Bottled to soon

[montanaWineGuy]

Lacking wine bottles, and equipment for a long fermentation process, I'm now paying the price and learning a lesson. I had 5 (other type of) bottles explode and make a huge mess. Now the wine bottles are shooting their corks and scaring the dog (and me). So far, they seemed to be of one batch of Apricot wine. Luckily my labels are consistent from one batch to the next so all the problem bottles that haven't exploded are out in the open.

Lesson learned. Next year get more carboys and airlocks.

 

[wineforfun]

Ok, here come the obvious questions.
I assume it was fermented to dry.

Did you clear the wine?
Did you backsweeten? and if so, did you add sorbate? and if so, was the sorbate fresh and not outdated?

 

[montanaWineGuy]

Ok, here come the obvious questions.
I assume it was fermented to dry.

Did you clear the wine?
Did you backsweeten? and if so, did you add sorbate? and if so, was the sorbate fresh and not outdated?

Bottled too soon. Sharing, not asking a question. YMMV....

 

[cpfan]

Yes, but it is difficult for someone to learn when we don't know what you did wrong. For example, a lot of people bottle wine kits after 4 weeks (I've heard of some doing it in 3 weeks), and don't have problems with exploding bottles. But to me (and many others), that is too soon.

What I'm trying to say is that "too soon", doesn't really mean anything, and isn't (on it's own) the cause of exploding bottles.

Steve

 

[montanaWineGuy]

I've bottled early also, without a problem. I finally have a wine thief and hydro, and will now measure the sg to determine if I can bottle safely.

 

[vacuumpumpman]

@ Montanawineguy -

I can smile because I myself have been there before -Thats why I had to paint the entire foyer and living room. My friend brought over a bottle and we set it upright and it went all over the place in the middle of the night !!

Then about a week later my bottles in the cellar started to pop as well !! At that time we did not know about sulfite and we wanted to do it all natural -

 

[richmke]

IMHO, if you let time do the work, you don't need a wine thief and hydro to tell you when you can bottle. If you wait 9 months to a year, you should be good to go.

Now, if you want to bottle after 4 weeks, and are going to back sweeten, then you need to make sure you have degassed properly, killed the yeast, and added the proper amount of sorbate.

 

[Julie]

Sorry, montanaWineGuy but this is like sharing half a story.

 

[montanaWineGuy]

Sorry, montanaWineGuy but this is like sharing half a story.

It's all I got. The dog has the other half of the story, but he communicates in frightened eye signals and hyper panting.

 

[montanaWineGuy]

@ Montanawineguy -

I can smile because I myself have been there before -Thats why I had to paint the entire foyer and living room. My friend brought over a bottle and we set it upright and it went all over the place in the middle of the night !!

Then about a week later my bottles in the cellar started to pop as well !! At that time we did not know about sulfite and we wanted to do it all natural -

I first thought was this was due to heat. Early on, I found one cork was half way sticking out, so naturally I pushed it back in. Hours later, I thought my eyes were lying as the bottle was completely uncorked. At that point I gathered up all the bottles and one I was especially suspicious about went in the fridge. It busted and made a big mess also. Now all has been poured into very stout 1L whiskey bottles and have a cork/cap only resting on the bottle neck opening.

I've been checking other recently bottled wine, especially the Apricot, and all else seems stable.

Even grocery store wine sometimes gives out some gas when opened, but the stuff I messed up on, gasses, fizzes, and bubbles. Something serious happened. My area is undergoing rapid changes, high heat, normal to very cool. I can do nothing about it, so maybe there are environmental factors affecting the yeast activity.

My take away is to slow way down. More carboys and longer times before racking. My Elderberry from last year was 6+ months from initial to bottling. This year the fruit was abundant and I thought I had enough experience to accelerate the process. Not completely as it turns out. Education is not free or easy...

 

[vacuumpumpman]

I am glad that you are willing to look back and improve !!

That is the first step - My problem was no sulfite and bottled too early and malotic kicked in as soon as the temperature started to rise.

Thanks for sharing !!

 

[JohnT]

May I say that I feel your pain! All of the work, effort, dreaming, and expectations exploding onto the floor! If I end up in Hell, the devil will put me through that every day!

I really like your attitude! Learn a lesson, correct your processes, and move on. Make it a point to ensure that this does not happen again. All good winemakers go through this.

Just think of how good the next batch will be.

 

[BernardSmith]

It may not be yeast activity. If there is any CO2 absorbed in the wine and there are changes in temperature or air pressure (say with a passing electric storm) the equilibrium that allowed the gas to be absorbed and remain absorbed is changed and the gas may be forced out of the liquid. There is no place for it to go if the space between the top of the wine and the bottom of the cork is filled with air under pressure so it makes room for itself by forcing the cork out of the bottle. In other words, the problem may not be bottling too early in any literal sense. The problem may be bottling before all the CO2 has been expelled or removed.

 

[montanaWineGuy]

I ran a bottle of Apricot Wine from a different batch over to my neighbor that gave me all the apricots. I pulled the cork and only a tiny amount of gas was released. Same process, and approximately the same time involved from step to step, so something odd was at play. As BSmith suggest, CO2 sounds like the enemy agent to blame.

Hopefully I'll never find out, as maybe this is a one time phenomenon for me. I hope!

 

[montanaWineGuy]

Okay, it's definitely CO2, and I think I know why. Last night I shook some and it was like shaking a bottle of soda. For the why, this was the first batch of Apricot I did and the fruit was beat in my mixer to a puree. This finely mashed fruit is still cloudy, and is holding onto the CO2. Last night I pulled out the blender and vigorously blended the "wine" and as expected lots and lots of bubbles, even after several attempts.

My 2nd batch of apricot, which seems to be okay, is still not clear and was done with just halving the fruit. Looks as cloudy but the fine fine pulp is not there to cling to the CO2.

I have one more batch of Apricot in a carboy and it's been resting far longer then either B#1 or B#2. In a week I need to make room for more Rhubarb, and I'll probably rack it to a 3 gallon glass carboy and some 1 gallon jugs. I'm going to wait as long as it takes for it to settle down. This CO2 episode was a bad experience.

 

[vacuumpumpman]

I am glad you found out that you have a CO2 issue and can be easily corrected.

 

[richmke]

Okay, it's definitely CO2

That would have been the general consensus without any additional detail.

and I think I know why.

That's the $64,000 question.

This finely mashed fruit is still cloudy, and is holding onto the CO2. Last night I pulled out the blender and vigorously blended the "wine" and as expected lots and lots of bubbles, even after several attempts.

You bottled cloudy wine?

Looks as cloudy but the fine fine pulp is not there to cling to the CO2.

You don't need pulp for the wine to hold onto CO2. Clear wine can hold onto CO2 - Champagne.

 

[BernardSmith]

I think the explanation needs to be up-ended. It is not so much that the fruit particles are preventing the CO2 from being expelled but the presence of CO2 is keeping the fruit suspended and so you have a cloudy/hazy wine. And that is one reason for never bottling wine unless it is absolutely clear enough to read a newspaper through. In short, if your wine is cloudy, and if there is no question that the cloudiness is caused by a pectin haze then you know that there must be too much CO2 still absorbed in the wine to bottle. You may want to IM vacuumpumpman . He makes and sells vacuum pump systems that can extract the CO2 from your wine if you don't have the wherewithall to allow the wine to slowly expel the CO2 over time (His avatar/image is of the system he makes)

 

[montanaWineGuy]

I think the explanation needs to be up-ended. It is not so much that the fruit particles are preventing the CO2 from being expelled but the presence of CO2 is keeping the fruit suspended and so you have a cloudy/hazy wine. And that is one reason for never bottling wine unless it is absolutely clear enough to read a newspaper through. In short, if your wine is cloudy, and if there is no question that the cloudiness is caused by a pectin haze then you know that there must be too much CO2 still absorbed in the wine to bottle. You may want to IM vacuumpumpman . He makes and sells vacuum pump systems that can extract the CO2 from your wine if you don't have the wherewithall to allow the wine to slowly expel the CO2 over time (His avatar/image is of the system he makes)

Yeah, I'm getting that. Not enough carboys to process all the fruit this year. My early Rhubarb was the same (cloudy and bottled early), and it is in the bottles and is clearing up, no problems. Nope, it is the Puree'ing that caused the problem.