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Wade E

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My wife went to our recycling center and got some Champage bottles
today and there were only 6 here. She then took it upon herself to go
to another towns recycling center for me and got 12 more. Both places
were digging through their containers with long metal poles for her.
She also has them saving more for us tommorow as I did with wine
bottles but I never even though of going to another town's. Thats my
woman!!!
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Hope you gather up a few more bottles...sounds like you and your wife have things under control....

With making **Sparkling** wine you probably need about 60 bottles....usually one batch is half on the shelf and the rest ready to dégorge...the next batch is in the bottles with the secondary fermentation begining...it all takes time, but worth it.

Sounds like you have a goldmine of wine and bubbly bottles available to you...just need to dig in and get them...then comes the work of washing them.

I had to go out to the shed the past couple weeks and bring in more bottles and clean them....I just soak them in very hot water in the laundry tub overnight, then lift or scrape the labels with a knife, soak again and do the brush and faucet jet-washer thing...soak, scrub any stubborn labels/glue with steel curly thing, goo-gone...etc....Some labels just lift off...some of the bubbly bottles can be a challange...seems the first washing is the most work...it's all fun to me.....[I am a simple person...get entertained easily]
 
You dont bottle it all at once? I am going to do it the honeycreek way.
Do you top up with a similiar base or use a bottle of the sparkling
wine to top up all?
 
Yes, we bottle the whole batch....or you can do half a batch of wine as bubbly and sorbate and bottle the rest as plain still wine....or you could do a few bottles of any wine you have going now, just to give it a try.

This is how we do it...Do not stabilize the wine...Rinse sulfite off of everything you use, buckets, bottles, stoppers, spoons, etc....don't want to hinder a new fermentation...

First we rack the wine to a bottling bucket, add 1+3/4 cup plain white sugar that has been dissolved in small amount of boiling water [let cool] and a package of EC-1118 yeast [rehydrated in 1/4 cup warm water] for 6 gallons....stir continuously while bottling, to keep yeast in suspention....bottle...put in stoppers and wire hoods....let it sit for 2 months to let the yeast ferment in the bottle...shake it now and then to mix the yeast....then turn it up-side-down to get the lees into the plastic stoppers.Then you do the riddling thing, which is just making all the lees go into the neck of the bottle so you can dégorge it out.

When we dégorge we usually like to do about 3 or more bottles at a time, use one bottle as a topping off wine and recork the others.

We tried to do 12 bottles a couple weeks ago, putting that many bottles in the freezer brought the temp up in there and some of the necks didn't want to freeze...some did and some didn't....we have a 'Quick Freeze' button on the freezer, forgot about using it. Just had the door open for too long positioning the bottles and that was a lot of warm mass of bottles to chill down.Usually it takes about 1 1/2 hours in our chest freezer [-5*F] to get the necks of the bottles frozen about 2-3 inches up. Always keep the neck of the bottle down so you don't stir up the lees again.

This will be trial and error...if you have a freezer in your fridge, start with one bottle...see how long it takes to freeze it...open and enjoy...next time maybe try 3 bottles and re-cork 2....

Here are some of the last 2 batches we have made....

sparklingappleSmall.jpg


These are the crates that I use to 'riddle' the wine in...

riddlingcratesSmall.jpg


Yikes!!!
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Only 6 bottles left to do....time to make some more.

I like to use at least one clear bottle in each batch...then you can watch the yeast work and watch it clear.

I have a lady friend who books conventions and parties at a convention center at a resort, she gets me champagne/sparkling wine bottles....got 2 boxes that had screw tops....they were nice heavy bottles....They had a screw top but had a big lip under the screw part....we tried one of those bottles and they worked fine...the lip held the wire hood okay.Some sparkling wine bottles don't have a punt on the bottom of the bottle, I always worry about them being strong enough to hold the pressure, so far so good.

Hope this info helps and gets you into the world of making bubbly.Edited by: Northern Winos
 
Got another 11 bottles today but cant make it to the dump next till
Sat. Have 30 now and 2 of them are Magnums but will get as many as I
can for free seen as how they wont be around much after this weekend
when everyone who cant make it to the dump during the week gets rid of
New Years garbage on the weekend.
 
Well today I got 3 and my wife got 32. I guess shes the bread winner again as far as bottles go.
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Have about 66 all in all now with 3 of them being magnums.
 
I'm sorry but you will have to elaborate on that word, but I'm sure your busting on me!
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Glad you got so many bottles rounded up...I am sure you will fill them...your going to enjoy this new venture....same with you Joan....it's worth the extra effort....

Love those bubbles....our Usual Saturday night wine is bubbly...got to ration the 'good stuff'...
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