Floaters after shrinking foil top.

[WildBill]

Wonder if anyone else has experienced floaters in their bottle after shrinking foil top on a bottle of perfectly clear wine. This is a little bothersome after working so hard to get clear wine. Does the cork have a wax coat that would delaminate with heat?

 

[Rocky]

WB, are these floater on top or are they suspended in the wine? If they are on top and you are using a composite cork, the binder could have failed due to the heat and that might be what you are seeing. I don't have a shrink machine but I understand you only have to have the bottle in the heat for few seconds.

 

[Runningwolf]

I have put heat shrinks on thousands of bottles and have never seen this. First off I am highly doubtful the particles is from this. There just is not enough heat generated to cause anything like this. I would suggest corking your bottles and let them sit however long it takes you to see this happen.

What kind of corks and corker are you using. My guess is your corker is creating this. How are you treating your corks before bottling? Boiling?? How old are they and how do you store them. I am asking these questions just fishing around for a cause.

 

[Wade E]

Did you by any chance use campden tablets? These are notorious for not dissolving all the way due to fillers they use to hold the kmeta together.

 

[WildBill]

I bottled yesterday with actual corks from my wine supply store. fresh opened package. I used a twin lever corker. I have only wrapped 2 tops so far and they both have these floaters. I have 10 other bottles not wrapped that are crystal clear. My corker is somewhat old but I sanitized with iodophor before getting started. I used #8 1.5 inch corks. I did use campden tabs early on but added potassium bisulfite 2 days prior to bottling.

 

[Wade E]

It must be the parafin wax breaking off the corks then. There is no way for anything to get in through the cork.

 

[WildBill]

Thanks your responses. I am so impressed with how friendly this site is. I just did a test with another bottle. I shook the daylights out of it trying to get something to break loose and nothing did. Then I heated it up without the foil just so I could see the cork. I heated it about as long as it took for the foil to shrink and didn't see anything happening. I then just sloshed the wine up to the cork and washed the flakes off the bottom of the cork. I think Wade is right on the money. Possible that the wax on the cork was stressed in the corking process and there was just enough heat to loosen it. I will try the next one upside down so that the wine is keeping it cool as I shrink it. This site rocks so much!

 

[JordanPond]

This site rocks so much!

+1 - I agree completly

 

[WildBill]

Problem solved for now. I decided to water bath the remaining bottles and it worked perfectly. Gonna post up pics of first ever wine finally in the bottle soon. WHOOT!! Thanks again guys!

 

[Wade E]

Glad we could be of help.