Cornies And Not Bottles For Wine?

[HenryHill]

I'm basically a beer guy. I'm set up for kegging-because I didn't want to mess with bottles. I really don't plan on making much wine but I have just made a 5 gallon batch of dandelion wine, and have no desire to get into bottling of wine, either, if I don't have to.

It was truly quite enough work to just prepare enough petals for 5 gallons of dandelion wine, all by myself, and I want to minimize my future investment of work on this stuff.

So, do I have to? Is it possible to put wine into a corny that has been racked several times, aged for a few months in the secondary, then left to condition and finally, be served from the cornie? I have considered using CO2 as a way to stabilize the wine for keg conditioning, yet I am thinking of only adding a very small amount of pressure; just enough to preserve and slowly serve, yet not enough to make hugely fizzy champagne.

 

[Bobby_M]

I can't imagine any detriment. Just put 2 psi on it to serve.

 

[Yooper]

That will work. You'll miss the "romance" of opening bottles, but that's fine.

The only downside is that you'll have a cornie tied up a long time. I'm planning on opening a first bottle from last year's dandelions at maybe Christmas this year. I'd maybe just bulk age in a carboy for nine months to a year, or in an extra keg, then set it up to dispense.

I'd try to put just enough pressure in there to dispense- carbonated wine to me is really awful!

 

[HenryHill]

Thanks for the replies. I just wanted to ask in case there was something I was overlooking. I have 10 cornies, now, and my guess is that I will gain more in the next year, so giving one up to a wine is not a big imposition. I started by thinking that I would just condition in a cornie and just fill the headspace with enough CO2 for freshness, and then I thought, why move it out when I can serve from it, too...

 

[DUCCCC]

This may not be relevant in this case, but I could swear I read something recently about not using brass taps with wine, as the acid levels of wine leach bad things out of the brass. This may have been FUD from a plastic tap vendor, but I thought I'd throw this out here just in case.

ETA: Found the link at NB, and their note about brass and wine dispensing.

 

[ClutchDude]

Wine's pretty acidic. Like vinegar or star san, it'll clean off brass or copper pretty easily.

Here's a link to an abstract I found saying that most of the lead in wine was from brass fittings. Not really informative (abstract only) but still some proof.

 

[Zymurgrafi]

You could always dispense with a plastic picnic tap. Problem solved!

Then if you need to empty the keg to make room, fill the bottles from the keg through the picnic tap with a rubber stopper and some racking cane.

I keep apfelwein in a keg and serve through there too. Though I have mine carbonated.