I’m going to be bottling some low-carbed British styles soon, and I’d prefer the convenience of my 750 and 1500ml wine bottles, but I don’t have much experience with them holding pressure. Does anybody have data or anecdotal experience with naturally carbing in wine bottles?
My beers will all be under 2 volumes.
I didn’t know that standard wine bottles could hold any pressure.
I think they could take 1.0-1.5vol CO2, but I know that corks often push out of wine if it is bottled too early and pressure builds up. I don’t know how much pressure a cork would hold before it popped out. The Belgian corks are a really tight fit compared to wine, and they are also typically caged although I think thats just a precaution.
Definitely get the biggest cork you can, 1.75" and 23mm diameter. Report back if you try this, just so people will know if it works.
I did it with one bottle, using a #9 cork in a berliner weisse at 3.5 volumes, and I caged the top like a belgian, but since I only had one data point, I thought I’d check to see if anybody had done it a lot. I think I’ll do a few bottles with the corks this next time. An added benefit is that you can reuse corks if you don’t use a corkscrew to remove them.
