Beer Brewer in Colorado

[vezePilot]

Greetings ... I have received my 1 gallon WineXpert kit for California Moscato. Excited to get started! I already have all of the equipment because I made 67 batches of a light Ale between 2012 and 2018. That was more than 3,300 bottles (re-purposed green Dos Equis and Moosehead bottles). Of that total I gave away a few hundred.

And I'm planning on using those bottles again, for the wine, 'cuz I have eight cases of them. They are just a little smaller than 375ml.

First question: What will it do to my Moscato if I DON'T use the Chitosan? I cannot have anything from shrimp ... is there an alternative?

 

[Jim Welch]

I've never made Moscato but wine can clear naturally with time. You can just transfer it to a 1 gallon jug and "bulk age" it once fermentation is fully complete. I'm a beer brewer too and since it is only a gallon you could use a cold crash technique to hasten yeast floculation, again after fermentation is fully complete. I'm sure other more experienced folks will address this too.

 

[toadie]

I agree in time it will likely naturally clear. I wanted to address the fact that most people don't put wine in beer bottles. I'm guessing it has to mostly do with oxidation, aging and too much headspace. Wine bottles are easy to find and a hand corker is pretty cheap. You also might want to go down the dragon blood tunnel (look for the thread on this site). I carbonate mine with dextrose which you could put in a beer bottle and cap. Cheers. In my beer brewing life I bottle 500 ml min, too much work otherwise! I really like glass San Pelligrino bottles which I buy new caps for.

 

[winemaker81]

What will it do to my Moscato if I DON'T use the Chitosan?

In addition, there are other fining agents. This site provides information:

https://www.awri.com.au/industry_su...ces/frequently_asked_questions/fining_agents/

 

[Jim Welch]

I agree few people use beer bottles. I cork all my red wines, but the few times I made whites I did use beer bottles for some of each batch, leaving little headspace and using oxygen absorbing caps. I have a few bottles over 2 years old and I can not tell the difference between the corked and capped bottles. I agree corking is better but since it is a small batch, experimental I am supposing, I don't see a problem you using beer bottles and O2 absorbing caps.

 

[vezePilot]

Many Thanks for the comments. I do plan on acquiring good Wine Bottles, eventually. And then I will probably also start brewing beer again, as well as making wine. But in the short term I want to reduce costs, and get this 1 gallon kit started & through to bottling rather quickly. Then I'll probably get ingredients for a large batch right after that. When I learned to brew beer, I used only 2 ready-made kits. After that I bought ingredients in bulk and used my own recipe.

I found these Number 7 corks, which should fit my beer bottles just fine:

https://www.beer-wine.com/7-tapered-cork-stoppers
And thanks for the advice that I should leave less space above the wine when bottling in small bottles, less than I perhaps would with beer.

I call mine "Standard Reference" Ale:
Breiss Golden Light CBW, Cascade Hops, SafAle US-05 and water from a Rocky Mountain Spring, purified. Very Simple, distinctive.

 

[winemaker81]

@vezePilot, if it were me, I'd crown cap the wine. It's a 1 gallon batch so you'll get ~10x 12 oz bottles, and it's your first wine -- unless you're truly exceptional, that wine will be gone far faster than you expect. Aging is not a likely thing ...

Subsequent batches? Bottle in corked wine bottles.

 

[BarrelMonkey]

@vezePilot, if it were me, I'd crown cap the wine. It's a 1 gallon batch so you'll get ~10x 12 oz bottles, and it's your first wine -- unless you're truly exceptional, that wine will be gone far faster than you expect.

Sounds good to me, particularly if you have a crown capper from your beer brewing days! (And crown caps for aging wine are not unprecedented... many (most?) methode champenoise sparkling wines are initially bottled with crown caps for tirage, though in that case they also have a plastic plug (bidoule) and CO2 from secondary fermentation evolved into the headspace)

ps... Welcome!

 

[vezePilot]

Well that seems also good advice. I used a hand-held capper for about 30 batches of beer, before it wore out. The benchtop capper I bought after that is rugged and adjustable ... I can use it to press corks into full-size wine bottles. I also still have a large number of crown caps for beer. The Stars & Stripes colored ones are a favorite.

And yeah ... a first batch doesn't last long. I remember that with my first coupla batches of beer, there was a date when the recipe said I could start drinking.
Sometimes I even had a few left by then!

 

[Beristere]

I saw in an article about this cooking option. I remember my first brewed batch of beer.

 

[CDrew]

I think large beer bottles with crown caps would make excellent wine containers. For maybe 5 years. It's not traditional and sort of odd, but good, in a practical sort of way. Or, USA champagne bottles with crown caps would be great too and honestly, likely better than corking. Now if you could get a traditional Bordeaux type bottle that would take a crown cap, that would be great. But it isn't a thing. But this is an avenue worth exploring.

 

[NickGuliver]

I thought Colorado didn't know what beer was, ha ha

 

[Zeppers]

I've never done Moscato. I still have little experience in brewing beer, so I can't give you an exact answer here yet. By the way, I recently saw detailed statistics on the alcohol content in each type of beer on this site -- learningtohomebrew.com. This motivated me to try to brew American-Style Dark Lager. And if there is someone here who brewed such a beer, give me some tips. And if I manage to brew American-Style Dark Lager, I will go to Moscato, and I will definitely write you about what you need to do with your problem

 

[Earldw]

I wonder if you really enjoy your wine a lot, if you could just put your finished wine into a 5-gallon keg, give it a CO2 blanket and connect it to a tap? Be a heck of a weekend!

 

[TechAdmin]

Welcome, Zeppers. Any wine you tried making or hope to make?

 

[Jim Welch]

I wonder if you really enjoy your wine a lot, if you could just put your finished wine into a 5-gallon keg, give it a CO2 blanket and connect it to a tap? Be a heck of a weekend!

Yes you absolutely can keg your wine. I’ve used my fleet of cornies to age wine and can easily draw some of it using a picnic tap. You can use CO2 but I use argon for sealing/storing and to draw. If I force transfer it I use nitrogen.
Now drinking a 5 gallon keg in one weekend? We’ll I have not yet done that yet! I dare say the wine will stay good in a sealed keg as long as it would in a bottle but so far 7 months is the longest I’ve kept a wine kegged.