{"id":88,"date":"2007-06-16T06:19:09","date_gmt":"2007-06-16T13:19:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wineintheshower.com\/?p=88"},"modified":"2010-02-27T10:05:50","modified_gmt":"2010-02-27T18:05:50","slug":"finally-time-to-bottle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/docker.vsl:8080\/index.php\/2007\/06\/16\/finally-time-to-bottle\/","title":{"rendered":"Finally Time to Bottle!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Bottling<\/p>\n

Happily the wine was very clear at the last racking<\/a>, so I was confident that it was fine to bottle after 2 more weeks.\u00a0 I had added extra Kmeta<\/a> (potassium metabisulphite) for long-term aging when it was racked previously.\u00a0 There was a little layer of goop in the bottom, so I opted to rack the wine into another clean carboy before starting to bottle, so that I would not have to worry about getting solids into my last bottles.\u00a0 That would NOT make a nice gift, I\u2019m sure.<\/p>\n

First, I gathered everything together that I might need.\u00a0 Bottles, bottle jet for rinsing bottles, bottle tree for draining bottles.\u00a0 Corks, corker.\u00a0 Auto-siphon<\/a> and automatic bottle filler.\u00a0 The wine was racked into the clean carboy, then set up on the counter.\u00a0 The bottles were new, but I rinsed them out with easy clean solution anyway, just to be sure.\u00a0 To rinse, I put easy clean solution in the bottle jet, then the bottle gets pumped on the phallus until water squirts up into it.\u00a0 Depending on your state of mind, it\u2019s either very exciting or very disturbing.\u00a0 Either way, I usually do about 3 squirts of solution per bottle, then the bottle goes on the draining tree.\u00a0 The bottles don\u2019t need to be completely dry, and the easy clean doesn\u2019t need to be rinsed out of the bottles.\u00a0 I prepped the corks by putting them in dilute easy clean solution just before we started, but I wasn\u2019t sure it was the best thing to do.\u00a0 There were several aspects of the bottling process that I didn\u2019t really have instructions for, so I just kind of started.<\/p>\n

I had read that the bottles shouldn\u2019t sit open for very long, so my hubby was put on corking duty.\u00a0 He also helped me start the siphon into the bottler, and then we were off!\u00a0 Oh, what a mess \u2013 red wine started spraying out of every crack of the bottler, so we clipped off the siphon and I actually read the instructions for using it.\u00a0 I adjusted the screw at the top, and it eventually stopped spraying at least.\u00a0 As soon as the bottle reached the bottom of the bottler, the wine flow stopped.\u00a0 I then had to *remember* to push the button on the autobottler to actually stop the flow of wine when I removed the bottler to move it to another bottle.\u00a0 I think I only lost about one bottle\u2019s worth of wine on the floor and cabinets (and me, actually) before I caught on.\u00a0 We also quickly realized that paper towels are an important requirement for the bottling process.\u00a0 I also got out some plastic boxes to put the wine bottles in as they were filled, since the bottler did drip a little bit every time I switched bottles.<\/p>\n

We eventually finished, and actually ended up with 30 bottles.\u00a0 The last bottle wasn\u2019t quite full, so we consumed this bottle the same day. It had a slightly weird aftertaste with first taste, but that went away quickly. There was a nice nose of berries, good tannins — definitely still young with bold fruit flavors. Really not bad for a first wine and first taste without any bottle aging!<\/p>\n

The final touches were to put on the labels, including the front label and a sticker on the back with the bottling date, and shrink caps.\u00a0 This was a little challenging, I used steam from my tea kettle, which resulted in some pretty wrinkled caps.\u00a0 But, overall, they looked pretty!<\/p>\n

\"California<\/p>\n

The army of wine is ready to head to the cellar \u2013 in 3 days anyway.\u00a0 The wine is left upright for at least 3 days to let the corks kind of get comfy and settled, otherwise they might leak or even pop out.\u00a0 Or so I read.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Happily the wine was very clear at the last racking, so I was confident that it was fine to bottle after 2 more weeks.\u00a0 I had added extra Kmeta (potassium metabisulphite) for long-term aging when it was racked previously.\u00a0 There was a little layer of goop in the bottom, so I opted to rack the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[11,6,4,5,7],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/docker.vsl:8080\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/docker.vsl:8080\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/docker.vsl:8080\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/docker.vsl:8080\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/docker.vsl:8080\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=88"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/docker.vsl:8080\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1393,"href":"http:\/\/docker.vsl:8080\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88\/revisions\/1393"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/docker.vsl:8080\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/docker.vsl:8080\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/docker.vsl:8080\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}