Carbonating Box Wine

[fifis101]

Firstly... yes I've gone there... purely as an experiment because I was told that you can't carbonate cheap flat wine.

Ok so I grabbed a cheap arse box of fruity white, emptied it into my little 5L keg and hooked up the CO2. I set the pressure to 25psi and have left it for nearly 2 weeks. I checked it last night and it was really "fizzy" on the pour. Light when you pour a glass of soft drink and it foams right up and quickly settles back down. The issue is it doesn't seem to be holding the CO2. As in it doen't seem to be very carbonated. You can definitely taste it but not many bubbles etc.

Maybe I need a longer beer line. Maybe it's just foaming up and losing all the gas. I do have a flow control diconnect I can add on.

Have I done anything wrong? Is there something else I should have done?

 

[clickeral]

Is it cold?

 

[fifis101]

Yep. About 2degC.

 

[crowmanz]

I'd increase your pressure. Sparkling wine is up to 6 volumes of CO2 at 2 degrees this needs 45psi. 25psi is around 4 vol which is in your wheat beer range.

 

[fifis101]

I'd increase your pressure. Sparkling wine is up to 6 volumes of CO2 at 2 degrees this needs 45psi. 25psi is around 4 vol which is in your wheat beer range.

You may be right but I still feel like it should be far more carbonated than it is. I normally run a max of 15psi for my higher carbonated beers and they are well carbonated.

 

[fifis101]

I could try hooking it up to high pressure and roll it back and forth to force carb it. I just wanted to ask here first.

 

[crowmanz]

You may be right but I still feel like it should be far more carbonated than it is. I normally run a max of 15psi for my higher carbonated beers and they are well carbonated.

There's more stuff in beer to "hold" the carbonation in beer.

Example is soda water where anything under 30psi isn't right for me, so I set my reg to somewhere between 35-40psi

 

[MHB]

At 2oC and ~170kPa (25 PSI for the Luddites) your carbonation should be just under 8 grams / Litre.
Typically fizzy white wine is carbonated to 0.5-1.8 g/L so you are seriously over carbonated. This can cause some very strange effects.

Here is a good read on the carbonation of Champagne; there are some good links in the article if you want to explore further.
Mark

 

[fifis101]

So I have one saying to add more pressure & another saying I'm way over.
There is basically this mixed info when I look online too.

 

[justmat]

Assuming you’re at 2•c I’d aim for about 40-45 psi to achieve 6vol CO2, which is fairly standard for carbonated wines and champagne. This pressure is probably going to need a fair bit of extra flow resistance to slow down your wine though. I’d throw the FC disconnect on personally.

Typical still white wine has 0.5-1.8g/L of dissolved CO2, not sparkling wines and champagne.

 

[Vini2ton]

I don't know why you'd bother trying to fizz up cheap flat wine. Years ago we got a heap of reasonable Fizz. We put it in the vitamiser to de-fizz it, after which it was much more palatable. The things you do when you're young and dumb eh? Just drink it fast and have a bucket ready. Responsibly of course.