Sparkling wine instructions

[abefroman]

Making Champagne
Method One
This method will make any wine sparkle, whether red, rosé or white.
Make a top quality dry table wine, 10 - 11.5% alcohol by volume. This alcohol limit is important, careful use of a hydrometer will ensure that you do no exceed 11.5% AC.
When the wine is stable and very clear, probably six months old, rack it and add 1 1/2 ounces - NO MORE - of sugar per gallon.
Immediately bottle in champagne bottles (This is essential as ordinary bottles won't stand
the pressure) with plastic stoppers properly wired down. You can purchase plastic
stoppers at wine supply stores.
Stand the bottles upright and store for 12 to 18 months.
This gives you a dry, sparkling wine with about 28 lbs. per square inch pressure. Each bottle will have a slight sediment. Chill before serving, handle the bottles gently, and the sediment will give you no trouble. This is by far the simplest method. If you measure carefully, you should have no explosions and no flat bottles.

Just to confirm are the 1.5 oz. of sugar per gallon, regular granulated sugar or corn sugar?

What's the best way to stop fermentation if I'm getting close to the 11.5% mark?

How much carbonation would there be after say 6 months as compared to 12 months?

TIA!

 

[applelover12]

Here's my method.

It takes more equipment, but is less work, and you can skip bottling altogether if you wish

Put the wine into a sanitized corny keg. Using a carbonation table, carbonate to about 3 volumes co2. Get the bottles and wine as cold as you can and bottle using a picnic tap with either a bottling wand or a broken piece of racking cane attached.

close quickly with either stoppers or caps
You can control the levels of carbonation according to your preferences. stabilize and sweeten your wine before you keg it.

Bulk aging in the keg under pressure results in finer bubbles, and you can tap the keg and "sample" your work without fear of the rest spoiling, as its protected by the gas pressure.

You really dont need to bottle the whole batch at once or even bottle it at all.

The same method works for home made soda, beer, or any other liquid you want to play with. I accidentally carbonated a keg of oxy-clean once. Talk about scrubbing bubbles!

its very interesting. Do you use a carbonation stone ? I heard that is faster, but will it make smaller bobles? I think sparkling wine with small bobles are best

 

[Johnd]

its very interesting. Do you use a carbonation stone ? I heard that is faster, but will it make smaller bobles? I think sparkling wine with small bobles are best

The post you asked your question about is over 7 years old, and I've never seen a post from twissty in my time here, so don't be disappointed if you don't get a response from twissty.

Hopefully someone else will chime in and answer your question......

 

[JohnT]

I use force carbonation, so perhaps I could answer the question.

What I do is to take 4 gallons of clear, aged, and finished wine. Place it into a 5 gallon corny keg. Seal and pump keg up to 10 PSI with CO2. I then release the pressure to purge the air in the keg. I repeat this pump/release step 3 times. This does not get rid of all of the air, but drastically reduces it.

I then pump the keg up to 35 psi and place in my keg-a-rater for 2 months at 33 degrees F. The wine needs to be cold for the CO2 to go into solution. Every couple of weeks, I check the pressure in the keg and (if low) pump it back up to 35 psi.

A 2 month waiting period is not really needed. You will get carbonation is as little as a day or two. I just find that the longer you wait, the longer the carbonation lasts.

When time to tap, I release the pressure to 10 or 11 psi and pour.