Bottle Sediment

How long between adding the campden & sorbate, and then bottling? Darlene Wisconsin

bottling.

If it's the Campdens then just use potassium meta powder instead. It has no binding agent, and it's cheaper. Personally, I think Campdens should be firmly relegated to the dungeons of the past.

Pp

Why are you adding sorbate after bulk aging?

Totally *rse about face! (IMHO).

I rarely use sorbate anyway, because I ferment all my wines totally dry, and certainly would NEVER, NEVER do it at the end of bulk aging. The process of aging is, among other important things, a slow process of degassing and all fermentation has to be completed before you bulk age!

Similarly I use crushed, dissolved, campden tablets as a known measured dose when I adjust the SO2 levels before bulk aging.

I do not adjust again immediately before bottling!

I normally bulk age for at least one year for my red wines and over 6 months for my ordinary whites.

In 30+ years of wine making I have never had your problem! So perhaps I might be doing something different to the way you are doing it

degassing and

measured

I agree with the sorbate but not with the sulfite, I find I have to adjust that regularly during aging and before bottling to maintain normal SO2 levels. But perhaps this is because I'm not dealing with kits and racking several times during this process.

Pp

Everyone has their own system, and as long as it works for you, that's great and I wouldn't change it. I would hope that anyone following our discussion, would understand that we all have our own way of doing things - many times it works...when it doesn't, then that means we should look for an alternative so it does. As to the Campden tablet - I generally add a campden tablet every other racking; usually that works out to be the racking in which I stabilize the wine. Also, I just went back to the notes I downloaded from Jack's site, he suggests adding a campden tablet along with stabilizer to stop fermentation. I guess that's why I do it and the result is either no sediment or a very light dusting in my bottles. ;o) Darlene Wisconsin

There might be a bit of a misconception here.

I do not only refer to making wine with kits and I make "country wines" ( so called) regularly, though no longer on the scale that I used to do -- due to lack of storage space in my small flat ( apartment to you in US). My well ventilated bedroom is also my fermenting room and bulk store ( after all I only sleep in my bedroom!) and I can additionally store about 200 bottles on racks in my larder. My main country wines these days are blackberry ( with a tad of elderberry), apricot ( a favourite of mine) and rhubarb -- still a tremendously useful wine to have a couple of 1 gallon jars of in reserve and strawberry. I make strawberry every year but others now every other year. My fortified elderberry is made every 3 years or so these days (but goes through a very different aging process). The trouble is that country wines do generally need a couple of years in bulk storage ( not strawberry).

In my original post I referred specifically to bulk storage. By this I meant the time after which my wine sits in it 24 litre glass carboys and is NOT disturbed at all -- not even moved from its position until the day I come to bottle it. Before this time all necessary interference with the wine has been completed and all lees have settled out. There will be, inevitably, a very minor dusting in the carboy after bulk aging but this will not affect the wine in anyway. If, for any reason, I have to check the wine under bulk store, during this resting time by taste or other test I might a readjust the SO2 --- but very rarely. It would be very very unusual for me to have to rerack the maturing wine during this resting/maturing period.

I am not an expert in winemaking by any means except that most of my methods are as a result of long experience. One of the prime things I learned ( learnt?), many years ago, is that there tends to be too much "hands on" interference with wines during all of the wine making process. Too many hydrometer readings taken, too many peeks under the lid to see what is happening, --- too much being "busy" with the wine. You have only to peruse the columns here to see what I mean! Wine benefits by being left to get on by itself. It is robust and likes to make itself. Wine likes to trundle along in its own way without being rushed -- as, I suppose, do I!! am sure that I do several things "wrong" by modern standards and long experience is by no means necessarily "right" -- but I have only ever once thrown away any of my wine -- last year as a matter of fact. I came to bottle my last 1 gallon ( imp) of my fortified elderberry (vintage 1998 ). which had been sitting gently in a remote corner, sealed off and undisturbed for several years. It turned out to be neither fortified, nor elderberry, nor indeed wine any more. I don't know how the labelling mistake was made but when I cleaned off the dust from the jar ( I always write on the carboy as well in felt pen) I found it to be a gallon of a kit wine ( out of 5 which I had made for a friend) Anyway it wasn't wine any more or of any other use and was poured on my flowerbeds!

Apologies for the long ramble! ( or should that be "bramble")

No apologies necessary. You're at a point I wish I was at. I'm still building up my reserves, and I don't bulk age very long. I'm hoping to begin bulk aging for longer periods of time next year. I basically make fruit, veggie, herb, and frozen concentrate wines. I agree with you on everything - we shouldn't fiddle too much with our wines and patience is an important part. Most of us are not where you are though, with many years of experience, and with a lot of wines in reserve which have already aged. A lot of us are new at this or relatively new at this, and it is just a different perspective. For example, I'm sure you never have bottle sediment with the extended bulk aging you do. I usually don't have any sediment either, or if I do, it is a very light dusting (which I can live with) until I build up my reserves. I usually bottle at 7 months, which for some wines is early. I think some of the recent posts we've had are due to bottling the wine too young and not realizing that more sediment will fall out. And that comes from experience. Darlene ;o) Wisconsin

"pinky" wrote in message news:xo_Od.11770$ snipped-for-privacy@text.news.blueyonder.co.uk...

I added the sorbate and campden to the bottling bucket and then bottled. As to using pot meta powder, I am unsure of the measurement to use for one gallon batches (See post below).

1/4 tsp of the meta powder gives 50ppm for 5 US gals. For smaller measures, like 1 gallon, my approach is to make the 1/4 tsp in 25ml of cold water and then use a pipette or syringe to draw how much I want. For example, for 50ppm in 1 gal, you'd need 5ml of the solution, for 25ppm 2.5 ml etc. There is a bit of math involved but very simple.

I don't use Campden but believe 1 tablet is supposed to give 50ppm in 1 gal, so the above should give you an equivalent measure with the powder.

Other common approach is to use a 10% solution - if you do a search, you should easily find tables that list how much of this solution is needed per given amount of wine and desired concentration of SO2.

Pp