Bottling of the Elderberry port

The elderberry port is finally in bottles. The fermentation stopped a few weeks ago, and this weekend it was time to get it into bottles. I had the help of my brother, which was really nice. There are just many things to hold and and extra pair of hands is really convenient. Here are the pictures of what we did. Started by placing the demijohn on the countertop, taking care to not disturb the sediment.

 Meanwhile we boiled some corks to get them into the bottles, and cleaned out six bottles. I have tried to gather old used bottles, but couldn`t gather a sufficient amount of bottles with the right opening and size, so eventually I gave in and ordered twelve appropriate bottles for €0.80 a piece. Along with that I ordered a simple bottling-device. I had planned on using a mallet, but figured that I could just as well invest the €5,- in this device I`ll be using more often in the future.

 Above you see the bottling device that compresses a cork untill it fits the bottleneck and shoves it in. It makes life a whole lot easier. When the bottles were clean and the corks ready, we started racking the port into the bottles. In hindsight I think racking the port into another container before putting it in bottles would have reduced the sediment in the last bottle we filled, so that is something to remember for the next time we do this. The next picture is a bit messy, but getting this process on is tricky enough while holding tubes and making sure the bottle doesn`t overflow.

 For the last bit of port in the demijohn you have to tilt to get it out without sediment. When all six bottles were full we pushed in the corks. This is a matter of placing the corks into the device, placing the device on the bottle, and pushing in the plunger. Here is a shot of my brother pushing one in.

 While we were at it, we racked off the plum wine into the now available (and cleaned) demijohn. This is to clear it further. The result of the evenings work are six bottles of port, an a racked gallon of plum wine of which we got to have a little taste.

 Since we didn`t degas the port, and want to know if there is risks of the corks coming out, I sealed the corks with wax. When the wax breaches we know the cork moves, and then we have to take action.

Six bottles of port. I like the colour. I didn`t really get to taste it yet though. The small sip I got was promising, but I couldn`t really taste all that was going on. In a couple of months we can open a bottle and see what we think of it. If people like it I want to scale up and make 12 bottles next year. Then there is some to give away as well.