First Crack at It

[DirtyDawg10]

I checked the SG again tonight and it was still at 0.996. I decided I would try the hydrometer with water and I also got 0.996. Does this mean the wine is dry and done fermenting?

 

[Wade E]

Was the water at the right temp? You have to adjust for temp as they are calibrated to either 60 or 68 depending on where they came from. The paper in the tube tells you what it was calibrated to. If with adjustment or at the right temp then your sg is really at 1.004 which is still fine with a white but a little high IMO if it were a red wine.

 

[DirtyDawg10]

Forgot about the temp adjustment. After using the correct temp water the hydrometer reads 1.000.

 

[Wade E]

But now what temp is the wine. I was hoping I didnt give you a bad hydrometer! LOL Dont want to pawn off my crap on people!

 

[DirtyDawg10]

The wine is at 65deg so no adjustment is needed from what I read. Or I guess it could be add .0005 which is next to nothing.

 

[Wade E]

Well that means you are about as dry as Id ever want a white wine to be. You are good to go to the next step but if you are a few days ahead of sched there is no need to rush it and you can just wait until the number of days is up and proceed from there. What ever is more convenient with you really!

 

[DirtyDawg10]

I'll probably check the SG again tomorrow and if it is the same I'll go on to degassing and clearing.

 

[Wade E]

Stablize it first so as to not oxidize it while degassing.

 

[DirtyDawg10]

Same SG again tonight (0.996) so I stabilized, degassed and added kieselsol & chitosan. Then I topped it up with some similar commercial wine because this is my first batch. By far the worst part of making wine so far is degassing. I used the back end of my plastic stirrer and it wasn't fun. My kit says degassing may take anywhere from an hour to 3 days. After about an hour I stopped because the bubbles had diminished and I didn't want to keep going for 3 days One of the better parts of the night though was finishing off the bottle I topped up with

 

[Wade E]

This degassing is the main reason we use vacuum pumps!!!! Its so much easier and with a gauge you will know when you are done! A drill mounted mix stir will also greatly help you in the degassing phase and when mixing it all up when starting your must! I have a an old pump that is missing a few things like the over fill bottle but Ill see what I can do to see if I can get this thing usable to either degas or at least splash rack it for you. Ill let you know if its usable by tomorrow night.

 

[DirtyDawg10]

Cool! Thanks...so I was taking a look online and from what I can see my wine's ABV is 12.34% does that sound right? (Starting SG=1.090 - Finishing SG=0.996)

 

[DirtyDawg10]

I checked my wine today and it is clearing nicely. It is a bit darker then I had imagined but it looks good. My kit says to wait 4 days for the wine to clear and then rack it (optional) or just wait 35 to 42 days to bottle it. I have decided to skip the additional racking and just let the wine clear longer. Is there any advantage to this additional racking? I was thinking opening up the wine to more possible oxygen exposure would be worse.

Also, during the degassing/clearing step it had me add k-meta. Do I add more before bottling and should I age it in the carboy longer then 42 days?

 

[Wade E]

Just do yourself a favor and rack it off the sediment a week in advance minimum prior to when you are going to bottle it. Never attempt to bottle from a carboy with sediment as you may get 1/2 done and then disturb it and be stuck with 2.5 gallons of dirty wine and not know how to keep it at that point to clear again topped up in a vessel.

 

[DirtyDawg10]

Thanks for the tip Wade.

Do you usually add more k-meta before bottling?

 

[DirtyDawg10]

Cool! Thanks...so I was taking a look online and from what I can see my wine's ABV is 12.34% does that sound right? (Starting SG=1.090 - Finishing SG=0.996)

I've gone to a few different places online to try and figure what the ABV of my first wine will be. Here's what I came up with...

Online Calculator (Brewer's Friend) - 12.34% ABV

Online formula from eHow - (1.090-0.996)1000)/7.36 = 12.77% ABV

Online Calculator (Vinter Resources) - 13% ABV

Can anyone tell me what they use to calculate ABV and which might be right? They are all fairly close but I like to be accurate and I figured you guys would have done this before and can steer me in the right direction. I looked but couldn't seem to find a sticky or recent thread about this on here. Thanks for any help you can give me.

 

[DirtyDawg10]

Racked my wine again after a successful clearing. There was quite a bit of sediment at the bottom which I assume is normal. Topped up again with a sauv blanc this time. The wine tastes fairly good. I can taste a slight hint of the oak and I figured out what the young wine taste is. The flavor is coming along and the nose is still good. Definitely will benefit from more aging though. It already has nice legs to it as well.

 

[robie]

Racked my wine again after a successful clearing. There was quite a bit of sediment at the bottom which I assume is normal. Topped up again with a sauv blanc this time. The wine tastes fairly good. I can taste a slight hint of the oak and I figured out what the young wine taste is. The flavor is coming along and the nose is still good. Definitely will benefit from more aging though. It already has nice legs to it as well.

Sounds great! It is good you have ID'ed the young wine taste, as that seems to throw a lot of new wine makers off; they sometimes think the wine is spoiled because it is so tart and green tasting. Time fixes that quite well.

For ABV calc I use -

(Beginning SG - ending SG) multiplied by 131. Not exact but close enough for home use for sure.

 

[DirtyDawg10]

Thanks Robie! I probably would have thought the wine was a bit off if I hadn't been reading on here about the young wine taste. This is definitely a great resource for info.

 

[DirtyDawg10]

After 2 months of patience here's what I ended up with...

Now I just need to get my bottles cleaned up and ready to go

 

[g8keeper]

looking really good, dawg.....very nice......liquid gold......congrats....