Advice for my 1.5 month old elderberry wine

[Davidrias]

Hello all, I'm a little ways into my first batch of wine ever (elderberry) and was looking for advice/critique of my wine making. I have roughly been following Hank shaw's recipe on his Honest Food blog.

History: Picked one trash bag full of elderberries, cleaned them all, mashed w/ potato masher, mixed with some sugar, let sit overnight.

The next day I squeezed and squeezed all the juice out. Ended up with 2 - 2.5 gallons. Brought it up to five gallons, adjusted sugar to a SG of about 1.125 adjusted acid to best I could with crappy acid tester from homebrew shop. transferred to 5 Gal glass carboy. Added campden tabs, then yeast, fermented for a week, racked to new carboy.

Fermented intensely and lasted about a month, still some very slow bubbling, now I racked it again. My thoughts were... rack while there was still a little action so the headspace would fill.

So here I am, racked twice, no more bubbling, I have too much headspace. I added some marbles but not enough, I can add more or I can add oak.

My thoughts were to age in this carboy and bottle in January or so. Does that sound reasonable?

Other questions:
-Should I worry to much about headspace?
-Should I worry about adding marbles that were made in china and are only meant for decoration?
-is it too soon to add oak cubes to take up some headspace?
-How important is it to de-gas and when should I be doing this?

Thanks in advance, I realize this was long.

 

[CBell]

Sounds fairly reasonable.
Things to think about:
1. You say you started this out in a carboy. What you ought to consider is doing your primary fermentation in a fermentation bucket, which allows oxygen to get into your must and makes for an easier fermentation, less stressed yeast, and less h2s, then you rack to a carboy near the end of fermentation when the CO2 will not fully protect your wine to prevent oxidation
2. You don't say whether or not you stabilized your wine after it finished fermenting, but if you didn't, add K Meta (or campden) to prevent any bacterial growth. I see that you added it before fermentation to prevent wild yeast, but I didn't see that you did again after fermentation.
3. You should worry about headspace since you intend on bulk aging. It's not a big deal for a few days/weeks, but if you are aging for months, you need to concern yourself with it.
4. I wouldn't personally worry about low-quality marbles, but lord only knows what they contain, if they weren't made for this purpose.
5. Not too soon to add oak, but 3 ounces of oak will not fill much headspace, and you should not add enough oak to fill all of your headspace, or you will be posting about your over-oaked wine by next week
6. Degassing is something that will happen naturally over months of bulk aging. The only time you really need to worry about manual degassing is with quick drinkers or kits that will be bottled right away

Cheers

 

[garymc]

You didn't mention your finished specific gravity, but if you took it from 1.125 to 1.000, you have 17% wine and if you've gone below 1.000 it would be even higher. Have you tasted it? You may find it hard to drink. You could top it up with water. Elderberry can take a lot of water and it may need to be diluted. At this high a concentration of alcohol, spoilage won't be a big worry, but K-meta every 3 months during bulk aging will protect it from oxidation.
When you get three sg readings that don't change, put the first dose in and every 3 months thereafter. I'm assuming you intend to backsweeten (depending on whether it fermented to dry.) Prior to backsweetening, you'll need to stabilize with potassium sorbate.
On the other hand, if it has quit at 1.030 or higher, you'll have to do some calculating to figure out what to do.

 

[WVMountaineerJack]

Yes worry about headspace, dont use marbles from China they contain lead and cadmiun, get them out, never to soon to add oak but dont use it to fill headspce as you will add too much, right now let it bulk age, worry about degassing when it is done. Top off with some welches grape juice, red or white and get it off of those marbles and add some oak. You need to let it totally finish fermenting before doing anything else. What yeast did you use? Your starting gravity was a little high so the yeast may still be working you just might not see the bubbles, did you take any hydrometer readings? And congradulations on starting with your own handpickded elderberries, its a great wine.

ps just to be sure, do you know what elderberries look like?

WVMJ

 

[Davidrias]

Thanks so much everybody. Next time I make I will start with a bucket and leave berries in at first. Also I used Lalvin EC-1118 yeast.

Based on your responses here is my plan, tonight I will rack off the marbles and check SG. If it seems like my final ABV is too high I will dilute with boiled and cooled water to bring up the headspace. I'll monitor SG and add K-meta if it seems done. I'll also add oak.

Follow up questions:
I wasn't planning on back sweetening. I suppose I can taste it and decide if I want it sweeter? It seemed fine the way it was when I tasted it last week.

If I add grape juice now instead of water, am I assuming it will ferment out? it seems late in the game for that. or could I add k-meta and have that be my back sweetening?

One last note, I'm sure I got elderberries. I used to help friends up in northern maine pick them a lot, we'd just cruise up and down the river in a pontoon boat picking them off the boat. Way better then roadside picking