Ken -
The ice/brine mixture is the same sort of thing used for making
ice-cream at home. You want the ice as cold as you can get it, and a
whole bunch of rock salt. I don't think it hurts to have too much
salt - it just doesn't dissolve. I've also seen comments lately that
calcium chloride works better than regular salt, as the freezing point
of the CaCl solution is lower than that for brine. Where I live
(Minnesota), this stuff is readily available as a product to melt ice
off sidewalks in the winter time.

I tried using this approach, but just couldn't seem to get the
whole mess cold enough for long enough to freeze the wine/sediment in
the neck of the bottles. I finally gave up and just rigged up a
little rack to hold six bottles (neck down) in the freezer. I find
that if the crown cap on the bottle is in contact with the wire
shelving in the freezer, the neck of the bottle will start to freeze
in about 3 to 4 hours.

The only downside to this is that if you forget the bottles in
the freezer, they will freeze solid, and the crown cap may be forced
off (resulting in loss of the Champagne, and quite a mess in the
freezer). So you want to set a timer or something. Other than that,
though, this worked just great. Six bottles at a time was a
manageable number; it took me about a week to work through the
double-batch (about 5 cases) I made this winter. I even have a case
or two left, amazingly enough.

Best of luck. I'm sure you'll get the hang of it after a few tries.
I made a few spectacular messes (mostly in the kitchen) before I
really had the thing down, but it was fun, and (when done right) very
satisfying.


Doug