The rewards and frustrations of home winemaking

Tag archive: bottling

Lots o’ Bottling

It’s finally time to bottle the barolo that has been bulk aging since March.  I wanted to avoid bottling any of the goop that has settled out at the bottom, so I racked off the clear wine into a bucket.  I noticed a white film at the top similar to what I saw a few […]

Bottling Merlot During the Miramar Air Show

It is kinda cool to look up and see jets flying in formations overhead while you’re bottling your wine.  We all got together to bottle the rest of the merlot hanging out in the barrel, and it happened to be the day of the Miramar Air Show.  We got our bottling line set up outside […]

Starting Syrah Fermentation and Bottling Zin

Time to get the syrah started.  I met Dave at the office, and he set up the “server room winery” with plastic sheeting while I revved up the yeast.  I heated up some water and dissolved in go-ferm, then added ICV-D254 yeast and let it wake up for about 15 minutes.  Then I added some […]

That Doesn’t Look Quite Right

I started on the immense task of actually putting foil capsules and labels on all of the barrel wines I bottled a few weeks ago.  Occasionally some of the bottles I recycle have super-fat necks, and so instead of the heat capsules sliding nicely over the neck, I have to pull them on until they’re […]

Bottling Chianti and the Case of the Leaking Cork

Today I bottled 30 bottles each of a cabernet sauvignon kit (for Dave) and chianti (for me).  As I was putting labels on the chianti, I noticed one cork with wine seeping out of the top.  I’ve never had this happen before.  I yanked that one out, and wine spewed out – we had overfilled […]

Bottling Sauv Blanc

Time to bottle the sauvignon blanc that had the battonage treatment.  That added another 6 weeks of waiting to the kit, I’m very curious how this wine will compare to the “untreated” kit.  I will let these bottles wait for about 3 months before doing a side-by-side, to give it as much of a fair […]

Bottling Party

Our friend invited us over to “help” him bottle his 2 barrels of wine.  We spent most of the time drinking barrel samples, the bottling went pretty quickly.  We did have a problem at the end where the corks were coming back out of the bottles.  I’m still not sure why this started happening, but […]

Oi That’s a LOT of Wine!

My goal was to fill all of these bottles today.  It turned out I filled over half, but decided to wait to fill the rest next weekend.  Why do today what you can do a week from now, eh? I did at least put together all of the blends.  ‘Fiesta Islad Cab’ will be mainly […]

Yakima Synergy and Alsatian Riesling Bottling

The Yakima Synergy is clear enough that I’m not going to filter it for bottling.  It came out great!  I did leave about 700 mL at the bottom of the carboy that had some sediment and poured it off into a separate bottle to clear a little more.  Tasting notes: Very faint nose of apricots […]

Bottling Argentinian Trio

I used a 5 micron inline filter to bottle the Argentinian Trio today, and I noticed that the last 2 bottles had paper floating in them!  Total bummer.  I’m not sure if I didn’t set something up right, or what.  Oh well, I’ll mark the corks on these and keep them for home consumption.  The […]