Wine bottles and corks for a Saison?

In the spirit of "keeping it real" I've been looking into the possibility of corking my saison-to-be in wine bottles. Does anyone know if those will be thick enough to withstand the required volume of carbonation? Also, I understand that if you use a real cork, you should lay the bottle on its side to prevent it from drying out and allowing oxygen to enter. On the other hand, as far as I know, beer benefit from aging right-side-up. If I put the saison in wine bottles, what would be the right way to do that?

I'm no expert but I'm pretty sure you will have to use champagne bottles and corks along with a wire cage over the cork. Wine bottles are not designed to hold the pressure of carbonation.

ah yes I just was looking into this with bottling my Braggot and wine bottles do not hold pressure. So champagne and cork and cage it is

I've done this, although I DO NOT recommend it. It has worked for me, I'm not going to lie - but because they technically are not supposed to hold pressure I can't recommend it. Bottles are different, mine might work and your will not - you never know.
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showpost.php?p=426880&postcount=1
These are regular Riesling bottles that are at a high'ish carb level and seem to be fine. I've tried other bottles as well without any disastrous results. Including a batch of rootbeer, the wine bottle held - eventhough when I opened the rootbeer gushed out at least a foot out of the bottle. That's high carbonation!

Sounds like you need to start drinking a bunch of Ommegang!!! Try to collect enough Belgian bombers to bottle in. You can buy corks and hoods from B3. The Ommegang bottles are cheap (relative) and the labels come fully off very easily. Plus Ommegang is delicious!

As for aging, beer should be aged upright, even with corks. The vapor pressure within the bottle ensures the cork will not dry out, all the major Belgian brewers suggest storing their beer this way. Even Oude Beersel suggest upright storage for up to 25 years for improved character in their gueze!

EinGutesBier said:

In the spirit of "keeping it real" I've been looking into the possibility of corking my saison-to-be in wine bottles. Does anyone know if those will be thick enough to withstand the required volume of carbonation? Also, I understand that if you use a real cork, you should lay the bottle on its side to prevent it from drying out and allowing oxygen to enter. On the other hand, as far as I know, beer benefit from aging right-side-up. If I put the saison in wine bottles, what would be the right way to do that?

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You mind posting your saison receipe:rockin:

Brewlicious said:

You mind posting your saison receipe:rockin:

Click to expand...

Absolutely. And in case anyone else is interested, I'll try to get around to putting it in the recipes section.

Arc des Années Saison

Batch size: 8 gallons

10 lbs Pale/Pilsener Malt

2 lbs. Malted White Wheat

1 lbs. Belgian Biscuit Malt

1 lbs. Rye Malt

1 lbs. Golden Naked Oats

2 lbs. Clear/Yellow Belgian Candi Sugar Syrup (homemade)

Hops:

At 75 minutes - .75 oz. Hop Suey (can subsitute with any bittering hops with a 6-8% AA)

At 50 minutes - .5 oz. Mt. Hood

At 30 minutes - 1 oz. US Saaz

At 15 minutes - 1 oz. Tettnanger

1.0 - 1.25 oz. Grated Orange Peel at 15 minutes as well

Wyeast 3724 - Belgian Saison Yeast

OG: 1.056

Predicted FG: 1.013-1.016


Obviously, because it was such a big batch, you'd want to scale down some of the ingredients, but if you keep the proportion right, you've got a winner. Even before fermentation, it had a great taste, like an orangey-honeyish hop and malt tea. I have high hopes for this one.