally, if you should reach a critical point (freezing point, in this case) you would degas the solution as solubility goes to zero at all critical points. Fortunately, it takes some doing to freeze a sparkling wine, so we don't usually have to worry about that possibility. To get back to the main point, the best way to keep it fizzy is to place it under pressure, ideally under an atmosphere of carbon dioxide. In fact, you can make a still wine fizzy under those conditions! ;-)

Mark Lipton

I saw a somewhat ad hoc experiment done with this. The control condition was no spoon, cork etc at all.

No spoon had pretty much the same effect as putting the spoon in.

I think re-corking went ok. Vacuum sealing better. As you would logically expect I guess.

.....or morning. Don't you drink Champagne for breakfast?! ;-).

Goodnight Sammy-

- who doesn't drink Champagne for breakfast but only because he can't afford to.

Salut/Hi Mat,

le/on Sat, 29 Jan 2005 13:26:53 +1100, tu disais/you said:-

Err.. I doubt if a vacuum system would work too well with fizz. (GD&R)

Salut/Hi Mark Lipton,

le/on Fri, 28 Jan 2005 16:23:08 -0800, tu disais/you said:-

Mark!!!! Is it the addition of ethanol that changes things? Because the solubility of gases in water (though I thought it was in all solvents) does increase with falling temperatures. Otherwise you wouldn't get gas bubbles occurring in water when it is heated - long before boiling point.

It's almost equal pleasure to be able to read you here again and to be able to query a question of chemistry!

Interesting... that I didn't know.

] rfs wrote: ] > It's bollocks. The way to keep the fizz in sparkling wine is to make ] > sure it's well chilled before opening (chem 101, the colder it is, the ] > less gas that the liquid will give up) and treat it gently when ] > pouring, you want minimal sloshing inside the bottle. ] > Keep it in the coldest part of the fridge overnight and you'll have ] > plenty of bubbles the following afternoon or evening. ] > ] ] Sorry, but your Chem 101 is a bit rusty it would seem. The issue is the

Hey perfesser,

Good to see your crusty corrections again. :) We count on you to keep AFW on the scientific up-and-up. Don't know how you resisted on the "breathing" glassware.

I assume the sabbatical comes now so as to give baby Andy a "bluer" background. Seriously, hope he's still sleeping well and letting you and Jean get on with some serious tasting. (Thanks for the interesting Zin notes, BTW).

best from (as Adele calls it) "the bluest of the blue states", soon to be renamed the Republic of Sarkoland.

-E

P.S. now that you're academics emeritus (is there a plural of that?) any chance you'll be getting over here during the spring?

Ack! My second mea culpa in the past 12 hours. Yes, gases show an inverse temperature dependence for their solubilities. When I wrote that statement, I was thinking about the carbonic acid form, but since it's in a rapid equilibrium with CO2, it too shows an inverse temperature dependence. My apologies to rfs, who's point was dead on correct.

Thanks, Ian. Next time I'll try to make a point that's factually correct ;-)

Well, you know that you degas at boiling, but it's also true at freezing. A standard technique for rigorously degassing solutions is the "freeze-pump-thaw" cycle, where after freezing the solution you evacuate the atmosphere and replace it with something like Argon that has very low solubility in most solvents. Two or three rounds of freeze-pump-thaw is used to completely deoxygenate solutions (oxygen being the main gas one usually wants to get rid of).

Mark Lipton

Errr the ol' memory's not what it used to be. Errr the ol' memory's not what it used to be. Errr the ol' memory's not what it used to be.

I recall something about sugar as well, but errr the ol' memory's not what it used to be.

Wrong!

For solids, solubility decreases with decreasing temperature; for gases, it increases.

In my experience, keeping the temperature close to freezing and using a good stopper helps retain fizz.

-- ================================================Do you like wine? Do you live in South Florida? Visit the MIAMI WINE TASTERS group at

Ah, but carbonic acid is neither, so what do we say about that? However, for reasons stated in my response to Ian, its solubility still shows an inverse temperature dependence.

Yup. Temperature and pressure combined.

Mark Lipton

a bottle of what?

killfiled... Anders "xenophobe" skrev i melding news:J%sXd.38397$ snipped-for-privacy@fe2.texas.rr.com...