Marbles...

[TheTooth]

I was thinking about experimenting with displacing wine with some marbles instead of topping up in my carboys.

Unfortunately I lost my marbles long ago, so I need to buy new ones.

What I'm trying to figure out now is how many marbles need to buy. Does anyone know how many marbles it would take to displace... let's say... 1 gallon of liquid.

Has anyone here done this? If so, how many marbles have did you need to pull it off?

 

[arcticsid]

Don't know how many, but it has been suggested that as opposed to just dropping them in individually, you could insert a sterilized nylon stocking into the carboy and put them into that.

 

[djrockinsteve]

Your gonna need a heck of a lot to displace a gallon of liquid and yes put them in a mesh/nylon bag. Be sure to sanitize all.

 

[Runningwolf]

Thats a pretty small neck to be putting a sack of marbles into or to take out. I am just trying to visualize how you would do that.

 

[Lurker]

I drop the marbles in 1 or 2 at a time, no sock or bag. I keep them in a plastic container that I fill with sulfite solution before using. I have not counted them but a lot is good guess. I bought 3 bags of them at a dollar store a year ago and they do come in handy. I've never had to displace a gal. in one carboy. For a gal. you may want to use a similar wine or a smaller container. Why so much?

 

[arcticsid]

Insert the "toe" in the neck add the marbles to the level needed and tie it off. A gallon is alot to displace. Just be careful not to drop any of the marbles, doesn't seem like you can afford to lose any more marbles.

 

[AlFulchino]

toooo many marbles in order to displace a gallon...why not just get smaller carboys....do you really want to clean all those marbles?

secondly...if you did wishto determine what you need, simply get a measure cup fill w set amount of water...displace w marbles....then either count the marbles ( have fun) of weigh the marbles needed

 

[Wade E]

That would be a lot of marbles, A few more bucks and you can just buy anothetr carboy and those come in handy more then the marbles do! Once you have a few different size carboys and a few batches of wine in stock you can just use what you have to top up.

 

[TheTooth]

OK... I don't actually have to displace 1 gallon of wine at the moment. I was just using that as an arbitrary number to get a feel. If it took, say, roughly 1280 marbles to displace 1 gallon, I'd know that I needed to have 10 marbles to displace 1 ounce. If I had a marble and a graduated cylinder on hand, I'd find out how much one marble displaces. I've tried looking it up online, but all I could find was exercises to do just that, but none of the answers. LOL

I use better bottles, so I figure I can just drop them in without any concern of cracking the carboy. As far as using other wine, I'm hoping not to have to re-open bottles I've already packaged just to top up my carboy. I'm figuring that I'd be more likely to dump in a handful of marbles than crack open a bottle of wine.

As far as smaller containers are concerned, I either make kits or 6 gallon batches of homemade recipes. I really don't want to lose wine by jamming my batch into a 5 gallon carboy, nor do I want a bunch of tiny containers for one batch. Wouldn't that defeat the purpose of bulk aging anyway?

 

[TheTooth]

I bought 3 bags of them at a dollar store a year ago and they do come in handy.

How many marbles were in each bag? That would probably be a good enough answer for me. I'm just trying to figure out how many to buy. I seem to find better deals on bulk amounts, but I don't want to buy 1000 of them if I only need 50. LOL

 

[Lurker]

I didn't count them. I probably have about 150 or 200. They actually are easy to clean. I just rinse them, sulfite them and dump them in.

 

[TheTooth]

Thanks, Richard. That's what I needed to know. I'll pick up a few hundred and go from there.

It looks like I worded the original question poorly. Sorry for the confusion everyone.