First country wine

[Dwerth]

So I there I was on a slow Friday evening at work (I work from home), and I realized my Little Big Mouth Bubbler was getting dry. Now, as we all know that having a Little Big Mouth Bubbler get dry is a potential crime, or so I have been told, I went to the kitchen to see what I could put together as an experiment.

Ugh, not much there.

No fresh fruit in the house as we go shopping on Saturdays.

No frozen fruit, as that disappears for deserts quite often.

However, in the pantry there were two half gallon peach / mango juice containers that my younger son adores. Hmm, there is still some in the fridge, I can get more before we go through what is in the fridge. Also, do I see a packet of 71B in there...

Time to experiment!
1 gallon of mango/peach juice from Walmart (no preservatives, 100% juice - apple/mango/peach)
3 C. sugar (calculated to match sugar content of the juice, as my kitchen scale was not working, need to fix/replace it!)
1 tsp. yeast nutrient
1/2 tsp pectic enzyme
1 Packet of Lalvin 71B yeast pitched 4/7/2023
OG 1.104


Early the next morning the fermentation was well underway, and this is the photo from this morning.

 

[Dwerth]

Day 7 of primary. It is amazing to me just how much particulate matter has precipitated out of this wine. A full inch of precipitate in a week. No tannin was added at the start, so I think the pectinase has done its job magnificently. I will let it sit another week, then rack, taste, and do any needed stabilization / backsweetening.

 

[BigDaveK]

Looks good!
You may want to delay the stabilizing and back sweetening. I, like others, transfer to secondary somewhere around 1.020 and it will keep going for another week or two or three. Then rack, think about stabilizing and back sweetening when it's clear in a month or two or three.

But there's no law! You can drink it whenever you want.

 

[Dwerth]

Looks good!
You may want to delay the stabilizing and back sweetening. I, like others, transfer to secondary somewhere around 1.020 and it will keep going for another week or two or three. Then rack, think about stabilizing and back sweetening when it's clear in a month or two or three.

But there's no law! You can drink it whenever you want.

Based on all previous ferments I have done (not many) they all hit 1.000 or less within 10 days. I will take your point, and I may test SG on day 14, then just go into bulk and do adjustments later. It is intended to be a quick-ish drinking wine.

 

[BigDaveK]

Based on all previous ferments I have done (not many) they all hit 1.000 or less within 10 days. I will take your point, and I may test SG on day 14, then just go into bulk and do adjustments later. It is intended to be a quick-ish drinking wine.

Believe me, Dwerth, I understand. I had a few where I was tempted to skip bulk aging. I was curious how the wine would evolve so I followed standard protocols. But like I said, you can drink it whenever you want and enjoy every mouthful! Good luck!

 

[Dwerth]

Ongoing notes:

Racked this out of primary to secondary tonight.
It will probably need some substantial time to clear, if it ever truly does.
Loss due to sediment was very heavy, at around 25%, as the juice had very heavy precipitate that did not compact well.. We netted around 3/4 of a gallon from the recipe.
It went fully dry at .990 (~15.5%)
It has a very unexpected sweetness compared to the SG reading I got. I was absolutely not expecting that based on the SG. Not cloying, but it will not need back-sweetening for my taste.

I did not get it as well degassed as I had thought I had. That needs to be corrected.

You can smell the mango from across the room from where I racked it, which is kind of what I was aiming for.

This wine has no business being this good this early. This is going into rotation for certain.

 

[winemaker81]

Something to do in the future is to add bentonite when starting the wine. This will help the lees compact, and reduce your wine loss at the first racking. Another option is to pour the loose sludge into jar and refrigerate for a week. You can recover a fair amount of wine doing so.

 

[BigDaveK]

I have another option to consider. I transfer from primary around 1.020, pouring into another bucket with a brew bag to filter out the big stuff, and then pouring that into secondary with airlock.

That's the great thing about this site, so many good ideas. You can try a couple and eventually decide what you like to do.

 

[Dwerth]

Something to do in the future is to add bentonite when starting the wine. This will help the lees compact, and reduce your wine loss at the first racking. Another option is to pour the loose sludge into jar and refrigerate for a week. You can recover a fair amount of wine doing so.

I will try doing that on the next iteration of this wine.