Sparkling wine

[tonyhibbett]

Having completed bottling 9 gallons of unremarable white wine from what I now believe to be my Muller Thurgau grapes, I contacted the groundsman at Leeds Castle (in Kent) where they have a vineyard of 50% MT and 50% Seyval for some advice on this variety, only to discover that, as of this year, they leave the grapes to rot as they are only good for 'Liebfraumilch' type wine, for which folks are not prepared to pay the high prices for English wine, which why sparkling wine is now in vogue, and even the French think it's good.
I tried making sparkling wine using the Champagne method and it's hard work, so I thought I'd try a short cut. I bought a Sodastream jet from Argos on special offer at £37. They are designed to make sparkling water in 1 litre batches, using their special bottles. This works fine but for wine it needs a slightly different approach, because it has a different density.
First you have to fill the special stong plastic bottle (2 are supplied) with well-chilled liquid (normally water) up to a mark so that the gas injector is in the liquid. A standard wine bottle holds a little less, so you have to top it up. You then screw the bottle in place and depress a button until a buzzer sounds to indicate the level of carbonation. With wine, this happens far too late and when you attempt to remove the bottle, excess gas escapes along with some of the wine, which is messy and wasteful. The solution, presumably, is to make a note of the number of button presses required for sparkling water and use the same for wine without waiting for the buzzer.
At this piont you can either drink the wine, or screw on the cap and drink it later, or transfer it back to the wine bottle. What I actually did was pour some in a glass and sampled it. Champagne it was not, but a pleasant vin mousseux and a significant improvement.
I then carefully poured it all back into the wine bottle, holding it at an angle as tyou would fill a glass. This had to be done in stages, due to the foam. The bottle was then capped with a tight-fitting plastic stopper, although a screw cap would suffice. You don't need champagne bottles and wire cages, because the pressure is not high enough to require it.The gas cylinder supplied is enough for up to 60 litres and when it runs out, you can exchange it for a few pounds.

 

[tonyhibbett]

Addendum to the above:
Best to do it in batches. Take 6 bottles of very well chilled wine. Pour contents of 1 into special bottle and top up to mark with second bottle. Inject gas in short bursts until buzzer sounds. Leave until settled. Pull bottle forward from base gently a few times to release excess gas until settled. Pour a little into a glass and taste for fizz. If required, re-gass until tastes right. Pour wine gently and slowly, at an angle, back into first bottle until full and then seal tight.
Add remaining contents of second bottle to contents of special bottle and top up with third bottle if required. Continue until all bottles treated. Drink what remains in special bottle, (about a glassful) then rinse bottle and clean gas nozzle.
Rather more gas is wasted when treating wine so don't expect 60 litres from the gas cylinder, but don't complain to the manufacturer as they say you should only use water!

 

[screamlead]

Easiest way to do sparkling is stick in 2 level teaspoons of suger per bottle - cork - and leave for a week or two it soon carbonates the wine - i found out by mistake.
I asked the Mrs to put in 1 teaspoon of suger per litre bottle so she whacked in 2 result - sparkling wine - really good it was too.
We had a couple of bottles blow their corks but apart from that no probs at all. :

 

[ricardo]

Thats how I make my sparkling wine.....
I brew a Wineworks Pink Chardonnay & when it has finished fermenting I bottle it in 750ml swing top bottles.
I dont add any stabiliser or any finings & put 1.5 teaspoons of sugar per 750ml bottle.
After about 2 weeks it is ready for drinking.
Chilled well the sediment holds firm on the bottom of the bottle poured carefully there is only about 1 inch of wine left in the bottle.
Tastes as good if not better than many Champagnes I have tried.......
:

 

[tonyhibbett]

My first sparkling wine was also by accident. The bottles got exposed to direct sunlight, causing a secondary fermentation. It turned a catty elderflower into a superb drink but I had to decant it first to avoid the sediment, so I tried the proper method, involving champagne bottles and plastic blister corks. You have to keep turning the bottles to get all the sediment down into the blister on the end of the cork, then eventually cutting this off and inserting a plug.
Secondary fermentation is not possible with wine which has been stabilised, fined and filtered and sulphited, hence the Sodastream experiment.
One of the treated bottles must have had a leaky cap and was not sparkling when opened. However, the injection of carbon dioxide livened up the wine and made it better.

 

[tonyhibbett]

Important note: about Sodastream:
The colder the liquid, the more carbon dioxide can be dissolved in it. Wine freezes at -4 c, so you can safely take it down to zero before injection. In practice, turn fridge up to high, place bottles of wine at bottom (coldest place) and leave for 1 hour before injection. The temperature should be down to 3.5 c. This way it will absorb more gas and lose much less when you transfer the wine back to the bottle.
A more efficient approach is to buy extra Sodastream bottles and store the carbonated wine in them, thus avoiding transferring back to the wine bottle, but at £13 a pair, a tad expensive!

 

[tonyhibbett]

The optimum temperarure for carbonating wine is 4 c. Dissolved CO2 produces carbonic acid so don't use wine which is already high in acid. The gas cylinder ran out after only 25 bottles because I wasted gas by overdoing it. A refill costs £9, so about 50p per bottle so far. Now using champagne bottles collected from recycling bins after xmas/new year, sealed with plastic champagne stoppers and wire muzzles. Stoppers easy to fit by hand if dipped in hot water first, and are reuseable., as are the muzzles, up to a point. Leave 6 mm air gap between base of stopper and surface of liquid to act as a pressure buffer. This is why sparlking wines have a neck foil, to conceal this! These foils are hard to come by in small quantities and are made of polylaminate, not aluminium, and are easy to fit.
opened a bottle to celebrate Ashes victory. It was good but slightly too acidic, so best to use either a demi-sec or a dry wine with relatively low acidity. Alternatively, treat wine beforehand with precipitated chalk to reduce acidity by, say, 1 ppt.

 

[phatpete]

I've just put on a winebuddy chardonnay (made short to 21 litres) and was thinking of trying to carbonate a few bottles of it as a cava experiment.

Reading back here I'm a bit confused.

If I follow the kit and add the stabaliser agent etc... to finish the wine I can't then add sugar into the bottles to carbonate it?

Is that right?

My mates wife really loves Cava and wanted to make her a few bottles from this batch.

Apologies for the newbie-ness of this, but I've done 25 home brews since xmas (when I started) and am slavishly following the instruction sets trying to get decent results. I'm always getting carbonation wrong in beers but thats for another post :)

Cheers,
Pete

 

[Tim_Crowhurst]

If I follow the kit and add the stabaliser agent etc... to finish the wine I can't then add sugar into the bottles to carbonate it?

Is that right?

Pretty much. You can add the sugar, it just won't carbonate as there'll be no yeast. You need to let the wine clear naturally, then prime each bottle (1tsp/5g sugar each) before adding the wine. Even once cleared there's enough yeast suspended in the wine to re-start fermentation.

Add the stabiliser to the rest of the wine after you've bottled the cava.

 

[phatpete]

If I follow the kit and add the stabaliser agent etc... to finish the wine I can't then add sugar into the bottles to carbonate it?

Is that right?

Pretty much. You can add the sugar, it just won't carbonate as there'll be no yeast. You need to let the wine clear naturally, then prime each bottle (1tsp/5g sugar each) before adding the wine. Even once cleared there's enough yeast suspended in the wine to re-start fermentation.

Add the stabiliser to the rest of the wine after you've bottled the cava.

Think that's a bit beyond me the now. I'm just following the kit instructions.

Really appreciate the response though. You just saved me wasting 5 bottles! :)