Recent content by Gwenakinyi

I have a batch of wild cherry wine that is nearly complete. First and second rackings went great, fermentation was normal, nothing went wrong. At the time of the third racking (6 months after primary ferment) the wine tasted dreamy. Really fantastic. I racked into a new carboy with a new...

I suspect you're right. The cherry wine I made at around the same time with a similar recipe is sparkling clear without any finings. I don't have a wine filter. I might try adding bentonite just in case, but I'm going to temper my expectations now.

Thanks. I hope I didn't ruin it. I got my timeline and recipe confused with a concurrent batch of cherry wine, it seems. I was supposed to rack at 4 weeks and I missed it by months. Re-checked my notes, and the SG was 1.016 when I racked from primary to secondary. I did not add K-meta, as I...

I have a 5 gal carboy of plum wine in secondary that is long overdue to be racked again. It's been stabilized in secondary for 4 months (recipe said to rack every two, oops) but never cleared. Totally cloudy. I did use pectinase in the primary. I think I need to add bentonite to help clear...

I ended up losing a lot of my wine to the sediment; I had to add a whole bottle of commercial sauvignon blanc to top off. I think adding that amount of water would have been detrimental. I like the tip about pushing the alcohol higher to account for addition of water later, good idea.

Yes, but I stirred RIGHT before racking into my secondary, so I took all of the sediment with me. I then had almost 3 inches of sediment in my 1 gal secondary, which was all liquid lost during racking. I had to top off with a whole bottle of commercial sauvignon blanc, which is unfortunate. But...

After 2 weeks in a secondary, I racked into a clean secondary to get it off the lees (I had a couple of inches of sediment due to an earlier error when I stirred the must before racking from primary into secondary, duh). SG read 1.00, so my ferment isn't completely done. But I added 1/2 a...

It's been 2 weeks in the 1 gal secondary, and now time to rack my cherry wine. There's a lot of sediment at the bottom, maybe 2 inches. Several questions: do I try to leave behind all of the sediment when I rack? And should I top up with something to eliminate airspace before adding the...

What's your method for a clean sanitized cloth? Do you boil a cheesecloth?

Thank you, this information is all gold. Well, I did just about everything wrong: made a yeast starter by mixing with a little juice, immediately dumped, and stirred; I added this yeast to a must with a recent addition of campden; and then I sealed the whole thing off with an airlock...

Thanks, Pam. I did add yeast nutrient, and thanks for the tip about Montrachet. There's a big learning curve in this hobby. I'm interested that you said not to use the airlock for primary ferment; I've read tutorials and forum threads that come down firmly on both sides of this, e.g., loosely...

Just stated my first batch of wine--wild cherry. I added 1 campden tablet to the must, let sit overnight about 10 hrs, then added a packet of Montrachet yeast. Have now read that I added the yeast too soon, and the campden needs 24 hrs to dissipate. So, do I assume the yeast was killed and add...