Help! Corks are gonna pop out!

I bottled some wine last night that I made from jelly. Today about half of the corks are half way out. It looks like they are slowly working there way out. What should I do?

Put some peanut butter on some bread and stick it to the ceiling...

It wouldn't be the first time I cleaned wine off the ceiling... I put all the bottles in a plastic storage bin so they can blow in peace.

Do I just recork them?

if you have room, refrigerate the bottles.

Yes I think I can manage that. I inherited a kegerator Saturday from a friend who's moving to California. How long do I need to refrigerate them?

So will refrigerating them kill the yeast or just slow it down? At some point can I take them out or do they need to stay in there now?

keeping them cold will just put the yeast to sleep. If the bottles warm up again, you'll have the same problem.

btw, and at the risk of sounding condescending, try making wine out of something other than jelly. For the same amount of work, you can enjoy a decent wine.

Long term I can't keep them in the fridge so should I pop the corks and drop some campden in?

Did you de-gas the wine before bottling?

david_42 said:

Did you de-gas the wine before bottling?

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This is what I was thinking. I don't know much about winemaking, so I kept my mouth shut, but the lady in the office next door makes wine and she has mentioned degassing.

You should be able to uncork and degas. Might be a good thing to double-check the gravity too.

They make bottles that accept corks with cages to keep the corks in place under pressure. If you use those, you could make a sparkling wine!

That is probably where I messed up. I did degass after I racked the first time but not again after that. So if that is what I need to do to fix this do I need to dump it out and pour it back into a bottling bucket, degass, and then rebottle?

no, pouring now will oxidize as well as degass...

you could uncork and then recork and hope they hold. use a half size larger cork for added snugness.

Personally, I would get one of those wine saver contraptions. It's a rubber cork with a hand pump that creates a vacuum in the wine bottle. It's used for preserving wine after you open the bottle, but I expect it would do well to degas individual bottles.

Something like this: http://www.kitchenfantasy.com/images/084256001288.jpg

Thanks for the advice. How will long term storage in the fridge affect the aging process? That pump might do the trick. Ever see it in any retail stores where I might pick it up?

Around here, you can get those wine saver pumps at just about any grocery store, or any beer and wine store. The thing is, they are usually hanging on those merchandise strips in the middle of random aisles, so they can be tricky to hunt down.

I will look at Wegmans and if they don't have it I will check Bed Bath and Beyond. I'm glad I only have 25 or so bottles to work on.

I had a similar problem. I store my wine in a wine rack above my washer/dryer... at 1am one of the corks shot out and LAUNCHED the bottle out of the laundry room and across the kitchen... the ENTIRE area was coated in a fine mist of sticky fun... I was cleaning until 3am

Here's the picture I took of the adventure...

Brazedowel, I'm sure it wasn't very funny at 3AM, but your two-photo essay is hilarious. *thumbsup*

NyQuil_Driver said:

Brazedowel, I'm sure it wasn't very funny at 3AM, but your two-photo essay is hilarious. *thumbsup*

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Thanks I didn't mind so much, but my wife was less then amused.