Wine bottle count calculator.

How it works

The standard wine bottle holds 750 millilitres (Wikipedia). A US gallon is 3.785 litres, so a 5 gallon batch is 18.93 L, which fills 25.2 bottles. That means 25 full bottles and a little left over for tasting. Real batches lose volume to lees and racking, so enter a loss percentage to plan more realistically.

For a sparkling mead, GotMead’s bottling chapter says to use 3/4 cup of sugar per 5 gallons (2 1/2 tablespoons per gallon), mixed gently into the racked mead before bottling. It also says not to add stabilizing chemicals to a sparkling mead.

Worked example. 5 US gallons with no loss gives 18.93 L, 25.24 bottles and 25 full bottles, with 177 mL left over. The priming sugar is 3/4 cup, or 12.5 tablespoons, about 0.5 tablespoon per bottle. With a 5% loss the batch gives 23.97 bottles, so 23 full bottles.

Carbonating in the bottle builds pressure. GotMead warns that following its guidelines helps reduce “bottle bombs” and that beer bottles for screw-off caps should not be used. Only use bottles and closures made to hold pressure, and keep carbonated bottles somewhere safe.