Hi Ray,
You don't want to just add the values, you have 86% water and 14%
alcohol in your sample wine, so factor that in.

I think you want to use ethyl, not methyl as your basis too. You want
the CRC Handbook for those tables, any library will have one.

Glass changes with temperature too, that has to be factored in.

I'll run some numbers in Excel later and post, I have a copy of the
CRC (Chemical Rubber Co. Handbook of Chemistry and Physics).

My wine did not change anywhere near that much as you suggest; a 5
gallon carboy dropping 50 F lost around 3 ounces, that's around 1.5
ml/F. But you bring up a good point, I went through 0C and water
behaves pretty oddly there. That could explain your higher values,
although I'm sure you need to touch them up a bit.

Water density is pretty odd, it actually reaches maximum density at
~4C, then turns around again. (Fish appreciate this, thankfully ice
floats or they would have a bad day every winter...) It's the only
substance that does this. I'll run the numbers over a range of
temperatures, once I get the equations in it's plug and play... I
have good temperature measurement equipment too, I may hook some up
and start getting some empirical data too.

This is a little tricky as the relationships are not intuitive (to me
at least).

Joe

> >
> Not a bad experiment at all and not bat results considering the accuracy of
> the measurements and the range of temperature. Here is another approach:
>
> Coefficient of expansion of Water @ 21 deg. C (70 deg F.) is 0.00021
> Coefficient of expansion of Methanol (temp not given so STP assumed) is
> 0.00122
>
> IF you can combine these properties linearly (a big if if someone wants to
> correct me) then the Coefficient of expansion of 14% wine will be 0.00034.
>
> Now a 6 gal batch will be 22714 ml so the expansion with 1 deg C temp change
> would be 7.75 ml. or for 1 deg F temp change would be 4.31 ml. For a 5 deg
> change in your den this would be a whooping 21.5 ml. Now how much rise in
> fluid level that translates to in your carboy depends on how high up into
> the neck the carboy is filled and the inside diameter of the neck.neck.
>
> Now these figures are for temperature changes around room temperature.
> Water coef. of expansion drops drastically at lower temperatures and
> methanol coef of expansion probably does as well. Note that the coef of
> expansion of water reverses itself below 39 deg F. So over the large change
> in temperature you used you would probably get a lower value than is
> observed at near room temperature. In fact you got 0.075 ml/l-deg F average
> over the range of 77 to 24 deg F. while it get 0.34 ml/l-deg F at
> temperatures near 70 deg F. Since most of us do not store our wine at
> temperatures that low, the numbers for 70 deg. F are probably more
> serviceable.
>
> Does anyone know of any measurements on water methanol mixtures?
>
> Ray