How To Chill Wine In Sous Vide

Sous Vide Wine Chilling is the fastest way to cool down your opened bottle of red or white wine. This technique only requires the use of a Sous Vide machine. No freezer needed! Who knew that all you need to chill your open bottle of wine in 10 minutes or less was just an immersion circulator?

Can you chill wine using the sous vide? Yes! This post will show you step by step instructions on how to bring your wine to the perfect temperature using an immersion circulator.

The Sous Vide is a French cooking technique in which food is placed in airtight plastic bags and cooked in precisely controlled water bath at an accurately regulated temperature. The intent behind this is to maintain the integrity of the food by retaining its moisture and heat when you’re cooking it. It’s similar to steaming yet delivers even more tender, moist and evenly cooked food.

While the sous vide technique is mainly used for cooking food to perfection, it has many other benefits including using it as sous vide wine chiller.

Wine is best served cool but not too cold. Cold dulls the flavor of the wine while too warm results in an unpleasant aroma and taste. That’s why we can’t use just any old refrigerator for chilling our bottle of wine – it takes way too long and creates that bitter ice-wine effect which is not ideal. That’s exactly where Sous Vide comes in!

How To Chill Wine Using Sous Vide

Here’s the simple instructions on how to chill wine using the sous vide method.

1. Pour some cold water into your cooking pot. The pot needs to be tall enough to hold the liquid part of the wine bottle. Bring the water up to the liquid line in the wine bottle, then place an immersion circulator inside.
2. Set the temperature on the immersion circulator according to your desired wine temperature, usually between 42F – 50F for red wines and 45F – 55F for white wines.
3. To speed up the cooling process, you can add some ice to the water, but keep an eye on the temperature as you may need to add more ice as it chills.
4. Once you have your desired temperature, add the bottle of wine to the temperature controlled water bath and set the timer for 10 minutes.
5. Once it’s chilled, remove the bottle from the water bath and give it a good swirl to evenly distribute the temperature. Serve immediately.

Chilling Wine In a Ziploc Bag

If you need your wine chilled at lightening speed, simply pour the wine into a plastic freezer safe bag and remove as much air as possible. Add it to the temperature controlled sous vide and remove in 8-10 minutes. While the wine is chilling, add the bottle to the freezer so the bottle doesn’t warm up the wine. Once finished, pour the wine into a measuring glass and serve, or pour back into the wine bottle.

FAQ

Have warm beer on hand? Use the sous vide to chill beer!