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Making Supplies
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Primary fermentation bucket (6.5 gallons)
5 ft. siphon tubing
Racking cane
Bottle filler
Champagne bottles
Crown caps
Bottle capper
Sanitizer
Plastic Champagne Stoppers
Champagne Wires
House Wine
EC-1118 Yeast
Cane Sugar
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1) First of all, these instructions assume you know how to make a still white "house" wine. Do so
with the following rules:
* use champagne yeast
* do not use finings, bentonite, or potassium sorbate or other stabilizers
* rack wine for clarity if possible
2) Add approximately a cup of cane sugar (no less) to the wine, and add EC-1118 yeast
(rehydrated).
3) Bottle in thick champagne bottles - cap these bottles with beer caps.
4) Let stand for 6-12 weeks at approximately 65 degrees F. Uncap one bottle - is there gas?
5) Place bottles up-side down. If you have the proper equipment for this operation (called
"riddling") then you'll be able to tilt the bottles a little bit every couple of days until they are upside
down. If you don't have the ability to do this, just place the bottles up-side down and turn the
bottles a half-turn or so every day. Do this for 2-3 weeks. This allows the sediment to settle in the
neck of the bottle against the bottle cap.
6) THE HARD PART is disgorging the bottles. This means you want to get that sediment OUT of
the bottle. DO NOT DO THIS AT ROOM TEMPERATURE. First prepare a "brine" of coarse salt
and chipped/crushed ice (one part salt to 4 parts ice).
7) Stick some bottles neck-down (don't shake these up - transport them carefully up-side down to
keep the sediment from moving around) into the brine deep enough to allow the wine in the bottle's
neck to freeze above the sediment.
8) Get a fermentation bucket or something similar - to catch excess wine and sediment.
9) Take one of the readied bottles of partially frozen wine and hold firmly between the knees,
pointing the neck toward the bucket. Remove the cap. The pressure in the bottle should force the
"frozen" sediment out of the neck in a chunk. This could happen quickly or it could slide out.
10) Quickly place your thumb over the neck of the bottle, or you're going to have a rush of your
wine follow that sediment. Hold your thumb there for at least 15-20 seconds to allow the pressure
to settle down a little. Stop the bottle with a sterilized plastic champagne cork and tie it down with
champagne wire.
* Note: if you lose a lot of wine out of the bottles, you can top each bottle off with some wine.
11) Let your "champagne" age at least 3 more months for best flavor.
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