Sparkling Wine...

Hey everyone, this is my first post here, but I've been reading for a little while.

I've made two one-gallon batches of wine and now I'm making my first five-gallon batch (white wine). I want to make a few bottles of sparkling wine. My local brew store has the proper bottles and recommended capping instead of corking.

My question is: if I use a liquid yeast to carbonate, would I need to freeze and deplug them, and would pressure continue to build until the bottles exploaded? Any advice at all is much appreciated!

Thanks everybody,
-Jared

 

Sugar.
1) Is there residual sugar if so, the yeast will eat and make co2 until there is no sugar.
2) What is the abv? If it's too high, the yeast may not work.
Freeze&deplug is for making sparkling wine clearer. Great if you can do it. Not necessary if you don't mind drinking a tiny bit of harmless yeast.

Example if the abv is from 6-10% and is fully fermented with no remaining sugar... Then you mix in some sugar (based on charts and calculators to find desired carbonation level). Bottle it in proper bottles and leave it for 3 weeks minimum. Then you'll be fine and not need to do anything else.

American champagne bottles take beer caps. European style takes corks (and wire holder) or extra large caps. You can also use beer bottles up to a certain pressure.

 

Thanks so much KevinM. It had a. Alcohol potential of 11% and had only been fermenting for 3 days thus far. Think I should pull some out and bottle as champagne before it is totally dry?

Your information really clears things up for me. I drank the yeast in some homemade root beer I made and it was just fine... I reckon it'll be fine again. : )

 

I'm planning on carbonating some wine. Do you ever need to add more yeast with the priming sugar? So if I have wine in a carboy that I've racked a few times over 6+ months, can I assume there is still yeast in there ready to go once I add the sugar and bottle?

Anything I need to do to know it's ready or just wait 3+ weeks?