I did a first rack of my low-dollar Amazon Cab-Merlot wine kit with a M&M grape pak added. The Amazon kit was pretty thin to start, it only measured 1.082 after mixing. I guessed about a quart of grapes are in the grape pak...boy was I off! There is almost a gallon of "stuff" in those grape paks. Just about overfilled my fermenting bucket and I knew it would foam-over in a day or two. I siphoned about 3/4 of a gallon into a Carlo Rossi carboy and set it next to the primary under airlock. I never did get a SG reading after adding the grape pak because it started to ferment in just a few hours, and I figured the solids hadn't had a chance to mix yet.
I stirred and punched the grape pak (that is in a cheese cloth bag) every day for 6 days. Didn't need to do anything to the carboy, it just quietly fermented with very tiny bubbles. At day 6, the SG had dropped to .996 most likely to the crazy heat we have here now, so I transferred to a 6 gallon carboy. Not a lot to dump because the carboy I used is a bit bigger than 6 gallons. I hand squeezed the cheese cloth bag of grape mush and a lot of solids came out, I mean a LOT. Looked like purple mud! That can only be good!
Poured all that solid mix into the carboy and airlocked it with a dry airlock, that is what I put on the gallon carboy and it seemed to do just fine.
Did I ever mention how much I love my All In One wine pump? I did all of that work with no lifting and the only purple splash occurred when I took the cheese cloth bag out to move to the sink. No splashing or spilling is a feature that isn't much talked about, but I work in my dining room so I need to try to be a neat as possible. Oh, and I get the benefit of degassing by vacuum racking.
Every winemaker should have one of those pumps!
I'll let this wine sit on the solids in secondary for a month and rack it again.
I stirred and punched the grape pak (that is in a cheese cloth bag) every day for 6 days. Didn't need to do anything to the carboy, it just quietly fermented with very tiny bubbles. At day 6, the SG had dropped to .996 most likely to the crazy heat we have here now, so I transferred to a 6 gallon carboy. Not a lot to dump because the carboy I used is a bit bigger than 6 gallons. I hand squeezed the cheese cloth bag of grape mush and a lot of solids came out, I mean a LOT. Looked like purple mud! That can only be good!
Poured all that solid mix into the carboy and airlocked it with a dry airlock, that is what I put on the gallon carboy and it seemed to do just fine.
Did I ever mention how much I love my All In One wine pump? I did all of that work with no lifting and the only purple splash occurred when I took the cheese cloth bag out to move to the sink. No splashing or spilling is a feature that isn't much talked about, but I work in my dining room so I need to try to be a neat as possible. Oh, and I get the benefit of degassing by vacuum racking.
Every winemaker should have one of those pumps!
I'll let this wine sit on the solids in secondary for a month and rack it again.
