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Science

The Science Behind the Bubbly 79

Posted by CmdrTaco from the happy-new-years dept.
isabotage3 writes "Here is everything you need to know about champagne in time for New Year's — From how to maximize your bubbles to why bubbles follow certain patterns and then suddenly change to when the time is right to stop studying your bubbly and drink up."
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The Science Behind the Bubbly More

The Science Behind the Bubbly

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  • Too late... (Score:3, Informative)

    by rrohbeck ( 944847 ) on Sunday December 31, 2006 @06:19PM (#17418684)
    You should have told us an hour ago. :)
    Over 10 C (50 F) at midnight in northern Germany, FWIW. Yeah I know, just one data point.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by garcia ( 6573 )
      We had rain all morning in Minnesota and it's now snowing and thus ice. We tried to go out to drink some champagne with a friend but turned back less than 3 miles from home after hitting a curb near someone who had jumped the curb and landed in the treeline.

      They were ok and we're safe at home -- no champagne though.
      • You must not be a native Minnesotan....I managed all the snow last year with about 2mm of tread on my front (drive) tires...
    • We had unseasonably cold weather here in Pittsburgh in September and October. Should we start calling it "the ice age of 2006"?
    • I don't know why we're talking about the weather, but 1C/33F here in Finland. We're still waiting for the winter to start.
      • Same in Belgium.
        Last week it actually froze, but that didn't last for too long.

        Right now it's between 7C and 12C.
    • I think winter forgot us this year. Temperature today: 71f in Manning, SC, USA. It's normally around 40 this time of year. And it's been like this since September!
      • 59 F right now in north georgia, 10 PM. The bugs have been out,and we have dandelions blooming in the lawn and we have daffodils coming up!

        Usually when this happens we get nailed hard later on in the season. It will most likely hurt the fruit crop (apples and peaches) some as well.
    • Well, I always knew America's a year behind the civilized parts of the world. And ATM it's literally true ;-)
    • About 25 deg here at midnight (Adelaide, Australia). Cold beer was the order of the night, and a drunken splash in the pool at about 1.00am.

  • Because (Score:5, Funny)

    by dj961 ( 660026 ) on Sunday December 31, 2006 @06:28PM (#17418724) Journal
    If you're reading this, you will be drinking champagne with another human being.

  • Bubble size (Score:3, Interesting)

    by TubeSteak ( 669689 ) on Sunday December 31, 2006 @06:40PM (#17418784) Journal
    I wonder if this has anything to do with the size of the bubbles.

    I recall reading somewhere that higher quality champagne has smaller bubbles

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Achoi77 ( 669484 )

      Generally, there are two main ways of making sparkling wine:

      1: the classic sparkling wine method, a double fermentation process made by taking wine, adding in more yeast and sugar resulting in a natural formation of the gas from within.

      2: the soda pop method, where you literally inject CO2 into your wine. This is the cheapest way to make your wine sparkle.

      Merely based on my observation, sparkling wine made via gas injection will always result in larger bubbles than sparkling wines made the classic way. E

  • Picked up a couple bottles of Veuve Clicquot for $33 each this morning...
  • ...Wiki link about how "it's all really just sparkling wine unless it's from the Champagne region of France."

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous McCartneyf ( 1037584 )
      No, no, no.
      European champagne is only sparkling white wine unless it's from the Champagne area of France. (Though I understand some European sparkling whites have their own special appelations.)
      American champagne is champagne wherever it's grown. I don't think American champagne even has to contain alcohol.

      • Why America cheats. (Score:3, Informative)

        by Eevee ( 535658 )

        The US Senate never signed the Treaty of Versailles after WWI, which contained among other things the legal basis for naming wines. So as long as an American winery puts its location on the label, it can use champagne as a generic for sparkling wine.

        I, on the other hand, am trying a sparkling rosé this year just to be different. So there!

        • They just suffered thru a damned war and one of the items to that needed to be in the damned treaty was wine naming? Jesus.

          • To keep on a theme, that sparkling rosé that gave its life to make me happy tonight came from Alsace. Now, the bottle is marked as a product of France. So, can we conclude that the Alsace always belonged to France?

            Of course, the answer is no. It's been traded back and forth between France and the Holy Roman Empire/Germany multiple time; with the occasional change of name to Elsass-Lothringen. At the time in question, it had ended up with Germany after the Franco-Prussian War; it then became French

        • We all know politics suck, but COME ON.

          My first thought on reading the parent post was not about champagne, but that, while writing up a treaty to end a fucking war, politicians, and no doubt, lobbyists, had to add language for business considerations...

          Sadly, it appears to be true. Several sites [wikipedia.org] confirm it.

          Given the history here, I am glad the USA didn't sign the treaty. Now Joe-SixPack can buy American "champagne", even if it isn't Champagne.

      • American champagne is champagne wherever it's grown. I don't think American champagne even has to contain alcohol.
        I planted my champagne crop a little late this year and the darn things sprouted alcohol free! ;-)
      • > Though I understand some European sparkling whites have their own special appellations.

        I dunno about the rest of Europe, in Italy the local sparkling whites' producers are very proud of their denominations, those wines get often preferred to champagne even on important occasions, especially in rural environments where wine is more of a religion than a beverage.

        Then, it's all a matter of taste.

  • Insensitive Clod!! (Score:5, Funny)

    by SilentOneNCW ( 943611 ) <silentdragon&gmail,com> on Sunday December 31, 2006 @07:15PM (#17418960) Homepage
    Way to post this 14 minutes after New Year's, you insensitive clod! We British invented Time, you ought to bow to our will!
  • To all the geeks who run their computers on UTC: It's one hour past midnight in your favorite timezone! Stop discussing bubble sizes...

  • Bubbles and cavitation during negative g load (Score:4, Informative)

    by viking80 ( 697716 ) on Sunday December 31, 2006 @08:19PM (#17419220) Journal
    Happy New Year.

    As divers know, if you reduce the pressure, bubbles will form. An easy way to do this in a glass of champagne, or beer for that matter, is to toast with your good (or not so good) friend by touching the top of his glass with the bottom of yours.

    The champagne in your glass with be compressed on impact, and no bubbles will form. The glass on the bottom will experience an explosive decompression in the liquid, and instantly foam up with little left to drink to the amusement of the whole party except for the unfortunate one.

    This takes very little force if executed correctly: Both glass and liquid are quite stiff. An impact of 10cm/sec will easily cause a g-load of the bottom glass in the range -2g to -4g. This will of course result in negative pressure in the liquid, and bubbles will form instanty. The liquid will soon be back to normal pressure, and many of the bubbles cavitate, causing additional local pressure waves.

    Happy New Year
    • "An explosive decompression in the liquid"? Liquid can't be compressed or decompressed. The air pushing down on the surface of the liquid can be decompressed, which would cause the champagne to bubble, but we're obviously not talking about that. The bubbles are formed simply by transferring kinetic energy from the moving glass to the stationary glass and in turn to the champagne. Your champagne doesn't fizz for the same reason the moving ball on those desktop clacky things stops moving the instant it hi

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by sdedeo ( 683762 )
        The approximation of incompressible fluid probably holds very well for champaigne. But incompressibility simply means no volume change with pressure change. So you, um, let me think, are correct in your description. I am curious tonight whether this method holds out, however -- it seems that most of the ways to cause, e.g., beer to fizz simply involve mixing more air in (i.e., you need splashing.)

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Liquids are compressible:
        http://www.physlink.com/Education/AskExperts/ae15. cfm [physlink.com]

        Liquids are about as compressible as steel or silicone dioxide, and as anyone with a watch knows, the steel in a spring and quarts in a crystal is compressible.

        With regular explosives, solid and liquids can be compressed by a factor of 2 to 4.

        The term used is "modulus of elasticity", and the unit is "Pa".
        For air at the surface of the earth it is something like 100kPa.
        For liquids it is something like 1000GPa
  • The article talks about ways to make the bubbles form in the champagne. Why would you want to do this? Once a bubble forms, it eventually comes to the surface and is forever lost. Once all the gas has formed bubbles and escaped, the champagne is completely flat. So don't you want bubbles to NOT form? The only explanation I can think of is that if you're drinking it WHILE the bubbles are forming, it tastes better. But that doesn't really make sense to me. I mean, if I take a pristinely clean champagne
    • You may or may not want to maximum amount of bubbles. If you are not a sparkeling wine connoisseur then you probably dont have an opinion either way. Let me tell you first of all that you wont be bothered by too much but you might be bothered by too little. The only time you will ever find too many bubbles is in aged sparkeling wine. As champagne ages it usually takes on an almost yeasty taste from the fermentation and the CO2 gas increases creating more bubbles. Recently i got to drink a Champagne old
    • This is old news. Here in Australia there is a company who makes beer glasses ('Head Master' brand) that are used by many pubs ('bars' in US-speak) and clubs, and have been for years. These glasses have been lightly sandblasted on the inside, just on the bottom. The irregular surface makes the beer bubble nicely.
    • I was wondering about this comment as well. Clearly the point of champagne is not to have the carbon dioxide outgas all at once. The enjoyment of champagne is intended to be leisurely and reflective as well as festive. The bubbles are visually interesting but that doesn't require an abundant flow of bubbles. The texture of champagne on the palate is the real test, and again there's an optimal point somewhere in the middle between tingling and explosive. You want to make that optimal moment last, especi
  • I ask myself: Do I even care?
  • Are you kidding? I've already recovered from my hangover!

    The Science Behind the Bubbly
    Posted by CmdrTaco on Monday January 01, @12:14PM
    from the happy-new-years dept.
  • such as "How to get a girl to drink it with you?!" or "how to kiss a girl on NYE and NOT get slapped?!"
    • I think this article is directly related to that. I certainly know I managed to get away with kissing a few girls and it involved lots of champagne. :p
  • A point that is often lost on people is that Champagne (as it can only be called when originating from the Champagne region of France) is just a "sparkling wine", and sparkling wine is produced by many countries... it's called Cava in Spain, Sekt in Germany, and sparkling wine in USA.

    And really you can find excellent quality sparkling wines that are not called 'champagne'. The term Champagne is kind of like a trademark, and France fiercely defends the name.

    But you can buy quality sparkling wines made in man
  • This reminds me of the classic question posed by a researcher at Stanford: why do the bubbles in a pint of Guinness sink? http://www.stanford.edu/group/Zarelab/guinness/ind ex.html [stanford.edu]
  • There are two methods- Charmat and French- and while Charmat is easier (Kegging beer equipment- use a CO2 wand and seal wine off) it doesn't produce the same flavours as the French method.

    Bottle fermented sparkling wines are more difficult to make- riddling (removal of the yeast) takes the longest time when done by hand. New methods can perform complete riddling in less than 2 days, whereas done by hand might take 2 months or more.

    We just disgorged and opened a bottle of 1993 Seyval Blanc champagne that ha

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