UKC

Two quickies: Anyone used those plastic screw on caps - so that you can re-use screw top wine bottles for home made wine? And anyone used recycled corks?

In reply to mick taylor:
No to both, but corks are dirt cheap. Tapered ones are theoretically slightly less good but a lot easier to put in.

Putting corks in screw top bottles is a bad idea as the glass is a too thin, so if that's what you have then go with the screw tops.

In reply to davidbeynon:

Thanks for info. Never knew about glass thickness. My plan is to make 3 gallons a week (got 15 demijohns in total, and 2 fermenting bins), but realise may need to slow down to ensure fermentation, and need all available bottles. Need to start emptying the freezer of fruit to get to the fish fingers and oven chips!

In reply to davidbeynon:


+1

I tend to keep the decent wine bottles (with corks) through the year for making the homemade stuff. It's easy enough to get cork stoppers also - plastic tops with a short cork - for those wines which are 'ready' to drink straight away (ie unlikely to get any less rough with age)

Martin

In reply to davidbeynon:

I never had any trouble putting corks in screw top bottles.

In reply to Mike Peacock:

same here ive put corks in pretty much every type of bottle. I wouldnt however use the hammer in type of device, the proper cork compressor is the only way to do it safely.

I usually save the metal lids and reuse them on screw tops if Im not keeping it for a long time

In reply to ow arm:

I used to use a twin-lever corker. Always did the job well.

In reply to mick taylor:
Another vote for corks and a corker. Cheap and easy to do. I reckon there may be hygene issues with screw tops as they don't necessarily form a perfect seal like they do in the factory.

In reply to mick taylor:

You can pick up corks cheap from wilkos. I keep my screw top wine bottles though and re use once ive sterilised them. The wine should be suitably stabilised by the time I bottle and as long as no primer is added no excessive gas build up should occur.

In reply to PhilMW:

true however if you plan on keeping the wine for a while Id suggest getting the silicone treated corks, or at least getting good quality ones.
I found a lot of the cheap corks went soft and broke on removing, or the wine spoiled. Ive not had any problems with the treated corks even though they are a few pence more expensive each.

In reply to mick taylor:

Another vote for corks - at least they can blow out if you end up with secondary fermentation. Screw-top bottles can explode under those circumstances. Rather have wine on the ceiling than flying glass!

In reply to ow arm:

Yeah good point on storage. My stuff never lasts long enough once its bottled!!!!! Wine is to be drinked!!!! hahahaha

In reply to mick taylor:

just another off topic suggestion, if you cant get steriliser/cleaning powder you can use milton tablets/liquid

I've bottled hundreds of bottles and stored for >5 years and I happily use wine bottles that had screw caps, with corks and a bang-in corker. Never had one split - just avoid the bottles of some of the sweeter low alcohol wines - lambrusco etc which are obviously thinner (but also usually have a narrower neck so the cork wouldn't fit anyway).

I do sometimes use plastic screw on caps for ciders or meads where they aren't going to be stored as long, and my GF's father just re-uses the original metal screw caps (and doesn't even take the labels off the bottles) yet still gets good results.

If you're really going flat out (3 gallons a week is a lot of work) then even think about racking the wine into empty 5 litre plastic water bottles.

It is also possible to get hold of self fill wine bags/boxes (I've even seen some in our local hardware store) but they work out quite expensive on a small scale. I haven't yet managed to work out a way of removing the tap from an emptied wine box.

In reply to mick taylor:

My parents used to use plastic stoppers with an internal thread that required a special type of cork screw like tool to remove. I've no idea what their advantages were over normal corks.

In reply to Ron Rees Davies:

youtube.com/watch?v=9K-rJ-xva58&

Only takes one!

In reply to Firestarter:
Sorry, we're talking at cross purposes here.

That exploded bottle is the result of fermentation taking place in a sealed bottle. It could happen in a corked bottle but is far more likely in a screw top or crown capped bottle. However, the problem is not the bottle but bottling at the wrong time.

I was trying to address the question of whether or not you could use a screw capped wine bottle to then take a cork, which is what I do most of the time for still wines.

I agree my girlfriends fathers batches (screw capped wine) are a bit of an explosion risk, but he doesn't tend to have them sitting round long maturing.

I've only ever had one batch (Cherry wine which I tried bottling too sweet because it hadn't been bubbling for over 6 weeks) that blew corks out - 4 of the 6 bottles blew on the same evening, no glass damage - the other two bottles I actually managed to salvage by letting off a little pressure, putting a screw cap over the cork and then keeping them in a secured (multiple towel layers) state. Made a very dry but still drinkable sparkling wine.

In reply to Ron Rees Davies:
No worries! That was what I was talking about in my first post though - secondary fermentation in a sealed bottle using screw tops rather than corks. I didn't make that very clear, sorry! Proper knackered my mums airing cupboard!!