Bottling Day!
Finally the time
has come to bottle up the juice I’ve tended to for the last year or
so. In my cellar bottling line, I employ some friends to help me get
the job done. Below is an outline of each station the bottles go
through to be filled. One person will man each station and it goes
pretty smoothly. After a 100 bottles or so we take a little break for
meatball hoagies and some other snacks. I also put out previous
vintages and beer too. This little event at my wine cellar attracts
friends and family alike. Folks just seem to be interested in the
process! Plus I can employ those folks to because everyone wants to
take a turn with the corker or bottle filler etc...
Bottle washer
I have built a bottle washer out of a shallow tub, water pump, and
the bottle rinser base and rack from morewine. The rack is filled
with 12 bottles, then placed on top of the washer. The pump is turned
on with the flip of a switch and the bottles have a sulfite/citric
acid solution circulated through them. The solution then drains
back into the tub. This sanitizes the bottles and they do not need to
be rinsed after.
Nitrogen Purge
The rack of bottles can then be lifted off the washer and placed on
the purging base. The purging base is just another rinsing base but
is connected to a nitrogen tank instead. The bottles are gassed to
purge the oxygen out of the bottles. This does a couple things: It
significantly reduces oxygen pick-up sustained to the wine and
reduces bottle shock. The flow meter is set pretty high and purge the
bottles for about 30 seconds before passing them on to the bottler.
Bottle Filler
The
bottle filler I use is a dual-spout gravity style filler. The vessels
are placed on an elevated plane and a siphon is started. Once the
reservoir of the bottle filler is full enough, the spouts can be
primed and remain that way until the vessels are empty. The
bottle is placed under the spout and placed on the shelf while it
fills. Once the bottle is full, the flow stops and the bottle is
removed and passed to the corker. This
makes quick work of bottling. Eventually I would like to have CO2
flowing into the reservoir blanketing and protecting the wine to
better help with oxygen pick-up during the bottling process.
Corker
Before the bottle is corked, it is checked for the proper fill-level
(about 0.75”- 1” from the bottom of the cork once it’s
inserted.) Before a
cork touches the corker, I spray the driver and jaws with 90% alcohol
to sanitize it. The cork is driven home and passed to the shrink
capping station.
I use the Portuguese floor corker for this job. When dong more than 50 bottles at time, this is the corker to use. The hand held corkers are difficult to use and get poor results.
Shrink Capping
I
use a pot of boiling water to apply the shrink caps. Simply put the
cap on, and dip the neck of the bottle into the water for a few
seconds and cap will shrink uniformly around the bottle. I plan to
upgrade to a heat tunnel shrink capper now that I have kids running
around the bottling area. Plus, anytime someone bumps the table the
water is disrupted and spills.
Labeling
Labeling
is typically done later after everyone has left. I like to do it
myself to make sure they go on right. This is no offense to my crew,
but I serve wine and beer during bottling day and well you know, some
may go on crooked after a while! I use a glue stick to apply my
labels. By the time the caps and the labels go on, the bottles are
looking pretty snazzy in my opinion!
Done
Once the bottles are filled, and dressed, I allow them to stand
upright for a few days before laying them down to age. This is so the
corks won’t leak and any pressure within the bottle will equalize
prior to laying down to age.
All done! Now my carboys are free to accommodate more wine in the
coming year.
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