plum wine and sg question

[fabrictodyefor]

Hope all had a wonderful Thanksgiving. I haven't been on WMT in months, life got in the way, but it is nice to smell fermenting wine again! I made a plum wine, Sept, 2013. My 3rd wine....realized it was not enough fruit and starting sg was a little high. So have racked it many times and tasted many times. No surprise the first taste was all alcohol, with a hint of plum. I decided after 14 months I would try an f-pak. So, I simmered down a jar of my home canned plums and 2 pint jars of my homemade plum jam. We tried it on Thanksgiving and it is now awesome. A little sweeter than I would have thought, but jam does have a lot of sugar! So.....starting sg, 1.102, ending sg of 1.000, now sg reading of 1.030, so does that make my alcohol content 9.75% alcohol by volume? rather than the 13.5% abv it was before I added the f-pak? If so am I still ok to bottle this? I had read somewhere wine should be 10%.....

On another note, I'm attempting another batch of plum. I had read through many old posts and found that many do not add any water to plums! So I thawed my 42 lbs of plums....added k-meta...when almost thawed added pectic enzyme and some sugar, let sit till fully thawed, but even with a wire mesh strainer I could not get enough "juice" to get an sg reading. So added 1 1/2 gallons of water and even though it was still a very thick must, added enough sugar to get to 1.084...I thought. 24 hours after I pitched the yeast I had an sg reading of 1.090...it had a nice cap and I was able to scoop down and get a more liquidy sample of the must. I can tell it is working fine, but I probably don't have an accurate reading of my starting sg...it is now at 1.080, 2 days after I pitched the yeast. It is cool in my basement and I want a slower ferment, so as long as it is working I am content with a slow ferment. How do you get a reading with a thick must?

Thanks for comments and helpful hints!

 

[sour_grapes]

You did not change your ABV much when you added the f-pack. You cannot use the difference in SG for calculating it, though.

Here is the way to think about it. After fermentation, you had a ABV of about 13.5%. You did not say how much wine you had, but let's say it was 2 gallons. That means you had 0.135*2gallon = 0.27 gallons of alcohol in your 2 gallons of wine. Then you added, say, 3 pints of additional material, giving you 2 gallons + 3 pints = 2.375 gallons total volume. Of that, 0.27 gallons are alcohol, so your ABV is 0.27gallon/2.375gallon = 11.4% ABV.


To get a reading from a thick must, use a stainless steel mesh kitchen strainer. Push it down into the must, and remove liquid from the "hole" using a wine thief. Transfer the liquid to a test cylinder, and float your hydrometer in there.

Hope that helps!


only chan

 

[fabrictodyefor]

Thanks, that really helps with the abv question. So at this point I am just measuring the "sugar" content of the wine. I did start with 3 gallons of wine and added about 2 pints liquid after simmering down, so I changed the abv a little, but not much.

Thanks for the tip on getting enough liquid to get an sg test, but before I pitched the yeast I could get no liquid thin enough to get a good reading. After I pitched the yeast and it formed a cap, then I could get below the cap and get a thinner liquid. Just hoping to figure out how to get a more accurate sg reading before I pitch the yeast.

 

[sour_grapes]

Sorry, I hadn't seen that you said "even with a wire-mesh strainer." My bad!

 

[jensmith]

Did you use peptic enzyme first?
To get max juice extraction before yeast addition this is what I do. Put frozen fruit in a bucket. Disolve the peptic enzyme in about a quart of water, or layer it between the frozen fruit, for best distubution. Also add your sulfa, either now or when it starts to thaw. Add some to all of the suger on top. Let sit at least 24h or untill it is swimming in juice.
Suger added by itself will draw out the juice. Thats how we fix our strawberries for shortcake.
If you still can't get a thin enough juice try diluting your sample with a measured amount of water untill you can. Then do the math to determin abv. I have not tried the diluting method, but it would be better then nothing!

I


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[fabrictodyefor]

Yes, jensmith, from my original post it states I added k-meta and pectic enzyme, then sugar, then had to add water till I could get enough "liquid" to get a reading.

On to my current situation with this plum. Going over my process,
started with 42 lbs of frozen plums, while dumping the plums into the ferment bucket, I intermixed k-meta with the plums. the next day, while plums were still semi-frozen, I added 6 tsp pectic enzyme and a couple cups of sugar. The next day all was thawed, added 6 tsp acid blend and 3/4 tsp tannin, and added sugar, but could not get it liquidy enough to get an sg reading. Slowly added water and more sugar till I could get enough liquid, it was still a very thick must and thought I had gotten a reading of 1.084. Added 2 tsp nutrient and 3/4 tsp energizer, then pitched EC-1118 yeast. The next morning it had formed a nice cap, and could then thief through the cap and got a better sample, sg at 1.091. Evidently my initial reading of 1.084 was off, I believe due to the thickness of the must. Next day sg 1.085, temp of must 65. Put the heater in my work room. Next day sg at 1.070, temp at 78, added 2 tsp nutrient and 3/4 tsp energizer. 2 days after that sg at 1.020 temp at 70. Day after sg still at 1.020, temp at 70. Added 1 tsp GoFerm, 2 days later sg still at 1.020. I know this may seem lengthy, but I figured it was better if someone could help to know what my process was. So I have a stuck ferment?? any suggestions as to what I can/should do at this point? Thanks

 

[cintipam]

Hi

I just went thru a similar struggle and it took me a long time to figure it out. I got 2 red juice buckets and both measured at 1.030 SG when I got them home. Not understanding that no grape would be picked at that brix, I figured you get what you get and put sugar in to take them up to 1.090. Well, they stalled out at 1.030 and nothing I did could get them any further. Finally the owner of a a LBH asked the right question and explained that the buckets had already been fermenting for a couple days and when I added sugar I took the yeast over it's top limit. Don't know if that is your problem but if you want to test it's easy enough. Just take couple cups and dilute with another cup of water. try making a yeast starter and add a bit more of this mixture a bit at a time. If it keeps doing well, add bits of the orig til it rolls over and dies. If that happens then it's sugar. What I had to do to fix it is add water in order to ferment as low as I could, then add strong concentrates that have low sugar to attempt to boost flavor while adding as little sugar as possible. Since you have plums I'd look into tart cherry or pomegranete concentrate available from health food stores. It's a real balancing act to get the sugar as low as you can while getting enough flavor to make a nice wine.

I always learn something from every batch I make. I hope I never ever make that mistake again as both of those red buckets were awesome before I had to butcher them and make them the equiv of red table wine.

Pam in cinti

 

[jensmith]

Stir the crap out of it would be my first suggestion. 1118 yeast should be able to handle a far higher sg then any of your readings were. Even counting errors due to suger release and thick sludge.
Temp looks good. Way too much acid blend. Unless you tested it and added it baced on that. My lhbs fella once told me never to add acid blend to fruit wines without testing first. I have found it to be good advice. Acid blend can be added later just fine. Too much to start can stall a ferment.
What size batch is this? If 6 gal your nutriants are a little light, but 1118 yeast is a light feeder so that should not matter.
If your plums were the store bought small yellow fleshed varity that would explain the natural high acid content and no juice. They tend to stay firm and not sweeten up no matter how "ripe" they get. They just get meallyier and loose flavor.
The huge dark purple fleshed plums on the other hand are sweet and very juicy! These are my prefured plums for wine. ( they make a med red wine instead of a white wine )

Have you tried watering down a sample to see it it restarts fermentation?

If all else failes take out the fruit sludge and airlock it. Recheck in a week or two. Sometimes the old hurry up and wait is effective.


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[fabrictodyefor]

Thanks, jensmith, the must barely fits in the 7.5 gallon ferment bucket. I had 2 different plums, 15 lbs from a friend, large fleshy plums, the remainder was "wild" plums, very small, no bigger than a bing cherry, guessing that is why the acid tested low....and I've had trouble with the juice. I pitched another yeast and 2 1/2 days later it is still at 1.020, so I'll rack to a car boy and let it go! I didn't know about the too much acid blend can cause stuck fermentation, I'll keep that in my thoughts for a "next" time!