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I spend much of my time degassing my wine, however, one of my readers asked me today how she can add carbonation to her wine so that she can make a sparkling wine.

Here are some quick suggestions that I gave her:

1) Champagne and beer are actually carbonated in the bottle (for champagne it is called “methode champenoise”) so if you wanted to go the natural route so you could add corn sugar to your wine must just before you bottle your wine. This will restart the fermentation thereby naturally carbonating your wine/beer. I make beer in addition to wine and this definitely works.

For example, for a 23 litre batch of beer I would prepare a “primer syrup” by dissolving 3/4 cup of dextrose (corn sugar) in 2 cups of boiling water. Pour the syrup into a primary then rack the beer/wine must into the primary then gently stir the mixture together. You can then rack the must into your bottles and allow 2 weeks carbonation from there. If you want more carbonation add more sugar, add less sugar for less “bubbly”.

2) You can also use a carbonation system such as the Tap-A-Draft that carbonates your wine/beer in the container by adding pressurized CO2 similar to a beer kegging system. I’ve actually seen this one in one of our local wine supply stores and it’s pretty slick. Basically it adds a tap with two carbonation “taps” where you insert a small CO2 cannister (or one CO2 and one Nitrogen cannister if you’d like to have finer bubbles for say a stout style beer). Instead of a metal keg you get an oversized slender plastic bottle (similar to a two litre pop/soda bottle) They are sized to fit nicely in your fridge so that you can easily “tap your keg” and get a drink, while keeping the whole system cold. Typically takes about 5 days from the time you fill your bottle and add the carbonation tap to fully carbonate your beer/wine or wine cooler.

It’s a cool system but isn’t cheap. Expect to spend $50+ on the tap and then another $20+ per bottle.

You can go to http://www.sturmanbg.com/products/beverage_dispenser.asp to learn more.

If you have a different sneaky trick to carbonate your wine, beer or wine cooler please do let me know!

Scott “The WineMaking Guy”

P.S. Here’s an interesting article from WineMaker Magazine that goes into greater detail on how to make sparkling wine that is worth reading if you’re interested in learning more:

www.winemakermag.com/departments/288.html