Quick brewing question?

[DarkLoki357]

Just thought of a question, I keep reading about mixing the must daily is this a good thing, I mean to keep opening the bucket. I noticed that when I open the bucket I show no signs in the lock for a good 5 hour is that slowing the fermentation?

 

[hounddawg]

when first fermenting your must you should put a towel over the bucket not a li\de with airlock during fermentation oxygen is your friend, you need a starting SG when you first start using a hydro meter, I use a cordless drill and stirrer during the first 7 to 10 days whipping as much oxygen into my must as possible, when your must moves down to around .990 to .999 as soon as it dropped to that level then you move to a carboy leaving only the neck empty and airlock it, depending what your fermenting whites you rack every month or 2, reds and pear you rack every 3 months for a year, if you can handle the cost I use the allinonewinepump.com to rack and bottle that limits your exposure to oxygen. plus 1 use a whole house filter in my lines for racking and bottling 1 micron for whites and 5 microns for reds,, when you filter that is called polishing your wine, and the vacuum of the pump helps degas much sooner, others on here know worlds more then me, good luck, the people on here have already got me making better tasting wine to me then I can but at the liquor store,,
Dawg

 

[hounddawg]

OBTW oxygen during ferment is your friend, once done fermenting the oxygen becomes your enemy,,
Dawg

 

[DarkLoki357]

Thanks, you are the first one to tell me to leave the lid off thought even the home brew videos all say to lid it, lol. But I will starts Aerating it every day, though I was told with the yeast I used it will never get that low lol I am lucky if it hit the 1.010 but that is okay by me was more what I was looking for anyways. I still don't see the point of letting it drop that way if I am only going to back sweeten anyways.

 

[BernardSmith]

Hounddawg is of course, right. Wine ain't beer and there is no good reason to seal your primary fermenter when you are making wine. But that said, when you aerate you are also removing the CO2. Bubbles in your airlock is the CO2 gas being forced through the liquid, but when you aerate and remove the CO2 that the yeast produced it will take some time for that headroom to be filled with enough CO2 with enough pressure to bubble through the water seal.
As to whether it makes sense to allow the wine to finish fermenting if you intend to have a sweeter rather than drier wine, the problem is that you do not have very much control over any remaining yeast cells and even months after you think that your wine is stable there can be enough yeast to restart the fermentation. There is no easy method of stopping fermentation unless you are using sterile filters (the material will trap every yeast cell) but your wine needs to be particle free. Those who advocate pasteurization are unconcerned about flavor or about setting pectins.. So what most wine makers do is ferment dry, rack over months to remove the yeast cells and then stabilize with K-meta and K-sorbate. You can then add sugar to sweeten

 

[Scooter68]

By the way the reason you see no bubbling in the air lock is that the larger bucket seal isn't that perfect - some gases will escape through the edges of the seal - So after about 5 hours you mention - enough moisture builds up and creates a better seal and THEN you see the airlock bubbling. I confirmed this once by putting some distilled water on the seal of the lid and sure enough the airlock showed action right away. BUT that was before I realized that Oxygen is needed by the yeast for the initial fermentation process.

But as others said - leave the lid off for primary fermentation. When you move into secondary fermentation we normally move the must into carboys and put the airlock on then because the amount of CO2 released is no longer necessarily going to protect our must and oxygen is really no longer needed by the yeast.

 

[DarkLoki357]

Thanks I never knew from all the wine making videos lol will have to try it. Now seeing that I am getting rid of the lock, need to check gravity every time I aerate to know when to go to secondary right?

 

[mennyg19]

You only need to aerate about once a day. When you do, check the SG, when its the same for 3 days in a row, it means you're primary fermentation has stopped and its time to rack into secondary.

 

[Noontime]

Not that I disagree with the ideas being shared, but I think a little too much importance is being paid to O2 being your friend during fermentation. Yes the yeast require some oxygen during the first stages of fermentation as their building up the humongous colony of yeast cells. Gently punching down or stirring the wine to reintroduce any solids that have floated to the top, and exposing the must to some oxygen is good to do. You can certainly put a lid on top if you like and you don't need use a towel or cloth (unless you're more comfortable with that). You don't have to seal the lid or use an airlock, but you can if you want (more of a pain to get to it to do your daily punch downs). I put the lid on loose and just cover the hole with a plastic screw cap. The main thing you want to do is keep all the floaty stuff in the air from dropping into your wine (yeasts, molds, bacteria, animal hair, your hair, etc), and to keep the flying and crawling critters that smell all that delicious fruit juice out.

Dawg- I think the drill is way overkill. You may be binding your kmeta to O2 quicker than you would otherwise by aggressively mixing O2 in. A gentle punch down or stir is all that's necessary.

 

[Scooter68]

Remember to remove a sample of the must from the fermentation bucket to test - this way you can be sure none of the gross lees influence the reading by preventing it from dropping down correctly. Several newbies seem to like using a short cut but I find drawing a sample into a SG Test tube lets me do my SG reading, My Acid test (Using pH reading not TA) and, when I'm about to rack the wine, I use that sample to prime my siphon.

 

[Brub58]

Not that I disagree with the ideas being shared, but I think a little too much importance is being paid to O2 being your friend during fermentation.

I agree 100% with Noontime. Oxygen is not your friend - it is at best a necessary evil. The most common comment I see on the critiques at our local amateur wine show is 'oxidised', and the biggest improvement in my wine happened when I got a bottle of inert gas.

So leave the cover and airlock on. You're doing fine. You aren't slowing down the fermentation, but when you stir you knock some of the CO2 out of solution and it takes that long to re-saturate the must before it can escape into the head space.

 

[NorCal]

I think the amount of oxygen depends on the must. I've made very few fruit wines and they seemed to need more stirring to keep the fermentation going. My grape wines chug along with a few punch downs each day.