wine bottling help

[primera16]

had a spare champagne yeast sachet after doing the fiery ginger beer from this forum, so decided to use it to make something easy, had the bubbler and bung and one of my grampas old demijohns, looked on the forum search and come across the ribena strawberry wine.

well its a week away from bottling and its dawned on me that i have no idea how to bottle this properly.

any help greatly appreciated

 

[Brewtrog]

How long has it been going?
The way I bottle is to get 6 wine bottles (scew caps are fine, if you want smarter looking bottles then cork, but make sure you have a corker [Do NOT use corks on screw cap bottles, it doesn't work]), sterilise them and siphon the wine into them, the last one will probably be less than full (I treat it as a taster bottle drank on bottling day)

 

[primera16]

a little over 3 weeks, will b using the proper wine bottles (easier for me to get), i read somewhere about de-gassing b4 bottling is it essential?

 

[Brewtrog]

I can't believe it'll be ready to bottle after only three weeks, or even a month. Has it really dropped clear (totally clear, no haze)? Degassing isn't essential unless you don't like the slight tingle that the CO2 will give the wine.

 

[primera16]

yeh still hazy, will leave it another few weeks till its cleared

 

[Brewtrog]

The biggest thing to learn with homebrewing and with wine in particular is patience. There's no point bottling a hazy wine, it looks **** in the glass - and has a possibility of tasting not as good. Wine will clear on it's own happily given time, this also helps the wine by giving it a bit more age. Wine always benefits from some age, even if it's only a couple of months. Some wines take years before they're anywhere near their best.

 

[GAZ9053]

I use a bottling wand on the end of my siphon tube