smack
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- Sep 7, 2010
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on this, my first attempt, i've been following the instructions on youtube(address below) for making muscadine wine, with a few (rookie) deviations.
i did not freeze the muscadines first, though in all my reading that didn't seem too necessary of a step. in the part of the instructions where it says to add additional water to get the initial volume to five gallons, i only had to add about three or four cups (plus the gallon for the sugar water makes 1.25 gallons total added water). The initial SG at this point was 1.145. this particular set of instructions says to squeeze and remove the pulp bag once the SG is 1.040, though i've read a few others with similar instructions varying between 1.020 and 1.040.
at any rate, today it was 1.035 so i squeezed and squeezed and squeezed (and squeezed and squeezed and squeezed) and used every method i could conjure to extract the maximum juice from my massive pulp bag. In the process i may have been a tad lax in sterilization of various equipment, a lapse which i now pray wont bite me in the rear. i'm left with roughly three and a half gallons of must, which i racked today from my primary stone crock into a five gallon glass carboy. actually it may be incorrect to call it racking as i definitely boogered that step of the process up, and managed to siphon just about all of the sediment into the glass *shaking head* (new guys).
in this set of video instructions it says to remove the bag, rack into glass to "complete fermentation" but to leave plenty of headroom until fermentation has completed. this is in stark contrast to most instructions which say no headroom; however, these instructions do go on to say that once fermentation is complete, to add five crushed campden tablets and two and a half teaspoons of sorbate, and then rack into a carboy with no headroom and fit an airlock. this i assume to be the step everyone agrees on, but my first question is: why might this author move into a glass carboy with plenty of headroom, how does he know when fermentation has completed (no bubbles i suppose?), and should i have an airlock on the carboy while fermentation is completing in this step, day eight, where there is still plenty of headroom (as opposed to cheese cloth which was on the primary)? this author is specific about adding an airlock after the wine is stabilized and ready for clearing, so it would surprise me if he left out the instructions to employ an airlock now.
question two (i know that was like three questions already but bear with me): i used enough sugar and grapes for this "five gallons" of wine recipe, but i find myself now with only three and a half gallons. should i worry about adding that much water, or can i consider that i should have added this much from the get go. if so i guess i will have no way of determining the alcohol content since my initial SG was based on a must with inadequate water. i don't see myself buying a gallon and a half of comparable wine, and i fear that if i add that much grape juice, i wont know how this wine was meant to taste. i guess my real question is, should i go ahead and add a lot of water now, or should i just get a three gallon carboy?
whew, i know. thats more than anyone here probably wanted to read. if you've gotten this far, i thank you sincerely.
as a newbie, i'm not allowed to post websites or urls on here, so to see the instructions that i've been following, either search youtube for muscadine wine (its the first one that comes up) or after the .com, add /watch?v=jFjgvRa1SmQ to the url
i did not freeze the muscadines first, though in all my reading that didn't seem too necessary of a step. in the part of the instructions where it says to add additional water to get the initial volume to five gallons, i only had to add about three or four cups (plus the gallon for the sugar water makes 1.25 gallons total added water). The initial SG at this point was 1.145. this particular set of instructions says to squeeze and remove the pulp bag once the SG is 1.040, though i've read a few others with similar instructions varying between 1.020 and 1.040.
at any rate, today it was 1.035 so i squeezed and squeezed and squeezed (and squeezed and squeezed and squeezed) and used every method i could conjure to extract the maximum juice from my massive pulp bag. In the process i may have been a tad lax in sterilization of various equipment, a lapse which i now pray wont bite me in the rear. i'm left with roughly three and a half gallons of must, which i racked today from my primary stone crock into a five gallon glass carboy. actually it may be incorrect to call it racking as i definitely boogered that step of the process up, and managed to siphon just about all of the sediment into the glass *shaking head* (new guys).
in this set of video instructions it says to remove the bag, rack into glass to "complete fermentation" but to leave plenty of headroom until fermentation has completed. this is in stark contrast to most instructions which say no headroom; however, these instructions do go on to say that once fermentation is complete, to add five crushed campden tablets and two and a half teaspoons of sorbate, and then rack into a carboy with no headroom and fit an airlock. this i assume to be the step everyone agrees on, but my first question is: why might this author move into a glass carboy with plenty of headroom, how does he know when fermentation has completed (no bubbles i suppose?), and should i have an airlock on the carboy while fermentation is completing in this step, day eight, where there is still plenty of headroom (as opposed to cheese cloth which was on the primary)? this author is specific about adding an airlock after the wine is stabilized and ready for clearing, so it would surprise me if he left out the instructions to employ an airlock now.
question two (i know that was like three questions already but bear with me): i used enough sugar and grapes for this "five gallons" of wine recipe, but i find myself now with only three and a half gallons. should i worry about adding that much water, or can i consider that i should have added this much from the get go. if so i guess i will have no way of determining the alcohol content since my initial SG was based on a must with inadequate water. i don't see myself buying a gallon and a half of comparable wine, and i fear that if i add that much grape juice, i wont know how this wine was meant to taste. i guess my real question is, should i go ahead and add a lot of water now, or should i just get a three gallon carboy?
whew, i know. thats more than anyone here probably wanted to read. if you've gotten this far, i thank you sincerely.
as a newbie, i'm not allowed to post websites or urls on here, so to see the instructions that i've been following, either search youtube for muscadine wine (its the first one that comes up) or after the .com, add /watch?v=jFjgvRa1SmQ to the url