Strawberry starter

[Arne]

Decided my supply was starting to run low and had to start another batch. On June 26 I racked my strawberry wine into the secondary. Put the slurry into a mason jar and stuck it in my basement reefer. Got it out night before last. Used the 5 gal batch recipe but only put 1 1/2 bottles of lemon in the primary and one 16 oz. bottle of lime in to start. S.G. wound up at 1.068. Used one of the lemon bottles, poured the slurry in, poured back and forth mixing it up til I got all the slurry out of the mason jar, used a turkey baster to get a couple squirts of the primary must in the bottle, then added a spoon of sugar or so, some energizer and nutrient screwed the cap back on and shook her all up. Next very important step is loosen the cap. Set it on the counter and by next morning it was slowly coming back to life. Yesterday at noon gave it a couple more shots of the must. By yesterday evening I had about 2 inches of bubbles on top of the starter. Decided to throw it into the must. Shook it up really good, used the degassing stirrer on the drill to introduce oxygen to it and dumped the slurry in. This a. m. had a nice layer on top of the must. Stirred it up and this noon The tea towel I had on top of the bucket was all full of yeasty bubbly stuff. Took it off and rinsed the towel off, left it with just the lid on. Now have to go back to work and hope there is not a big mess all over the floor when I get home. Will have another installment later. Arne.

 

[Arne]

S.G. went down today so decided to add the last bottle of lemon juice. Think I need a bigger primary. The must came out over the top of the primary, not bad, but over. Gonna wait til later to add the rest of the nutrient and energizer if I add it at all. More later, Arne.