j
Julie, herz how it went. Understand, my shop is about 95 - 100* during the day and gets down to maybe 85* at nite. Stuff works fast at those temperatures.
6/25: Two large watermelons
Cut em up in about 1 inch squares and froze em, 6ea 1 gallon
zip lock bags
Later that evening I made my Yeast starter: 1 cup of warm water in
a quart fruit jar and added1 pack of red star premier cuvee and a
pinch of nutrient
6/28: Set watermelon out to thaw
Added 1 tsp of sugar to yeast starter
6/29: Yeast starter doing nothing
Divided batch up - now making 2ea, 3 gallon batches. Had to add
a quart of water to each batch to get em both to 3 gallons.
Added equal amount of watermelons to each bucket.
Mashed watermelon up real good with my hands
Added 1 pound of rasins to each bucket.
Added 3 pounds of strawberries to each batch, fresh and frozen
that I froze when I froze the watermelon.
This is when I found out how much must I had and added the
1 quart of water to each batch.
Added 3/8 tsp of k-meta to each batch
Put both matches in the grill, to keep the bugs out.
Threw out the yeast starter, it was doing nothing.
Started a new starter: Two starters, one for each batch
1 1/2 cups of warm water
1/4 tsp yeast nutrient
1 tsp sugar
1/8 tsp yeast enigizer
1 pack of red star primier cuvee and covered with strainer
and left on bench.
SpGr of must: 1.030 on both batches
added 3 cups of sugar to each batch to get SpGr 1.070. done in
small steps using simple syrup.
Added 1/8 tsp tannin to each batch
Added 1/4 tsp bentonite to each batch
Added 1/8 tsp of tannin
About 10 pm the SpGr= 1.060
6/30 9 AM SpGr= 1.026
Transferred to carboy with air lock
Started with 6 gallons of must at SpGr 1.000 after transferring
Had a pint short of 5 gallons
7/1/ pH = lite blue
added 1/4 tsp of acid blend
pH = 3.2
Total Acid = .625
7/2 Racked to 4 gallon carboy, 1/2 gallon jug and 1/2 wine bottle
7/5 SpGr = .991
Racked
Added 1/2 tsp k-meta
Added 1 tsp sorbate
7/8 Using the wine caculator on web site - back sweetened with
1 1/2 pounds of sugar, I figured this would get me close to 1.015
to 1.020. Used simple syrup make with the watermelon wine
SpGr = 1.010
Racked all wine to 5 gallon carboy
Added 1/2 cup of sugar to carboy and stired good = 1.012
Added 1 cup of sugar to carboy and stired good = 1.016
7/9 Added super kleer as per directions
7/12 Racked - degassed - filtered and bottled - had 14 jack daniels and
2 wine bottles.
See, Julie it don't take long to make wine and it taste goooooood to.
just kidding, I know I rushed it, but since it fermented soo fast, I
just did things as they happened. I know I was lucky that it turned
out good. I'm going to let it age in the bottles for a while (maybe
a couple of weeks)
Thanks for all the feed back, I love to hear from all of ya'll, good and bad.
Semper Fi