Bottling the Wine - Less Tears & Broken Glass Than Expected

We should have bottled the wine a few months ago, but that didn't work out so well.  I had fears of broken glass, spilled wine, and tears.  As it turned out, bottling is so easy and happens pretty quick.  Thankfully the Banker discovered an ingenious method to minimize wine loss.  Well it impressed me and alleviated my fears, so therefore it is "ingenious." A couple extra months in the carboy didn't hurt the wine either.

We had about 30 wine bottles that previously held anything from 3 Buck Chuck to Pinot Grigio - why buy empty wine bottles when you can buy full bottles, drink their contents, and end up with "free" bottles?  The Wine Making Kit came with 30 corks, so we were set for corks.  While some people choose to buy higher end corks, we thought the corks from the kit were of fine quality for our first try.

I held the large end of the siphon hose inside the carboy which we set up high on the counter to siphon the wine down to the bottles below.  The Banker then did his neat trick holding the small end of the siphon hose up to stop the flow of wine.  I "carefully" took the following video demonstrating our bottling process...ignore the spilt wine on the floor.

Pretty slick!  And what a handsome guy.

After filling 30 bottles (and bonus bottle 31) we were ready to begin corking.  Matt pulled out the Portuguese Corking Machine that came with our wine kit.  Northern Brewer (the fine establishment where we bought the Deluxe Winemaking Starter Kit equipment) sold a more expensive corking machine than what we received with our kit, so I was worried that it meant our corking machine would be cumbersome and/or difficult to use.  Nope!  Again, that fear was quashed when the Banker easily placed a bottle of wine in the springy bottom holder that secures the bottle, placed a cork in the little spot where the cork is placed, and easily pulled down the lever.  I asked him if it was as easy as he made it look, and he offered me the lever.  I (skinny, wimpy arms) corked a bottle!  Success!

Here is a video of the very easy corking process.

So there you have it!  30 corked bottles of wine!  Now the bottles need to sit upright for 3 days while the corks are allowed to seal.  After 3 days they may be placed on their sides for aging.

And what did we do with the 31st bottle?  I had a clever idea with a zip lock and rubber band (recall that we only had the 30 corks that came with the kit):

This one will be used for cooking or immediate consumption, of course.

Racking & Clarification & Google Calendars

NOTE: This blog post was started in February.  Note the lapse in time until we actually bottled the wine...much later than necessary.  Explanation to come in the next blog post.  Also, we lost the camera for a brief period.  We are very responsible vintners with our first batch...

So the very responsible and organized Banker and Librarian were a bit late on the 8 days following the Stabilising and Clearing step...it's going to be OK, but clearly we need some help staying on task.  The Winemaking Journal is very helpful, but what do I check every day?  My Google Calendars!  So I created a Google Calendar to keep me on task.  Note - hahahaha, "on task."

Well this step wasn't very interesting, so I'm quite late at posting it and soon you'll see the blog post that involves the bottling procedure.   Note - hahahaha, "soon."