ah bubbles, easy to make and very easy to drink
ok so lets start with the basics, we need a reasonable wine wine.
favoritys for me are rhubarb, aple, pear, orange juices bases.
so lets do rhubarb, i dont do grapes far to over rated ha ha haha
once we have made a basic wine we need to clear it, either by its self or with some other way when it hits around 1010. but dont kill the yeast
i use old champange bottles colleted from a very large hotel in the centre of birmingham, one christmas party will supply 100 bottles easy or a birthday or weddings are cool to
so when we pour the wine in to the clean bottles we also add to is some more sugar, i add approx 2 tea spoons per bottle and fill up with the wine, because we have not killed the yeast i dont add any more. i use metal 29mm beer caps on my bottles( beer caps are normaly 27mm) then the bottles are stood the right way up in a wooden box for two months, its wood incase we have a couple of bangers
after two months the bottle are turned up side down to make the yeast fall to the neck, a couple of times a day the boxs are shaken or the bottles turn slightly, when the wine in the bottle has become clear its time to remove the sediment
i do this with a chest freezer, the neck will freeze before the whole bottle does, i would normaly have two in there and change one every time you throw one out, it normaly takes 15 mins max to do that ,
then lift it out and put another one in and go to the kitchen sink have at hand a narrow handled tea spoon and a beer cap opener and some plastic stoppers and wire cages.
keeping the bottle neck down all the time crack the metal stopper off you will need to be quick here with the old fingers to make sure loses are kept to a minium. if you are lucky the slug will come out and then quickly invert the bottle right way up and ram the plastic cap in and get the wire cage on quick, the cold holds the co2 in suspention, its why the french dont like to drink cold champange as it kills the bubbles. with the new cap in place we are good to go. if you get a sticky one you will have to use the teaspood to dig the yeast slug out. if i loose any liquid we like to top up useing brandy as it helps to produce a better champange