Sparkling wine bottling question...aka...."my foist thread".

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Psylon

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Okay. So I'm making my 2nd batch, and I'd like to be a sparkling wine, if possible.

But we're using slightly smaller bottles for bottling. I'm not sure what they're called, but it's about the size of a large beer bottle. Slightly smaller than a wine bottle. If I recall, they were about 1 glass smaller.

They're also "capped" like beer bottles. They've got the metal caps. So my questions is this. If I go ahead and make a batch of sparkling wine, would I be able to use these bottles at all, or should I just invest in a bunch of actually proper wine bottles/corker/etc. ?

Thank you for reading. :)
 
If you are making a sparkling wine then you need bottles that are designed for sparkling wine like used or new Champagne bottle. You can not use win e bottles as they are not designed for the pressure that a carbonated beverage has or you could have exploding bottles.
 
Cool. Like I said though, these are more like beer bottles. And they're also capped like them. They're like 700ml (approx). I looked it up once...they're about 3 oz smaller than a wine bottle...a little less than one glass. I'm not sure what they're called, but they're the same size as beer bottles I've drank out of before, and that's carbonated...

/confused
 
My advice: Go for proper champagne bottles. Explosions are not the fun they sound.
Also, the metal caps don't give you the extra safety and flexibility that corks do. If it is going to blow then the whole bottle will blow. Safety first please.
 
Are they made for Sparkling wine or Beer cause beer is much less carbonated so the bottles may not be made for that type of pressure.
 
Are they made for Sparkling wine or Beer cause beer is much less carbonated so the bottles may not be made for that type of pressure.


Aaaah. Yeah, I was afraid of that.

:m

I think they're made for beer. I didn't realize that they were that much different. I'm glad I found this forum! Nothing less cool than a peach flavored glass-grenade. :-/
 
There is quite a difference in the carbonation levebetween a beer and a sparling wine. I have both kegged as we speak and carb my sparkling wine at 20 and my beer at 8 psi.
 
Yep, regular beer bottles won't hold champagne like carbonation.

I sometimes buy fruit lambic beers and the bottles they come in are very thick, like a champagne bottle.

The other thing about sparkling wine is the sediment. if you carbonate in the bottle, sediment will form. With commercial champagne they do the carb stage with the bottles inverted so the sediment forms in the neck. then they freeze the neck area, remove the frozen yeast 'plug' and top off with champagne, cork, and off to market it goes.

Or...you could cheat. Keg the wine and force carbonate it, then serve from the keg, or bottle it using a beer gun.
I keep some raspberry mead on tap, carb'd up to beer CO2 volumes.
 
Or...you could cheat. Keg the wine and force carbonate it, then serve from the keg, or bottle it using a beer gun.
I keep some raspberry mead on tap, carb'd up to beer CO2 volumes.

Huh. Now THAT is an idea.

Yeah, my girlfriend's father came over with some Lambic bottles, and those seemed pretty thick. On one hand, it would be a good excuse to drink lambic, but on the other, I would need to buy a corker. And in my teeny pad, space is kind of a commodity. :(

But I like the idea of just having some sparkling peach wine "on tap" as it were....Hmm....you've given me much to think about.
 
I have the cheapest corker available, the kind that's a tapered plastic sleeve and a ram, and it's no big problem. It's not elegant, but unless you're bottling a lot it'll do the job. A 5 gallon batch produces about 20-25 bottles, depending on racking loss...That's not too much to put up with a clunky tool, in my opinion.

Take it for what it's worth, but as a carpenter I work with hand tools constantly. You sort of learn to put up with stuff instead of spending all your money on convenience items. 'Sides, I'd need a bigger truck after a while. :)
 
I too keep sparkling wine force carbed and in a keg. Right now I have sparkling crab apple and soon will also have raspberry. Ive doe the hard way and must admit its a little better that way but the extar work is not something fun, especially degorging the frozen bottles as you usually get sprayed pretty good.
 
Bomb Squad

I remember reading way back last century a letter in the 'Amateur Winemaker' published in the UK By CJJ Berry, warning winemakers about exploding bottles.

The poor man concerned went to get a bottle of wine from his cupboard and one bottle exploded as he took it from the rack. He ended up in A&E with his hand split in two. His wife, worried to death that the rest would go bang, called in the police. They refused to touch them and called in the Bomb Disposal Squad who took them all out into the garden and did a controlled explosion on them. :se
This wasn't Sparkling Wine by the way, it was ordinary table wine in normal bottles.
The moral of the tale is, be careful, better safe than sorry. Use only bottles that are intended for the job!
Regards to all, Winemanden. :h
 
Champagne/Sparkling wine bottles are designed for the 19 psi that commercial makers use. Having a bottle explode in your hands or face can not be exciting. They say always to wear eye protection and gloves in the making just in case.

My sparkling wine bottles are back in their boxes, taped up and inside a large garbage bag resting inside a large plastic storage bin.
 
so where does cider fall into the psi range? And what bottles should one consider using?

I was going to use beer bottle.. I just got a killer deal on some!
 
so where does cider fall into the psi range? And what bottles should one consider using?

I was going to use beer bottle.. I just got a killer deal on some!

Are you looking to "carbonate" your cider or introduce a secondary fermentation as in making sparkling wine?

For sparkling wines don't exceed 19psi in champagne bottles. That equates to 18 grams of sugar to each 750ml bottle.

As far as carbonating I don't know. Others on here may know.
 
I haven't made sparkling wine for quite a while but what I used was these gizmos. They are plastic stoppers with a built in safety valve. You make your sparkler in the usual way, priming, riddling, ending up standing on the corks. Once you're sure all the yeast has settled into the cork, over a bucket or the sink, you give a quick jerk on the cord and out splashes the yeast. They work quite well, the main problem being that more than twelve months or so they very gradually lose pressure.
Not as good as a proper champagne cork but they did the job for me with no worries about blown bottles, although I still used the proper ones.

Happy Christmas to all, Winemanden. :pty

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this info seems to be so evasive I read up on the malvino counter pressure bottle filler and they were using 47 pounds counter pressure with a wine cooled to about 33 f I would assume that the wine would absorb the excess co2 and eventual lower pressures in side the bottle would result. I would like to learn the co2 method as the fear of wounding my self or a guest with over charged sparkling wine has all but curtailed any more investigation in to this subject. When reading about Champagne they talk about 6 volumes of co2 and pressures of 90 psi but here a max of 19 psi is stressed any body have more answers on this?
 

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