I use a Portuguese floor corker, # 9X175 agglomerate corks and soak the corks in kmeta solution for half an hour before bottling. Lately small pieces of cork are breaking off and floating on top of the bottled wine. Anyone elce have this problem before? What to do?
Cork piecesk
- Thread starter jerry
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Don't soak the corks. Either use a corkador or spritz them at most but don't soak them as you can breakdown the binder that holds all the little cork pieces together.
cpfan
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jerry said:
It depends what's wrong, and perhaps exactly which corker you have. I've been told that on some corkers the steel that thepivot pin goes thru is not strong (thick?) enough, and the wear of the pin expands the hole and changes the angle of the cork pusher. One person that I met had a welderadd stronger steel to extend the life of the corker.Might have needed a longer pin too. But that conversation was about 12 years ago, and I don't think I even saw one of the repaired corkers.
Steve
cpfan
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Sure it could be the corks. I see 3 possibilities.
1. The corker.
2. The corks. Have you used this brand before? Is this a new or old batch of corks? [BTW, I do not recall seeing corks pieces in the bottle, and I ran a Ferment on Premises for 6 years, and used a few brands of corks before settling on a preferred one.]
3. Your process. Specifically, soaking the corks is the wrong thing to do. This removes a coating on the corks. [But, I don't think it causes the corks to break up. However, since I don't do this, I don't really know.]
Just remembered something. Is it many small pieces per bottle or one small chunk out of an edge of the cork? If one small chunk, I'm pretty sure it's the corker.
Suggestion, pull a cork out of a bottle and post a picture here.
Steve
1. The corker.
2. The corks. Have you used this brand before? Is this a new or old batch of corks? [BTW, I do not recall seeing corks pieces in the bottle, and I ran a Ferment on Premises for 6 years, and used a few brands of corks before settling on a preferred one.]
3. Your process. Specifically, soaking the corks is the wrong thing to do. This removes a coating on the corks. [But, I don't think it causes the corks to break up. However, since I don't do this, I don't really know.]
Just remembered something. Is it many small pieces per bottle or one small chunk out of an edge of the cork? If one small chunk, I'm pretty sure it's the corker.
Suggestion, pull a cork out of a bottle and post a picture here.
Steve
