I added the citric acid purely to give the yeast a slightly acidic environment which it prefers - - its not too bad to be fair. If anything, the yeast has imparted a slight flavour to the wine, but it is drinkable.
I sometimes found buying yeast from Canada from ebay in bulk actually worked out cheaper than buying from UK sources, even after shipping charges.
The plum wine has finished fermenting and I chucked in the finnings yesterday. I have to say, although the wine itself looks awful it's actually quite awful tasting as well . It's just been 'drained' and replaced with pineapple and grape/raspberry/apple. The 'test' pineapple wine has however been a success . I think I may be leaving the wine too long to ferment so it loses it's sweetness. From now on I'm going for primary fermentation, stabilisation, finnings and then drinking.
I have one recipe which says to make a starter bottle, and then a couple of days later to get the rest of the ingredients together and add the starter bottle - - is this a necessary step, particularly given that the yeast I currently have is the turbo stuff which goes Radio Rental when it is added to any mix?
I'm no expert by any means - but from the info. I've gathered from the internet - there do seem to be a fair few, possibly unnecessary stages to wine making. I just sprinkle the yeast on the top of the warm sugar water/juice mix and later again warm up the demijohn to get the yeast bubbling furiously. I can understand we need stabiliser to stop fermentation and then finnings to attach to and drag the cloudy bits to the bottom - I'm not at all sure about yeast nutrient; citric acid; pectolase; tannin etc. I'm sure they have their place - but I find a glass of plonk using none of these is perfectly quaffable. I can't see why we would need to start of the yeast is a separate container - none of the yeast packaging I have read say start the yeast of in a separate container - all you'll end up with is another container to sterilise.
Yep, there can be some unneccesary faffing about, wait till you find a recipe that gets you to float a bit of toast on top and sprinkle the yeast on that
A yeast starter ensures the yeast (especially if old stuff) is viable before tipping all the ingredients for 5 or 6 galls of wine into a bucket or fermenter then finding out after days of inactivity that it knackered and those valuable ingredients have been sitting around open to infection, and will continue to do so until you sourc some more fresh yeast. It will also ensure wild yeasts do not take over as some will spoil the wine or only ferment to a low ABV. Yeast starters can be split so 1 sachet of expensive yeast can be used for several 5 or 6 gall batches, etc., etc. Pectolase will not only prevent pectin hazes in finished wine, but also helps break down whole fruit releasing juice and colour. Yeast nutrient will ensure a healthy fermentation, helping avoid 'stuck' wines and off flavours caused by lack of nutrient. Tannin is something I consider to be unecessary with many recipes, but it's also a preservative that'll help wines avoid spoilage. I only add 1 teaspoon per 6 galls in 'easy whites' to get a bit more flavour/zest to a wine that only uses 2L of carton juices/gall. A cup of tea is an alternative, but if you use the real stuff, stirring it up with your sugar before dissolving will prevent it becoming a sticky clump immediately sinking to the bottom of your fermenter. Acid is something else routinely included in recipes using acidic fruit/juices where it's not required and will prolong maturation time. If necessary I try and get most acid required from juices in the starter, then add Tartaric, a 'softer' acid and cheaper bought by the Kilo.
I've just bottled the pineapple wine - this time I let it fully ferment - this stuff will blow your socks off - marvellous . As all the sugar had been turned into alcohol - I added a little sugar syrup to make it more quaffable: These are the Wilkinson's home wine making bottles - looks swish... and this is the grape, raspberry and apple - it's ready as well: I'm going to invest in one of them 25l plastic bins - it's time to go large
Using larger fermenters produces lots more (6 x as much) wine with only a little extra effort, plus there's savings on only 1 airlock, 1 sachet/spoon of yeast, 1 sachet of finings, etc. I initially add 5 galls to a fermenter, pitch the yeast starter then after the initial vigorous ferment that produces about one gall of foam has died down (so you can seen the liquid again - see pic below) then add another gall of sugar solution (which usually has a higher OSG than the 5 galls, enabling it to get off to a better start) getting it up to 6 galls. Starting off with 6 galls would produce foam spraying out of the airlock. 1 sachet/teaspoon of yeast will be adequate for 6 galls, but I go further by buying 10 for 99p each, adding one to 1L of cheap acidic fruit juice [1], then when it's fermenting strongly keeping adding 1L's of juice from the recipe until I've got 1L of active yeast starter for each fermenter, so for my current 4 x 6 gall batch it works out at only 4p/gall. A £1 sachet of Wilkos A&B finings for each 6 galls then only costs 17p/gall to get crystal clear wine 24 hours after it's stopped fermenting. But it can get rather noisy with numerous fermenters each containing 6 galls of furiously fermenting wine discharging CO2 through single airlocks! The 4 fermenters are currently bubbling away at the combined rate of nearly 240 times a minute gurgling loudly through red capped bubblers. [1] I built up a stockpile of Umbongo Original cartons when Tesco had it on special for 64p and there were printable coupons online to get 50p off.
