Elderflower sparkling wine

[Marches2]

So I'm making elderflower wine in the next few weeks but I couldn't help myself and tried a trial run with rowan blossom, I bottled at a SG of 1.020 and I having to vent the bottles every few hours to avoid any further explosions, lesson learnt!!

Anyone has experience with a good SG fir bottlimg, and if thus requires further priming?ive read to bottle at 1.010 and that should give enough fizz but I'm wondering has anyone here successfully done it

Thanks guys

 

[bernardsmith]

Are you looking for sparkle or sweetness and sparkle? If just the sparkle then I would ferment bone dry and prime with just enough sugar to prevent bottle bombs. But you need to select your bottles and caps. Wine bottles won't work because there will be too much pressure to keep the cork locked down. Beer bottles will work as will champagne bottles (or bottles for sparkling wine) but you will need to use wire cages to keep the corks or caps in place.

That said, you want about 1oz of sugar per gallon of wine for priming.

If you are looking for BOTH sparkle and residual sweetness then I would suggest that you force carbonate and you back sweeten the wine to the level of sweetness you want.

 

[Marches2]

Are you looking for sparkle or sweetness and sparkle? If just the sparkle then I would ferment bone dry and prime with just enough sugar to prevent bottle bombs. But you need to select your bottles and caps. Wine bottles won't work because there will be too much pressure to keep the cork locked down. Beer bottles will work as will champagne bottles (or bottles for sparkling wine) but you will need to use wire cages to keep the corks or caps in place.

That said, you want about 1oz of sugar per gallon of wine for priming.

If you are looking for BOTH sparkle and residual sweetness then I would suggest that you force carbonate and you back sweeten the wine to the level of sweetness you want.

Thanks for the reply, if I was to ferment it dry, then prime, is the risk of exploding bottles not offset as you csn calculate the amount of co2 per gram of sugar?

 

[bernardsmith]

Yes... and no. If you simply "ferment dry" then how certain are you that there is no sugar left? Is "dry" a final gravity of 1.002, or 1.000 or .998 , .996? or even .994? So, sure if you prime with a known amount of sugar you can predict the pressure that the CO2 that sugar will exert but you also may need to take into account the residual sugar that may be fermented plus any gas that was already saturating the wine before you primed (unless of course you degassed completely). And bottle bombs are the worse case... but gushing bottles is another problem though with a gusher the only thing that might be damaged is your reputation.

 

[Seamonkey84]

I’ve been taught that Properly degassing a batch before carbonating is the right procedure to begin with. You don’t want all the volatile Stuff that built up during primary (yeast farts) to stay in there, that’s where most of the off flavors and aromas in a young batch comes from. Degassing makes the batch clear better, as particles won’t be suspended by the micro bubbles.

 

[Marches2]

Yes... and no. If you simply "ferment dry" then how certain are you that there is no sugar left? Is "dry" a final gravity of 1.002, or 1.000 or .998 , .996? or even .994? So, sure if you prime with a known amount of sugar you can predict the pressure that the CO2 that sugar will exert but you also may need to take into account the residual sugar that may be fermented plus any gas that was already saturating the wine before you primed (unless of course you degassed completely). And bottle bombs are the worse case... but gushing bottles is another problem though with a gusher the only thing that might be damaged is your reputation.

Perfect thanks for that!

 

[Marches2]

I’ve been taught that Properly degassing a batch before carbonating is the right procedure to begin with. You don’t want all the volatile Stuff that built up during primary (yeast farts) to stay in there, that’s where most of the off flavors and aromas in a young batch comes from. Degassing makes the batch clear better, as particles won’t be suspended by the micro bubbles.

How woukd I go about that, I'm a complete beginner

 

[Seamonkey84]

it requires either time to gas off naturally or using a drill powered wine whip. With the whip, it’s shaped to agitate without splashing, so to not add oxygen into it. How to Degas Wine: 3 Simple Approaches - Wine Turtle

 

[bernardsmith]

it requires either time to gas off naturally or using a drill powered wine whip. With the whip, it’s shaped to agitate without splashing, so to not add oxygen into it. How to Degas Wine: 3 Simple Approaches - Wine Turtle

But you can degas in many different ways. If you have a small vacuum pump, for example, and you use it to pull the wine or mead from the carboy it is in into a target carboy that action of creating a vacuum and so sucking the wine from one vessel into another will pull out all the gases from the first container (the set up is a little complex as you need to protect the pump so that it does not pull liquid into itself and you can do that by having a safety container between the pump and the target carboy so you are pulling a vacuum through two containers. (f course , there are some pumps that use a different technique and so they are not susceptible to being flooded).
Another way - It uses more elbow grease than the drill is simply to stir the wine vigorously. You stir it , and as Seamonkey says you don't whip air into it but you may need to stir for 20 minutes to remove much of the CO2.
A third way is to add sanitized material with rough edges (could be silicone screws and the like). The rough edges create points for the gas to nucleate and when that happens (that's like moisture in the clouds collecting around dust particles and forming rain) the molecules of CO2 can more readily gather and when they gather they form bubbles large enough to escape.

 

[Seamonkey84]

Even adding some pieces of oak into the batch can cause that effect to some degree.

 

[bernardsmith]

Even adding some pieces of oak into the batch can cause that effect to some degree.

Yupper - because the wood has lots and lots of edges for the gas to nucleate.