Bottle aging vs. carboy

[JohnW]

I'm sure this topic has come up before but the final step of the WinExpert kit directions says "If choosing to carboy age wine, top-up with a similar style wine and fit with a solid stopper. Bottle aging is the preferred method." Any ideas why bottle aging would be their preferred method? I suppose natural corks do allow some natural breathing to occur but not sure how much difference that would make. Their directions also say if you plan to age the wine more than 3 months (duh!) add 1/4 tsp of potassium metabisulphite. In the past I haven't done so and found that wine I bottled two or three years that were just fine. Maybe it's because I store it in a cool location.

 

[cmason1957]

I think kit instructions have many, if not most, of their instructions written based on the assumption that this is the first wine the winemaker has ever made and they leave nothing to chance. Plus you want it under bottle as soon as possible, so you can buy another kit and make that. Given new winemaker and maybe not having a more experienced person to learn from, bottle aging over a not properly topped up carboy is probably the preferred method. I almost always suggest new winemakers follow those instructions to the best of their ability for the first few wines. Once you have some idea of what you are doing, then deviate.

 

[wineh]

I'm sure this topic has come up before but the final step of the WinExpert kit directions says "If choosing to carboy age wine, top-up with a similar style wine and fit with a solid stopper. Bottle aging is the preferred method." Any ideas why bottle aging would be their preferred method? I .

It's not you, it's the collective winemaking society. Winexpert guarantees the result, as long as you follow the instructions, even though not all winemakers have the same skills. So if you carboy age, I think you're on your own.
I bulk age, but just to 90 to 100 days. I leave the airlock in and check it daily. I have heard of people going on vacation and coming home to an empty airlock and smelly wine. I have also heard of solid bungs getting sucked into the carboy and same result.

 

[JohnW]

I like your profit motive theory I once racked my wine to a new carboy and inserted a solid cork, as fermentation had finished sometime ago. I guess I hadn't degassed it properly or maybe it was undergoing some MLF but it blew out the cork. Fortunately I happened to notice it before it spoiled

 

[JohnW]

It's not you, it's the collective winemaking society. Winexpert guarantees the result, as long as you follow the instructions, even though not all winemakers have the same skills. So if you carboy age, I think you're on your own.
I bulk age, but just to 90 to 100 days. I leave the airlock in and check it daily. I have heard of people going on vacation and coming home to an empty airlock and smelly wine. I have also heard of solid bungs getting sucked into the carboy and same result.

Three months or so is pretty much the path I am heading. I've made a lot more wine since COVID happened and just don't have enough bottles. Must drink faster!

 

[winemaker81]

@JohnW, as @cmason1957 said, wine in the bottle is FAR safer than the carboy. Kit vendors want you to have a happy result, so you'll buy more. Plus new wine makers are typically eager to crack that first bottle, and to do that the wine has to be in the bottle!

Here's an example: An acquaintance had a great wine going, but she and her husband apparently didn't understand the lesson about head space. They started drinking out of the carboy and a couple months later when the carboy was half full, she brought me a badly oxidized sample. I told her to hit it with K-meta and keep drinking, as it was on a downward spiral. Getting the wine into the bottle eliminates the problem.

Storage without K-meta? It's not required, but it greatly increases your longevity as it's an antioxidant and preservative. Why your wine was ok? Could be storage conditions. Could be that prior doses of K-meta were more than necessary but within parameters. Could be luck of the draw.

Once fermentation is done and the wine is (mostly) degassed, switched to vented bungs. They let gas escape so they won't blow. If a bung gets sucked into the carboy, the bung is too small and/or poorly shaped. None of my vented bungs could possibly get sucked into the carboy.

 

[JohnW]

This is generally what I am thinking. If bottled and something happens to one of them, say a bad cork or you drop it, then you are out one bottle. Sad but not catastrophic. If you have an entire carboy go bad, well that's a real reason to cry.

 

[Handy Turnip]

Personally I only make whites so bottle aging suits me - the wine is really good from 3mths, so I can enjoy the journey drinking steadily over the next year or so knowing it's all good (and obviously working out where it peaks so that I know when I should be focusing my main drinking in the next batch).

However the journey with reds is different, and I don't think I would take the same approach. Bottling early with a red that isn't at that point anywhere near it's best, means you have to employ a lot of patience to ensure you don't drink it too soon, plus you will end up drinking bottles that aren't ready when you're trying to work out when it is ready.

 

[JohnW]

Personally I only make whites so bottle aging suits me - the wine is really good from 3mths, so I can enjoy the journey drinking steadily over the next year or so knowing it's all good (and obviously working out where it peaks so that I know when I should be focusing my main drinking in the next batch).

However the journey with reds is different, and I don't think I would take the same approach. Bottling early with a red that isn't at that point anywhere near it's best, means you have to employ a lot of patience to ensure you don't drink it too soon, plus you will end up drinking bottles that aren't ready when you're trying to work out when it is ready.

Excellent point about bottling and possibly a study of human willpower. I'm way less likely to drink wine that is still in a carboy. Full wine bottles are constantly calling out "drink me, drink me...". Carboy it is.

 

[winemaker81]

One solution to the aging problem is to make more wine.

Seriously. Make more than you drink, and make some early drinkers. Sure, you'll pop a cork occasionally on the longer aging wines, but that is good, as it gives you the opportunity to learn first hand about aging. With a variety of wines, most of your longer aging wines will be around.

Be judicious in selecting wines to make. Early in my winemaking, I went crazy and made FAR more wine than I could ever drink, including a number of French-American hybrid whites that didn't have a long aging potential. I had 14 cases of whites that were clearly in decline. Fortunately I had friends that would drink anything with alcohol in it (hide the cough syrup!), so we drank about half and I gave the other half away. These guys were very happy to get the wine and I was happy to get rid of it.

 

[Handy Turnip]

One solution to the aging problem is to make more wine.

Seriously. Make more than you drink, and make some early drinkers. Sure, you'll pop a cork occasionally on the longer aging wines, but that is good, as it gives you the opportunity to learn first hand about aging. With a variety of wines, most of your longer aging wines will be around.

Yes 100% agree. One of the big mistakes I made when I started was doing a couple of batches and then pausing for a couple of months because I foolishly thought that 60 bottles would keep me going for a while. I soon realised that I was just slowly drinking my way through it too early - and would potentially have nearly finished it at the point I was bottling my next batch, which I would then in turn be forced to start drinking that too early too. I do whites so this isn't disastrous but by no means ideal!

So I did 5 batches in a short space of time, some concurrently, which meant that I knew that even if I drank a few early (while going through my earlier batches), I'd still have plenty left in 9-12mths when they should hit their peak. Just need to manage my rolling stock now..

 

[JohnW]

Clearly, making more wine is a practical solution to most problems. Unfortunately I need to make more storage. Stay tuned

 

[winemaker81]

Non-winemaking friends are amazed at the amount of wine I make ... until I mention that if 1 bottle per week is opened, a 5 gallon carboy (2 cases) is consumed in less than 6 months. [I mention this off-n-on in the Beginners forum, as new winemakers may not have realized it yet.]

One friend said, "but I don't drink that much wine." My response was, "how much Scotch do you drink in a week?"

The light bulb turned on brightly at that moment, as he often has a shot or 2 of Scotch when arriving home after work. That carboy would last him 3-4 months if he was drinking wine ...



I make 1 or 2 batches (5 US gallon) of white per year. For my needs, this seems to work out. I'm currently debating getting a Gewurztraminer frozen juice bucket, as I have less than 2 cases of white left, from 2018 and 2019. As @JohnW mentioned, storage is an issue, and at this moment so is bulk aging. I have to re-arrange my barrels to make space before doing anything new.

 

[JohnW]

Problem solved - More wine it is! Lately I mostly make Italian grape kits; Amarone, Sangiovese and Nebbiolo although I do have a Lodi Cab Sav and Marlborough sauvignon blanc in the works. I just finished one Sangiovese and ordered two more of the older kits that haven't been downsized yet. I do a lot of woodworking and hopefully have enough leftover wood in my garage to build some more racks. Another good COVID project. If I don't post some pictures in the next week or so you can probably assume I lost what little motivation I currently have.

 

[wineh]

One solution to the aging problem is to make more wine.

Seriously. Make more than you drink, and make some early drinkers. Sure, you'll pop a cork occasionally on the longer aging wines, but that is good, as it gives you the opportunity to learn first hand about aging. With a variety of wines, most of your longer aging wines will be around.

For most of us, consumption rises to meet production!

 

[Old Corker]

For most of us, consumption rises to meet production!

It's called winflation. The more you make the more you need to keep up.

 

[WillShill]

I have a concern about ageing kit wines in carboys, when I transfer to carboy I’ve always had headspace, I’ve only access to 5 gallon carboys or a slightly smaller water cooler container, water cooler or individual 1 gallon jugs? .

 

[Chuck E]

I have a concern about ageing kit wines in carboys, when I transfer to carboy I’ve always had headspace, I’ve only access to 5 gallon carboys or a slightly smaller water cooler container, water cooler or individual 1 gallon jugs? .

On the bigger kits (23 liter), I used to short the water by a quart or 2 and add a home made fruit pack. I would typically wind up with about 5-1/2 gallons of wine. This would fill a 5 gallon carboy and leave a couple bottles (750mL) as top off wine. Alternatively, you can fill the headspace with a similar store bought wine.

 

[WillShill]

I made a kit last July and added a 4 kg grape pack and after racking I was left with max 20 litres of wine which I have recently added campden tablets, I’ve gone to far to think about adding additional wine to top up , so it’s prayers at this stage

 

[Chuck E]

@WillShill I would add additional wine to top off. Oxygen is the enemy at this point.