Wine making

I'm going to be making some Elderberry wine soon and have been collecting some bottles for it. I've more screw cap bottles than ones that had corks, will the screw caps ones be ok to use with corks?

Steve...

 

Hi Steve, how do you make your wine? In spite of my father having owned a vinyard and produced his own excellent quality wine for decades - I would not know where to start...!

 

Hi Steve,

As long as its finished fermenting properly, corks will pop out if its not stopped but screw top bottles will explode.

You can stop the ferment with campden tablets to be sure.

 

If you're making elderberry wine it will need at least a year to mature, which is best done in a demijohn, giving you plenty of time to collect some other types of bottle. If you bottle elderberry wine prematurely it will drop out sediment (tannins) in the bottles.

Screw top bottles are weaker at the top than bottles designed to take corks, but are also slightly wider meaning cheapo spongy corks may want to slide out as soon as you've driven them home, and better quality corks may split the screw threaded top.

 

hang on and get some proper wine bottles, it can stay in the demijon for ages, if your corks shrink the wine will turn to vinigar if it ferments the bottles may bust and when you think of the work in making a good wine (if it turns out good) why risk loosing it over rubbish bottles.

Good luck with it, hope its cracking stuff.

 

Cheers Zig...I'm not planning to use screw caps, but I'll use screw cap bottles, then cork them. That'll be safe?

Steve...

 

Think you missed the last couple of posts out Steve, have another look at what Scrunge & the others said

 

That sounds fun Steve! Are elderberries wild or have you grown your own?

 

Made about 20 Gallons of home made wine last year from various things in the garden & hedges: so far my conclusions are:

- Rhubarb makes a nice wine but you need a lot to get enough flavor, best combined with other things unless you have a real surplus
- Made quite a nice Rose from the grapes on my vine & those donated from another source, didnt leave it long enough to clear so its got quite a lot of sediment in the bottle
- Rosehip came out perfectly, just dont think I like it very much
- First batch of elderberry was undrinkable - dont know what I did wrong but it was strangely sweet & vomit-inducing. Possibly left too many of the little stems in, all 12 bottles down the sink. Second batch past the initial tasting & is put away until next year
- Damson is looking promising, needs another 6 months or so in the bottle
- Parsnip is looking promising too, took a long time to clear & stop fermenting but should be bottled at the weekend if I have time
+ a couple of other experiments with Brewers Malt, Fruit Juices, Jam & anything else that comes my way all of which I will drink when I have no proper drinkies in the house.

Slowly ramping up this years with two gallons of damson - interestingly its looking like red milkshake at the moment, hopefully it will clear when I rack it next & add some more pectin.

Going back to the original question - I use screwtop wine bottles (donated by the dozen from my local pub) with corks without any issues so far, as well as the odd big gin bottle if they have any empties - if you use good corks I wouldnt worry too much.

Finally a question of my own - I was given a couple of old demijohns with some sort of white residue in the bottom. I dont think its paint, since they still had bungs & airlocks in so Im guessing some sort of cleaning gunk was left in them for a couple of years. Nothing Ive tried so far has managed to shift it (Soaking in warm water - Weak Cleaner - Stronger Cleaner - getting the bottle brush in there & trying to clear it) Anyone have any other suggestions ? Im close to chucking them but it kinda goes against the grain to throw anything away.

Ta - Nick.
Apologies for the long 2nd post !

 

I have always seen my mother, fanatic of natural remedies, cleaning big glass containers with nettles, salt in big grain or pebbles. But I couldn't tell you exactly how to proceed.

I read about caustic soda, but one has to be very careful how to operate because it can burn your hands.

 

Well ....

The first thing I'd suggest is a length of chain, some gravel, a handful of old screws or something of that ilk. Then, pour in either -

1 - a fairly strong bleach solution - although that'll result in a lot of rinsing afterwards.

2 - soda crystals and boiling water

3 - vinegar (I find boiling it and just leaving it to get cold)

Denture cleaning tablets - just 'scale up' whatever it says on the tube with regards to how many to use - then add a few extra!

With all of these (except perhaps the last suggestion), you'll probably do better to leave the 'solution' in the demijohn for a few days, swirling around as and when you think/feel like it. I'm not suggesting any/either of them will work first time, but they're what I've used for cleaning badly stained decanters and glass vases.

 

Thanks for the ideas - Ive got some fish tank gravel that I use for topdressing on houseplants so a handful of that & some vinegar might do the trick. Tempted to stick some nettle leaves in anyway just 'cos it would be nice to find a use for the things. Hmm - having said that I haven't tried Nettle Wine yet..

 

Cheap weak bleach has always removed the crud from even the most disgusting demijohns I've ever obtained. Well wash several times afterwards as chlorine has been indentified as having potential for causing 'cork taint' but I've used it hundreds of times and never had a problem.

 

'Back in the day' both my Father and Father-in-law produced some very effective drain cleaner, err I mean, home made wine - ye gods some of it was vile! Yet everyone seemed to rave about home made wine, so my husband and I decided to have a go, basically in the hope of producing something that was drinkable without actually melting your fillings. We didn't have much money so with nothing more than a plastic bucket, a borrowed demijohn and some plastic lemonade bottles we made the cheapest sort of homemade wine we could think of - nettle.

We made the stuff, racked it off into the plastic bottles then promptly lost interest, so just put the bottles in the shed. Months later I went to the shed and, you've guessed it, all these plastic bottles had taken on the sort of shape you'd normally associate either with something seen under a microscope or an alien life form! Still, we opened a bottle (very carefully I might add) and the result was ........... delicious. The wine had, I suppose, continued to ferment in the bottles and had produced the most delicious sweet, sparkling wine we've ever tasted.

In the intervening 30 or so years, we've occasionally had another go at nettle wine but have never managed to create anything even approaching what we called our 'nettle champagne'.