going to the secondary

[Angell Wine]

Question : what takes precedent when going to the carboy on kits or scratch wine when you have a fast fermation. Example day 1: Sg 1.080: day 3: sg 1.010 do you wait till day 5 or go ahead and rack it to the carboy?

 

[Joseph1]

I would transfer to secondarybased on the hydrometer reading.

 

[Hippie]

I second that move to secondary based on hydrometer readings!

 

[Angell Wine]

Thanks for the answers. Now let's go the other direction. What would be the highest sg reading you can have before going to the carboyfor a slow fermation. The reason I'm asking this questions is i had a banana wine take 13 days to go from sg 1.110 to a sg 1.020? temp avg was 74 deg.

 

[masta]

I would not transfer to your carboy unless the SG is at least down to 1.020 because you take a chance of leaving too many live yeast cells behind and causing the fermentation to stop prematurely.


A fermentation of 13 days to 1.020is not unheard of but could be a result of lack of nutrients in the must.

 

[peterCooper]

If it's a kit wine, george and masta always say "Follow the directions".
Leave until day 5.

for a scratch wine

1.020 is sweet, which you might want for a banana wine, but if it is still
fermenting...

Have you checked other factors? pH. , What's the alcohol level if you start
at 1.100 and end at 1.020? Is that what you're wanting, 'cause if you rack
now, as Masta says, that may be about the end of the fermentaiton,
especially as it has been slow.

 

[Angell Wine]

this is the th day in the carboy for the banana wine and the sg is 1.004. It's still bubbling. As far as the kits go I'm going with the hydrometer. I think it was Tim Vandegrift who said "I think of myself as an artist not a scientist" But I could be wrong.