At last the wine is ready. Not quite ready for drinking, admittedly, but ready to syphon from the fermenter and bottle up, as its specific gravity has passed the magic 1000 point.

We’ve decided to dump the corks this year. They served us well last year and the year before, and squeezing them into the top of the bottles using the corking gun is quite fun, but we don’t have room to store our bottles horizontally and I’m worried that they dry out. The last couple of bottles of last year’s batch went bad from, I think, air seeping in. Obviously we don’t want that happening this time around.

So, as you can see from the picture, we’ve switched to plastic stoppers, which are tight enough to need a little assistance from a hammer and some elbow grease to get them in. I don’t think they’re going to be letting in any air any time soon and, better still, they’re re-usable, so when we pop them out to drink this year’s brew we can wash them off and keep them in store for next year’s brew.

All we have to do now is wait a month or so as they mature in the bottles and we can open the first few for drinking. Just in time for Christmas.

Related posts:

1. Bottling the wine
2. We’ve opened our first plum wine
3. Home-brewed wine