Re: Bottling Champagne

alien wrote:
I go for 90 PSIG and ferment in the bottle. All true sparklers are
made that way. (Use the correct bottles and measure the sugar
carefully, it's a hand grenade.) I freeze the neck to disgorge, it's
not as hard as it sounds. (I did screw up the first ten bottles or so
but you develop a technique with experience, you get to drink your
mistakes.)

Any chance of elaborating on your disgorge technique? I was
hoping to make 30 bottles of sparkling elderflower this year, but
illness prevented me from picking. I'm thinking of getting a 1 gallon
white kit in and sparkling it as practice soon. The disgorging is
worrying me, I have visions of sparkling wine spraying everywhere.
The technique I'm using is one based on 'Making Sparkling Wine' Restall
& Hobbs published here in UK. I diluted some concentrated wine juice to
2 gals & adjusted SG to 1.070 with sugar. Acidity adjusted to 5ppm
H2SO4 using tartaric/malic acid mixture & whole lot fermented out to
dryness using a champagne yeast. Cleared using combination of time &
finings - result was a very clear, dry white white SG 0.996. SG then
adjusted to 1.001 by adding 60gm sugar & whole lot put in a stainless
steel cornelius pressure keg for the secondary fermentation. Pressure
built up to about 2.7bar over the next couple of weeks until
fermentation completed. Keg allowed to stand at room temp & this
pressure for 8-9 weeks followed by 2 weeks @ 0°C to finish off
clearing. What I'm trying to do now is get the wine in the keg into
bottles, hence my question to the news group.
The whole reason for using this technique was to avoid having to
disgorge and what I eventually got into my trial bottles was very, very
clear but having read Joe's comments about disgorgement maybe it's not
as difficult as it sounds !
Sitting here reading your comments & thinking it struck me that if I'm
dispensing some thing like a beer then I shouldn't be suprised if I get
something looking like a beer !!! Think I'll drop the keg temperature a
low as I can in the fridge, open up the keg and use an old fashioned
siphon tube.
Thanks for your thoughts.

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