Converting white wine to champagne

[yanks4carolyn]

Why not try forced carbonation by using a 5 gal keg? The link below is a place that has them on sale.

http://www.homebrewsupply.com/

What you do is to finish your wine and get it clear and stable as if you were making still wine. You then place your wine into a 5 gal keg and pump it up to 20 or 30 psi of C02. Then place the keg in the fridge for 2 or 3 weeks so that the CO2 goes into solution. Done..

I like this method because it takes leftover yeast (from the carbonation step) and disgorging out of the equation. Your champagne will be clear from the first glass right down to the last!!!!

One more benefit is the coolness factor.. Champagne on tap.. How cool is that??

I used to do methode champenoise when making champagne. Not anymore!!

Champagne on tap. What an amazing thing. I'm having visions. Good ones. Congrats on having this idea. Lovely, just lovely. I bet you have lots of friends.

 

[ceeaton]

I will add that I took the tap off this morning, cleaned it out and took it back to the basement so it would take an effort on my part to retap the keg. It is very easy to overindulge in this beverage.

Amazing when you take off the tap how we forget about it. Had taken it back up to the garage to cool it down a bit for some sampling, now almost two months later I put the tap back on.

I got an email from the ring leader of the group that occasionally meets to prepare for our HS reunions, the 40th being more than four years from now. Last time we met there were about eight of us and we consumed seven bottles of wine and some beer. So the light bulb clicked on, let's do some Sauvingon Blanc sparkling wine from the keg! Turns out my wife doesn't love the wine but does want me to make it for next Christmas using a Pinot Grigio kit. So I will be taking that and a bit of ice to sit the keg in for Sunday's event.

An update on the taste. I'll state again, it is amazing what a little CO2 can do to make a cheaper kit taste pretty darn good. It's only going on four months old but is much better than what I remember of it from our family reunion between Christmas and New Years.

Cheers!

 

[Tnuscan]

Amazing when you take off the tap how we forget about it. Had taken it back up to the garage to cool it down a bit for some sampling, now almost two months later I put the tap back on.

I got an email from the ring leader of the group that occasionally meets to prepare for our HS reunions, the 40th being more than four years from now. Last time we met there were about eight of us and we consumed seven bottles of wine and some beer. So the light bulb clicked on, let's do some Sauvingon Blanc sparkling wine from the keg! Turns out my wife doesn't love the wine but does want me to make it for next Christmas using a Pinot Grigio kit. So I will be taking that and a bit of ice to sit the keg in for Sunday's event.

An update on the taste. I'll state again, it is amazing what a little CO2 can do to make a cheaper kit taste pretty darn good. It's only going on four months old but is much better than what I remember of it from our family reunion between Christmas and New Years.

Cheers!

Am I understanding you shot co2 into this, and it's been sitting four months in this state, and it has gotten better?

 

[ceeaton]

Am I understanding you shot co2 into this, and it's been sitting four months in this state, and it has gotten better?

Yes, I have a 3 gallon Cornelius keg (mainly used for beer making) that I added 1/2 of a World Vineyards Sauvingon Blanc kit to in December and force carbonated it (like I would my beer batches) just using the highest psi I could set my regulator at (around 30 psi). I hook the gas in line to the output line of he keg and slowly roll the keg back an forth to add as much CO2 as I can. Works much better if the wine (or beer) is cold.

I served it at our family Christmas party in late December and never tried again until last night. So it was under CO2 pressure the whole time (I added CO2 as I dispensed it and the pressure dropped thus excluding O2 and keeping it from oxidizing). The taste was much improved!

 

[ibglowin]

I am about ready to pick up a Soda Stream just for this purpose. I can open a bottle of white wine and transfer to the supplied soda stream bottle and hit it a couple of times with CO2 injections an viola', instant Champagne!

 

[Radek]

It is simple. Champagne is carbonated.
How to convert wine in to the champagne.
Before bottling Add to each bottle 0.7 L - 5g of sugar ( to make a carbon).
Leave for two weeks.

 

[Radek]

Do not forget to close the bottles

 

[ceeaton]

It is simple. Champagne is carbonated.
How to convert wine in to the champagne.
Before bottling Add to each bottle 0.7 L - 5g of sugar ( to make a carbon).
Leave for two weeks.

Well, the route we are taking eliminates any sediment if the wine was properly aged.

If you use added sugar to carbonate, yeast sediment will form when it is done feeding on the sugar you added and the yeast drops to the bottom for a well deserved sleep, much like a naturally bottle conditioned beer.

 

[ceeaton]

Put the small keg on ice inside my mash cooler and after dinner resurrected the counter pressure bottle filler and went to work. One issue, it is supposed to have a gas line that splits, one part goes to the bottle to pressurize it, the other to the keg to keep the whole "system" in balance. Well at some point the split disappeared. I assume because it was a PIA, but also because when you bottle beer at 8 or 10 psi, there is really no need to keep the pressure up in the keg, it's already there and unless you are bottling the whole batch it won't lose all of that "stored" chemical pressure in the beer.

Not quite as easy when bottling at 30 psi. I had to pressurize the bottle, back that off so that the keg wine would flow in by gravity. It seemed to work okay, but the proof will be when I open the bottle on Sunday afternoon. Will be very curious how carbonated it still is...

PS. Wifey was studying (no coat necessary @Johnd) and was keeping an eye on the proceedings. Seems she was thinking I could carbonate a gallon or two of the Pinot Grigio kit I have aging.

 

[Tnuscan]

I am about ready to pick up a Soda Stream just for this purpose. I can open a bottle of white wine and transfer to the supplied soda stream bottle and hit it a couple of times with CO2 injections an viola', instant Champagne!

Think I'll give this a try also.

 

[thruhike00]

Anybody tried carbonating with sodastream and then putting in bottles? Want to take a few bottles to parties instead of carrying sodastream with me to make ghetto champagne on location. Which is better: pinot grigio or chardonnay for making sparkling wine?

 

[Julie]

Pinot grigio, can't imagine chardonnay carbonated. And yes you should be able to do that. I don't have a soda stream but I have taken wine that I have kegged and put into a couple of bottles to take to parties.

 

[sour_grapes]

Pinot grigio, can't imagine chardonnay carbonated.

Chardonnay is one of the three grapes used to make Champagne. In particular, Blanc de blanc is 100% Chard.

 

[ibglowin]

Amazing Paul and I agree on something two days in a row!

I just received my Sodastream this week and plan on doing the same thing at some point. There are plenty of youtube videos online showing people doing this without issues just be careful to not over carbonate and as you are supposed to only carb water make sure to wipe down/rinse the carbonation tube so it doesn't plug the tip with dried sticky stuff.

One issue/problem I see with making instant Champagne is that the Sodastream bottle is a 1L bottle and the max liquid line is at 900ml. A bottle of wine is ~750ml and would just touch the end of the tip of the carbonator which would not be enough to carb the wine. So what do you do? Open another bottle and top off with 150ml or perhaps use some clean marbles to increase the volume to the line?

I ordered a couple more Sodastream bottles of Amazon already and am looking into purchasing an adapter so I could use a regular 20lb (Beer Keg) CO2 cylinder in order to save $$$ on CO2

 

[barbiek]

My Pinot Gris kit had refermented in the bottle and makes a nice sparkling wine it's just now going through them before the corks start popping lol