I need to bottle a batch of wine and am having difficulty in finding a good set of instructions. I’ve bottled many batches of beer, but this will be my first (and possibly) last occassion to bottle wine. Can someone point me towards a tutorial or basic instructions?
Biggest questions:
- Should I rack to a bottling bucket and use my bottle filler?
- I have synthetic corks sealed in their packaging. Should I soak them in StarSan or some other sanitizer?
- How full should I fill the bottles?
To answer your questions in order: Yes, No and When you pull out your filler it will be approximately the correct level.
- You need to use your bottling bucket to add the last dose of sulphite.
- The corks are clean. No winery on earth soaks their corks. Just dump’em in the hopper. Although it might help the artificial cork material to slide in easier.
- Self explanatory. Unless you use a Ferrari filler. Then fill about 2 1/2 inches from the lip of the bottle.
Thanks for the help guys.
Backstory: The friend who got me into brewing got out of the hobby about 4 years ago after finding out he could no longer drink (medical reasons). He still had a six gallon carboy of red wine sitting in his basement that he was finally ready to get rid of. It was mine for the taking, I just had to bottle it
Follow up to this, I have seen individuals that say they throw their bottles in a dish washer. Can I do this? If I do what should I use for the cleaner the regular stuff I would put in there for dishes?
Don’t use anything as a cleaner, but set it to sanitize so the heat of the water will sanitize the bottles.
Ok, and I don’t need to use a sanitizer after that?