Sparkly!!!

[whino-wino]

I made 2 small batches of sparking wine using NW's tutorial last summer. It had been sitting in my wine cellar ready for degorging sinceabout June. The reason for this is I didn't have room in my freezer to do it. Tonight however, the temp outside is a balmy -15°F and dropping fast so I brought both batches up and put them out one case at a time. It only took about 30 to 45 minutes for the ice to form in the neck. It was actually quite easy.


I did not heed NW's advice about wearing safety goggles and for a while I thought I hadthe processdownwell enoughthat I wouldn't need them, but the very last bottle got me and it got me good. Up to that point I hadn't gotten so much as a drop on me.


The first batch was 2 gallons of pineapple.After degorging and topping up all the bottesI had enough leftfor 1 glass. I must say that it is quite excellent

Next up was a 2 gallon batch of Peach wine. I did have a minor problem with this batch. 2 of the bottles were completely flat. No bubbles at all. I don't think that the stoppers leaked because they had been stored upside down for degorging and none of the wine had leaked out. I'm really not sure what happened here. I topped them both up anyway, which didn'ttake much since the stopper basically fell out and I didn't lose much of the wine. I added 1/2 tsp of sugar to each of the two, put new stoppers in and set them aside. I'll check one of these out in a month or so to see if it has come back to life. If not I'm not sure what I'll do with them.


The peach was very good but I definitely liked the pineapple more. The pineapple has a hint of sweetness but is still pretty dry. The peach is definitely dry, but has a very pleasant "peachiness" to it. Overall I would say it was a resounding success. I ended up with 8 bottles of each kind, although 2 of the peach might not work out.


Camera batteryis dead. Sorry, no pics at this time......

 

[scubaman2151]

Thats really cool. Good to hear that you did so well. Im at the beginning stage of degorging and can only hope it goes as easy as yours did.

 

[NorthernWinos]

Every now and then we get a flat bottle.
Sometimes the stoppers go into a bottle very easily, so you know the air can get out of them....maybe not the liquid.

Last time during bottling we had a bottle that wouldn't take a stopper, finally after 3 tries..... we tried a different plastic [used] stopper from a purchased bottle of wine, it fit snug...marked that bottle just to see what happens with it.

The bottle was a little taller than the others...So, all bottles are not created equally.

 

[whino-wino]

It will be interesting to see what happens with that one bottle you have. It just so happens that one of the two flat bottles I had was exactly like the one you described. A little taller than the others and a real pain to get the stopper in (and out, by the way)
If that one goes flat on you then we can know to avoid those ones n the future.

 

[Wade E]

Did youadd sugar to each bottle or didi you mix all the fermenting sugar in with the full batch and then pour into bottle. If not stirred constantly the sugar will not be equal into all the bottles and those few might not have received enough sugar.

 

[whino-wino]

I followed NW's tutorial exactly and added the sugar to the whole batch before bottling. It's probably the first time in my life I've actually followed the directions on something