Carboy Tap

That may have been a stupid question. Should I just do it exactly the same way as beer but with nitrogen instead?

David

Hi David;

I keep most of my table wine in beer kegs, charged with nitrogen. Works fine. Doesn't seem to cause any ill affect to the wine. The wine goes into the keg after the third / fourth racking and stays there until the wine is +/- two years old. I bottle some for continued aging but generally just decant from the keg for immediate use.

Pressure in the keg runs 8-10 lb so I don't think it would be wise to try pressurizing a carboy. You could use less pressure but delivery would be slower.

Beer kegs are easy to fill by pump or by vacuum. Once the keg is full I tap off a litre or so for expansion during storage.

Some may consider keg storage less than cool ... But once decanted into a bottle it looks the same if it were from a corked bottle. You could make a popping sound, when out of sight, to please the purists.

CHEERS

if I keg the wine, it will still age even, if I draw off a bottle here and there right?

David

Just don't let it come into contact with oxygen and it should be fine. That said, I never tried it... You can't pressurize a carboy but you already caught that. You are right about not using CO2 unless you want fizz.

Joe

As an alternative, you can get collapsible plastic containers with taps on them. You can get them different sizes form 1/2 gal up to 5 gal's. You fill them with aged wine put them out on your bar or in the fridge. As you tap the wine, the container collapses so air never entrees it. I would not want to keep wine in it very long but it would be fine for a few months. Just something you might look into.

Ray

if I keg the wine, it will still age even, if I draw off a bottle here and there right? David ========================= my grandpa told me one of some monks that used to put round stones in thier wine kegs to keep the level up and the air out. lucas