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tbohling

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Started with 16# rhubarb and 4 strawberry. 5# sugar and water to get to about 3.5 gal on primary. SG 1.10 so a little high. Now km finding recipes that suggest this should be 5 gal which makes sense with the high SG.

Took 90 hrs to begin fermentation. I was ready to throw and start over and came home to find a very active primary. After 12 hrs of fermentation SG is at 1.095. Fruit is still in primary.
My plan was to strain off fruit and rinse it (to make sure yeast stayed with primary) on day 3 of fermentation in primary. Is this a good idea and if so, how much water should/can I add? I'm afraid this stuff could be a little too concentrated and will get too potent. Can you simply add another gallon to get it to 4? I know it will dilute bit with starting at 1.01 is that necessarily a bad thing? I was going for a light dessert wine.
 
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Started with 16# rhubarb and 4 strawberry. 5# sugar and water to get to about 3.5 gal on primary. SG 1.10 so a little high. Now km finding recipes that suggest this should be 5 gal which makes sense with the high SG.

Took 90 hrs to begin fermentation. I was ready to throw and start over and came home to find a very active primary. After 12 hrs of fermentation SG is at 1.095. Fruit is still in primary.
My plan was to strain off fruit and rinse it (to make sure yeast stayed with primary) on day 3 of fermentation in primary. Is this a good idea and if so, how much water should/can I add? I'm afraid this stuff could be a little too concentrated and will get too potent. Can you simply add another gallon to get it to 4? I know it will dilute bit with starting at 1.01 is that necessarily a bad thing? I was going for a light dessert wine.

No need to rinse fruit. Leave in the primary five days ( after fermentaion starts) or untill below 1.000. I leave in untill I am ready to rack the first time. I almost always start at 1.100. I don't mind the higher abv. You can dilute down if you want to. I usually use close to 20# rubarb for a five galeon batch. You should be fine to add watter to 4 galeons. Up to five if you want a lighter wine. Better sooner rather then later. Better flavor intergration.
For a desert wine I would keep it as strongly flavored as possible to offset the sweetnes. My personal preference. You will need to backsweeten. ( I like my rubarb dry:)


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Thank you very much. I did Add 1 gal water and sg didn't drop but .002. Still fermenting but down to 1.03 already in 24hrs. Start to smell like something OK....ha!
 
I would think that the addition of 1 gallon to 3.5 gallons should have reduced the gravity by significantly more than 2 points. I wonder if you had really mixed the water with the heavier gravity must? You could use a Pearson square to calculate the expected gravity but let me suggest the following:
A gravity of 1.100 suggests approximately 2.75 lbs of sugar /gallon. You say the original volume was 3.5 gallons - so the total sugar is 2.75 * 3.5 = 9.625 lbs of fermentable sugar. You now have increased the volume by 1 gallon so the total amount of sugar per gallon is 9.625 / 4.5 = 2.13 lbs of sugar /gallon and 2.13 lbs /gallon should result in a gravity of about 1.085 (if we assume 40 points of gravity per lb). In other words the change in gravity should have been a drop of about 15 points and not 2.
 
I think I took a reading too quickly and without an aggressive stir. Last evening, 20 hours after I added water, SG was down to 1.005.
I really wanted to rack into secondary, bit I would call this aggressive fermentation yet. I put an airlock on primary just for fun and damn near blew my water right out! Am I right to wait for it to calm down? Will be 80 hours this evening.
So..do I decide on time/fermentation or SG reading?
 
Go by sg reading. Yeast has no sence of time:)
Rack at or below 1.000. .990 to .995 is good, or when it calms down. You can airlock it now, then racking can easily wait untill dry.


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Hello again all- thanks for your help so far.

Rhubarb wine was racked into secondary and air locked 5 days ago. Since then, there is about 1 ½- 2" of lees/sediment in the bottom. I haven't taken the airlock off to check sg, but I was wondering if you can rack too much and if only 5 days is way too early? I made the mistake of not using a bag for the fruit initially- so I'm trying to find a way to clean it up. I think from now on I'm going to use cheesecloth....seems much cleaner!
 
Paint strainer bags are the best!

You can rack now, but I would wait a week or two. More stuff will settle. Migh just as well wait for it.


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