Must have been a sunny day when I wasn't here They might, but you could still put em in soup Reminds me of something
an If you add an airlock to a bucket lid, siting it close to the edge will enable you to stand a smaller bucket on top. A small piece of Sellotape will seal the hole if an airlock isn't required. Wines made from the likes High Juice containing Sorbate preservative very often don't ferment right out, so I wouldn't disturb it during the final stages of fermentation as it's probably looking for any excuse to give up and finish as an overly sweet wine. Tubular airlocks are quieter but don't seem to let the CO2 through as quick as red capped bubblers which can make them more prone to have foam spraying out of them with a vigorous fermentation of a pulpy must. I pour thin bleach into red capped bubblers to clean out any gunge inside.
I think the trick with the tubular airlocks is to use less water than you might initially think... I filled mine to where I reckoned it wanted to be, and it promptly blew most of the water out. I have topped it up a couple of times since using less water and it always blows a bit out and settles at a fairly low level. I get a bubble of CO2 approximately every 40 seconds from mine. Re the sorbate - I understood that the boiling of the juice at the start drove all of that off?
You can do, think it's one crushed per gallon, let it stand overnight, but check on the lable in case it's 2
Ta Zigs - I'm finally getting round to making the grape, apple and raspberry wine. Can't wait to see how it turns out.
Blackcurrant is still fizzing away, but not just as vigorously now, so I reckon another week or so and it will be finished and ready to bottle (after degassing of course). I have to say, it is the best smelling wine we have made so far - it is only when you shove your nose really close to the neck of the fermenter and inhale that you get a sharp nip which I assume is either ammonia or ethanol? Really looking forward to tasting this one. The strawberry jam wine hasn't given off any more gas, so it appears stable now and will stay that way until I bottle it in March.
Well, it appears to be in its final throes now - fizzing has died right down today, so I am hoping that it will all be done and dusted in a few days. I had a wee taste tonight (extracted some out of the fermenter with a sterilised turkey baster) - quite fizzy, almost carbonated feeling in the mouth, but it otherwise has a lovely flavour and a nice body to it too. I think we have found a stock-cupboard favourite. I might try it with some of the other high juices in the future, just to try different flavours. If it has stopped by Thursday, I will pop the crushed campden tablets in with a view to degassing and bottling it on Saturday, and then start un-bottling it on Saturday night
Well, 2 weeks are up this Monday - what do I do now? There's a thick 'scum' on the top of the wine (which I assume is yeast) - do I syphon to another container for this 'secondary' fermentation and then degass add finings - bottle then drink? Ta
Two weeks isn't all that long, so I would reckon it is still fermenting away at the moment - is it still bubbling gas out?
Let it be for now - I have been waiting until the bubbling slows right down before racking off into clean demijohns, and then I wait again until it stops before degassing and bottling. I didn't get to bottle the blackcurrant at the weekend, as it was still going (albeit not much); I racked it off into clean demijohns last night, and it is now sitting waiting for things to settle before degassing and bottling.
Good info. thanks - I'll wait a little longer - I'm really looking forward to supping the first glass. I won't have much to myself as a number of the bottles have been 'earmarked' by friends - even before they're filled. Bloke in work syphons the wine through a coffee filter - before it goes into the bottles - sounds a bit overkill to me - I would have thought that it was the finings job to move all the dead yeast down to the bottom of the demijohn.
