keg champaign?

I know its crazy, but anybody ever thought/tried to keg champaign? :cross:

you can force carb and make a sparkling wine. A corny keg should hold 80psi, but I'd want to check the gaskets and popets. Also make sure the line clamps are good and high pressure rated.

amandabab said:

you can force carb and make a sparkling wine. A corny keg should hold 80psi, but I'd want to check the gaskets and popets. Also make sure the line clamps are good and high pressure rated.

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Good tips! I don't think you'd need to go above 30 psi (at fridge temperatures) to get a nicely carbed sparkling wine. I'm no expert, but I don't like sweetened sparkling wine so I'd carb up a nice dry wine or even cider. A cider is very nice when sparkling, if you like champagne type of wines.

Yooper said:

I don't think you'd need to go above 30 psi (at fridge temperatures) to get a nicely carbed sparkling wine.

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that would probably do it. just the bottle pressures are really high.

Awesome! Thanks!

everybody thinks of wood and glass, but a lot of commercial wine spends most of its life in stainless steel these days. variable volume SS tanks are becoming affordable for small/hobby/home wineries, so thinking about a keg isn't that far out.

If you're not spending $50-100 a bottle for champagne, it was probably filled under pressure, so thinking about force carbing isn't that far out.

I kegged a pinot blanc for my wedding party about 8 years ago. It was forced carbonated, somewhere between 20-30psi and served cold at a low psi. It worked out well. I forgot about it in the back of a fridge (34F) and tasted it recently. It held up really well, even improving over the 8 years. Both then and now, the head didn't hold very long, but you can say that for most sparkling wines. The size of the bubbles got smaller over time. You could try the Charmat process, which involves adding some reserved sweet juice to the fermented wine in the keg to carbonate. It should give you a quality somewhere between Méthode Champenoise and forced carbonation.

Cheap sparkling wines are done this way...not sure if you would get enough pressure for champagne standards.