Bottling Champagne

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Any chance of elaborating on your disgorge technique? I was hoping to make 30 bottles of sparkling elderflower this year, but illness prevented me from picking. I'm thinking of getting a 1 gallon white kit in and sparkling it as practice soon. The disgorging is worrying me, I have visions of sparkling wine spraying everywhere.

Reply to
alien
Reply to
dick at ravelrig

Your method did emulate the bulk transfer method or Charmat; they pressurize the bottles also to avoid losing pressure in the transfer and use a higher initial pressure.

I start with a similar dry base wine and add 18 g table sugar/ bottle to the batch I am making, usually a 5 gallon carboy. I add hydrated yeast to that and as soon as I'm sure it's fermenting I bottle, stirring as I bottle. I fill the bottles to 1/2 to 3/4 inch full and cap with a crown cap. I lay them on their sides in the wine cellar and forget about them for a few years, (I should rotate them every 6 months but it rarely happens.)

The traditional method of disgorging is very easy. The trick is to get all the yeast and sediment into the neck and freeze it. I use a riddling rack and that takes a month of turning the bottle about 1/5 of a turn and tilting the point down a little each day. I have one so I use it. It's harder to make than you might think, so another method follows.

You can get just about the same effect by shaking up the bottle (I wear a face shield just in case) and placing it into the empty wine bottle box. Pick it up an inch and drop it back in each day fro a week or so.

Once the sediment is all in the neck, make some room in the freezer and place 2 bottles in sitting straight up on the neck. 30 -45 minutes later you will see the neck freeze a plug; once it's about 2 inches or

5 cm long, pull it out of the freezer, rinse the neck quickly with warm water (neck still down) and take it outside with an uncapper in your hand. The whole time this bottle is pointed mostly straight down.

Turn the bottle up pointed away from you and pop off the cap in one motion; as soon as the cap is off and plug clear place your thumb over the opening. Ensure there is no debris from the plug on the lip and cork or recap. The plug of ice cleans off the sides of the bottle on it's way out, it's an elegant solution. (Thank the widow Clicquot; if her husband hadn't died we may still be drinking cloudy wine...) A clean thumb is a very good idea... :)

If you want it sweet this is when you add a sugar syrup. I make up some fruity white wine and sugar at about a 50/50 mix ahead of time. Tilt the bottle and let it slide down the side, don't drip it in. One ounce or 30 ml of this makes a pretty sweet sparkler, you can certainly go higher though. Just make sure you have room in the bottle. Some add a touch of sulfite or brandy here too as a preservative.

You can top with still wine if you lose too much the first few times but after about 5 bottles you will develop a technique that works well. It really is easier than it sounds. It's all common sense stuff.

You need to close this bottle as soon as possible so you need to have everything ready, I usually uncap, make sure the inside of the neck is clean and use one of those spring loaded champagne re-stoppers. Since you are working near 0 F you don't lose much pressure at all. I'm still using plastic corks so I need to whack them in with a rubber mallet, then I wire down. Some wine makers are just using crown caps again, that woks too.

I follow the technique outlined in "Modern Winemaking" by Phillip Jackisch. I think it's a very under rated reference book for winemakers. I know Lum has a very good section on sparkling winemaking too and if you can read this post you have access to his book.

Hope this helped, if anything is a little fuzzy I will keep an eye on this thread and try to answer.

Joe

Reply to
Joe Sallustio

Joe, Do I take it you're crown topping proper sized champagne bottles, if so what size crown top do you use ? I wondered about this years ago but gave up the idea after finding the beer bottle size top too small for the job.

Dick

Reply to
dick at ravelrig

Hi Dick, There are two sizes, I don't know what they are really called but I call them 'North American' and 'European'. I pitch the European bottles because I cant use them. The European one is bigger than the ones I use. The North American ones fit beer bottles; I think they are

26 mm, I think the European is 29 mm. My capper is made for the 26 mm and is at least 50 years old.

I bought new bottles off of Presque Isle Wine Cellars and get the caps there too. They sell a '10 atmosphere' bottle, that is the one I use. I have heard it can be an issue to reuse sparkling wine bottles but I do. The only qualification I can give is that if you want to stack them you need to use the same shape and shapes vary all over the place.

Joe

dick at ravelrig wrote:

Reply to
Joe Sallustio

One thing, Champagne bottles have a thicker neck than a beer bottle, so most "wing" bottle cappers won't work - they're fixed at the beer bottle size. I've seen one brand with a swing-out adjustment for the neck size that will work. Bench cappers will always work because they don't touch the neck at all.

So if you're going to buy a capper for this, be sure it will work on a Champagne bottle first... (like he said above, the caps are the same size on the "North American" bottles.

Reply to
Derric

Thanks for the info, I standardized on swing top bottles for my beer years ago so had no call to look at crown tops. So many new toys to play with .... it's enough to drive you to drink !! Think I'll go and have a good look at some home brewshop catalogues to see what they can come up with.

Reply to
dick at ravelrig

The crowns are indeed 26 and 29mm. I was very fortunate that my floor corker included a capping attachment that interchanges two bell-shaped items to take care of either cap size. The corker came from St. Pat's about 4 years ago.

Reply to
patrick mcdonald

Thought I'd just post an up-date on my original query about the problem of getting champagne into those bottles. Sucess !! I simply put the half cornelius keg, still under about 2bar pressure, back into the fridge and turned the temp down as low as I could get it (1-2 deg below freezing) & left the whole lot for a couple of weeks. Brought the keg back out, relieved the pressure & simply siphoned the champagne into very cold bottles. Getting the siphon running involved a couple of mouthfulls of fizz but I forced myself to live with that, the trick seems to be to work quickly, have the cold bottles handy & try not to break the siphon action once it's established & running smoothly. All corked, wired & looking beautifully clear ........ I drop a note to the ng about what it tastes like when I crack the 1st bottle, should be at least a year but suspect it'll probably be more like Xmas.

Reply to
dick at ravelrig

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