Bottling first batch of wine on October 20, 2004, a Riesling.

 

Some bottles sparkling in the drying rack.  They are too tall to get sanitized in the dishwasher so they got the old fashioned treatment, a two-minute dunk in Star San.  Those bubbles are characteristic of Star San and have no effect on the taste of the wine or beer.

 

This picture is an attempt to display the clarity of the wine.  You can see the layer of sediment at the bottom that settle out after I added the fining agent isinglass.  I think the wine was a little clearer than you perceive from this picture, but still, you can easily see the bottle of wine I had sitting on the other side of the carboy.

Check out the act of corking a bottle while listening to the Red Sox complete their amazing comeback against the Yankees.  video 852k

Here is a closeup of the process, showing the corks going in to the neck of the bottles..   video 1.4 MB

Here are my 29 finished bottles.  You can see that some of the corks were either in too far, or not in far enough, but most of them were the correct depth.  It was the first time I'd used a corker.  That floor corker works pretty slick.   Alcohol is 11% and the taste was good, but young.  The instructions say to give it at least 3 months in the bottle before starting to drink it.

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