Starting my first pee!

[phat]

Soo... I've got a CellarCraft showcase shiraz which is now down to 1.015 or thereabouts.. so I'm figuring on racking it into a secondary tomorrow, and there should be a nice pile of red slurry at the bottom.

My sugar is slowly staying warm on the stove doing the invert thing, and I've got a sterilzed primary waiting for it and some realemon and goods.

Since my donor wine has oak and a grape pack in the primary I'm thinking when I rack tomorrow, I will strain the slurry through a strainer to remove the chunkies when adding it to the pee..

Wish me luck..

 

[Minnesotamaker]

Sounds to me like you're on track to TWO awesome beverages.

 

[phat]

Hey, thanks for the recipe!

So, following the recipe to a T starting with a 4 kilogram bag of Rogers Granulated Sugar, my SG was a bit low after 16 cups of sugar making the liquid invert, however slowly adding the rest of the bag a half cup at a time, with lots of stirring brought me up to a nice 1.070 SG with a little bit over 5 US gallons of must to start (I'm going to be using a "small" 5 US gallon glass carboy for this)

It's now down sitting next to the Shiraz in the warm room waiting for me to rack the Shiraz tomorrow evening..

 

[Minnesotamaker]

You're right on track. The 16 cups of sugar will generally give you a slightly low SG. This is because it's always easier to add more sugar than to take some back out of the batch. Like you, I just add some granular sugar and stir to dissolve to get me to my target beginning SG.

 

[phat]

Wow.. yeast took off quick in that!

Soo.. Last night I racked the shiraz into a secondary and then poured the slurry through a strainer into the waiting pee bucket and gave everyone a good stir..

This morning after 12 hours I've already got a massively active ferment going with lots of foam on top. Dunno if I just hit the "active slurry" right having not quite fermented the shiraz to dry or just my nice warm room or whatever. but for all the talk of difficulty starting it, certainly wasn't the case here, it seems to have taken off like a rocket.. Gotta go to work, but I'll be interested to see what the hydrometer reads tonight..

 

[phat]

....

And as I guessed from the ferment, after 24 hours it had dropped from 1.070 to 1.050 -> in goes the third bottle and the rest of the yeast goodies.

Definately not that hard to start going

 

[Minnesotamaker]

At this rate, you'll be drinking it by the weekend...... maybe.

 

[phat]

At this rate, you'll be drinking it by the weekend...... maybe.

Well, not quite, degassed and sparkalloided yesterday.. This being my first experience with sparkalloid, like "wow". I am amazed at how fast that dropped everything out of there. perhaps I can drink it in a month....

 

[phat]

Racked it off the sediment and sweetened it on the weekend.. Finally had a taste - nice! I'm favorably impressed with it! with the donor shiraz slurry it's a lovely clear "pink lemonade" colour..

 

[Arne]

LOL, better start some more. Bet you find the first batch don't last long. Arne.

 

[phat]

LOL, better start some more. Bet you find the first batch don't last long. Arne.

It is now in the bottle. All I need now is warm weather and timid maidens...

 

[Rock]

Love your label.Just in time for summer!!!!