sparkling wine

[joeswine]

I would like to make sparkling wine have most of the hardware but I'am not sure of how despence the carbonated wine from the keg,any one no how or what I need to finish this with??

 

[NorthernWinos]

Welcome, joeswine...Hope you stay awhile and tell us what you've been up to in the wine making part of your life..


We have made sparkling wine by doing a secondary fermentation in the bottles.


We were over at the neighbors last month and he had carbonated some beer in a little keg and had some sort of gas tank hooked up to it...I have no idea how it worked, but he said he could easily do a gallon of wine in it. It dispensed like beer out of a keg.


There are some members here who may have experience kegging beer.

 

[joeswine]

I've been making wine all tyoes for 7years now and enjoy it fully the list and blends are verried from chard&eldernerry flowers to rassberry /sharza to blueberry fruit wine, most of the basics that most wine makers do however I like to explore with different styles and blends most times there good by my standards but the one item I haven't tried is sparkling wines and thats on the menu at the present,getting the wine in the bottle without loosing the carbonation is the trick//

 

[JWMINNESOTA]

Im currently following NW's tutorial on sparkling wines.


http://www.finevinewines.com//Wiz/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=1206

 

[andy123]

I would like to make sparkling wine have most of the hardware but I'am not sure of how despence the carbonated wine from the keg,any one no how or what I need to finish this with??

hi i had some thoughts on force carbonating sparkling wine. a picnic beer tap exit would work fine from your keg.but i also thought a bottle filler wand could be rigged to corny keg exit and an over carbonated wine might be transferred to champagne bottles without losing alot of gas.i also thought one might cut wine with 1/3rd 7 up at bottling bringing an 11/12%wine down to 7or 8% sparkler.force carbonation info and charts available @www.iancrockett.com/brewing/info/forcecarb.shtml

 

[joeswine]

HI PEOPLE I"AM already set to go on the 17th at our next wine club meeting 'll be using moscato,which is the juice to make spiamiti champain slitely sweet to the back side ,clean and fruity up front let you all know how I make out ,great tutorial guide on the forum,also bought a beer gun for despencing,tried it with selzer works fine//

 

[intoxicating]

I am planning to make a chardonnay kit this fall, and split it up to use in fruit wines for added body. I thought I might try adding a gallon of red to two gallons of the chard, and bottle carbonate it.

If I want to make a spumanti style, how do I get it a little sweet without the bottles exploding from yeast converting the sugar I intended for sweetening?

Can I skip the disgorging? I have no self-confidence in being able to do it without a huge mess and losing too much wine.

 

[Wade E]

To sweeten a stable wine(1 that is done fermenting and has been at an SG consecutively for 3 or more days) you must add Potassium sorbate at the rate of 1/2 tsp per gallon of wine and Potassium Metabisulfite to the tune of 1/4 tsp per 5-6 gallon. Add the meta 1st and then the sorbate and then sweeten and let sit for a few days to make sure it does not start fermenting again before you bottle.

 

[intoxicating]

Spumanti is a sparkling wine. If I stabalize before sweetening, then when I add the yeast to the champagne bottle, won't it die?
Edited by: intoxicating

 

[Wade E]

Sorry, I thought you were talking about the other mixed wine there. As for the sparkling wine being sweet, that is near impossible without carbonating them and then reopening them while almost frozen and adding a sweetener that has the sorbate and meta in it.
Here is an article about procedures for doing so.



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This method is a bit
more troublesome, but yields a sweet, sparkling wine without sediment.</span>

Make a basic dry table
wine, 10 - 11.5% alcohol by volume, finished, clear and stable.</span>

Take two ounces of
sugar for each gallon of wine and make it into a syrup with a little water.
Thoroughly mix the wine and syrup. (DO NOT try adding more sugar to get more
sparkle!).</span>

Be sure of a good
second fermentation, add one packet of Champagne Yeast or good all-purpose wine
yeast to the mixture and 1/4 teaspoon per gallon (NO MORE) of yeast energizer.</span>

Siphon the sweetened
wine into <st1lace wt="on">Champagne</st1lace> bottles and cap with crown
caps. Store at 65º to 70ºF. Once a month pick up each bottle, turn upside down
and then put back upright. After three months all the sugar should be converted
to Carbon Dioxide and alcohol. Yeast deposited on the bottom will show you that
the sparkle is there. When you think the wine is ready, taste one bottle. Cool
it in the refrigerator, open it and see if the wine really sparkles. If so,
proceed as follows, ( by the way, this test is a delightful excuse for sampling
your wine early).</span>

Next, place your
bottles in a freezer and chill the wine to about 25ºF. This usually takes two
to three hours. You may see a little ice within the bottles when they are
ready. Now get an equal number of champagne bottles. Put into each of these
bottles one ounce standard sugar syrup and one tablet of wine stabilizer
(Crushed and dissolved potassium sorbate), and put these bottles into the
freezer along with the wine. The stabilizer is essential to inhibit the yeast
and prevent a third fermentation and possible explosions.</span>

When the wine is cold
enough, bring out one bottle of wine and one champagne bottle. Uncap the wine
and siphon it gently into the cold <st1lace wt="on">Champagne</st1lace>
bottle, taking care to leave the sediment behind. Since the wine is cold, it
will loose very little gas. Now insert the plastic stopper and wire it down.
Then invert the bottle several times to mix the syrup and wine.</span>

This wine will be very
palatable almost immediately after bottling. Note, that one ounce of syrup
gives brut (Slightly Sweet) wine. If you want a Sweet wine, use two ounces of
syrup per bottle, plus the wine stabilizer tablet.</span>

*
Sugar Syrup 2 cups of sugar per one quart water yields five cups of syrup</span>

 

[intoxicating]

This looks like I could make less of a mess than the more traditional disgorging. How much trouble would I get into with "off flavors" if I left the little bit of yeast in the bottom instead of siphoning off? I guess I am making too big a deal, since I have rarely had a soda bottle spray all over me.

This sugar syrup has lots more water than the standard "simple syrup" proportions of 2 cups sugar to one cup water.

I have seen stabilizer as powder with and without sugar in it, but never noticed it in tablets. Am I reading it right that I use one tablet for each 750 bottle? Any ideas how much powder that would be? Go for the standard amount per gallon and dissolve it in the syrup?

How long does home made sparkling wine keep? Does one drink it young? I was thinking of making it for this Christmas/New Years. Would it be ready?


Forgive me if I am making this harder than it needs to be.

 

[Wade E]

Making a sparkling wine is more work and making a sweet sparkling wine is even more work then that. Stabilizer is usually a 2 part system of both K-meta(powder) or Campden tablets which is K-Meta pressed together with some material to help hold it together which if not mashed up good and dissolved well will make floaters in your wine and the 2nd part of the stabilizer is Potassium sorbate. In conjunction these 2 ingredients will prohibit a Re fermentation. 1 campden tablet =.44 grams of k-meta and 3 1/2 campden tablets is approximately the equivalent of 1/4 tsp of k-meta which is what we use for 6 gallons of wine. Sparkling wine will hold quite some time as its abv is typically higher then a white wine.
As for being ready for Christmas thats very tight if you have a wine already fermented and hav not added any k-meta since starting it and if you dont have the wine already fermented then I dont think its possible. After fermentation you would add the sugar to the fermented wine and bottle it in Champagne bottles and let sit for a few months upside down and spinning and smacking the bottle down often to get the sediment to sit in the plastic stopper reservoir. After that yo would degorge and back stabilize if back sweetening and then put stoppers on again and let sit again to rebuild its counter pressure. As you can see this all takes quite a bit of time but really comes out nice. To have it ready for Christmas in my opinion would require force carbonating by means of a corny keg and gas(C02) tank.
As for the syrup you are right, that article was copied out of Winemaker magazine quite awhile ago.

 

[bmckee56]

I would like to make sparkling wine have most of the hardware but I'am not sure of how despence the carbonated wine from the keg,any one no how or what I need to finish this with??

I gather from your comments that you intend on using a corny keg and force carbonate your wine. I have this setup and plan to use it in the next few weeks. Do a "Google" on "Counter Pressure Bottling" there are several sites that offer the equipment you will require to complete this operation. They also offer step by step instructions on how to use the equipment.


Also Winemaker Magazine had an issue detailing the steps involved in counter pressure bottling a wine. I have two copies of it at home, but I can't recall the exact date for the issue. I believe it was December 06/January 07. Got to their site to research the issue and purchase a copy of it.


Good Luck!


Salute!

Oh! You can stabilze and sorbate a wine if you are force carbonating it. It will not re-ferment once stabilized and the ABV will not increase.Edited by: bmckee56