Strawberry wine snafu

[TemperanceOwl]

My first wine "from scratch" except for a DB:
I recently tasted some wonderful strawberry wine that was based on the recipe in the "purple book" but with double the amount of fruit called for in the recipe. I decided to make that recipe this spring, so this week I bought and cut up 35 lbs of strawberries to make 5 gallons of wine.

The recipe calls for (for 5 gallons):
17 1/2 lbs berries (doubled to 35 lbs berries)
4 3/8 gallons water
10 lbs sugar.

I cut up my berries and put them in the straining bag in my 6 gallon primary (7 1/2 to the very top), added 1 gallon of water, and mixed in 1/4 teaspoon of k-meta and left it for 24 hours. I could already see that everything wasn't going to fit in the primary.

The next evening I added all the other chemicals, 1 more gallon of water, and 8 lbs of sugar. At that point the level was up to the 6 gallon mark and the SG was 1.114 (of course it was way high due to lack of water). My thought at that point was that I'd let it ferment like that, and when I removed the berries in a week or so I'd add the rest of the water.

I added yeast (EC-1118) and went to bed….and worried about it all night. In the morning I got up and got out a clean food grade bucket (not a fermenter, just a bucket) and moved 1/2 of the berries over to it. To the juice I added 2 3/8 gallons of water and 2 lbs of sugar, and split the juice between the two buckets.

At that point my SG was 1.074 in one of the buckets (the other one has loose berry mush in it since I didn't have a second straining bag, and I couldn't get an SG reading on it)

So now I have two buckets of about the same stuff. My concerns are:
1. I don't feel confident about my starting SG. Could the SG have already dropped from when I pitched about 10:30 pm until when I measured it again about 6 am? How can I ever know what my ABV turns out to be?
2. I followed a friend's instructions in adding the 1 gallon of water and k-meta initially, and then adding all the other ingredients and pitching yeast the next night. The recipe says to put everything together and add the k-meta the first night, then pitch yeast the second. Will this cause problems?
3. It does not smell good working. It's now about 36 hours after pitching yeast, and it smells more like rotten berries than must. I'm really concerned about that since yesterday morning while I was up to my elbows splitting it into two buckets I spotted a little patch of mold or mildew floating on top of the juice. It had apparently grown in the 30 minutes or so that it was undisturbed while I was working with the berries. What in the heck?

Does anyone have any advice or reassurance? That was a lot of (expensive) berries to waste if this is going to be bad. I have had must before that didn't smell good working, so maybe it'll be ok. I haven't seen any more mold since the fermentation has gotten going. I hope the EC-1118 will win out over anything that floated in after the k-meta dissipated.

Thanks in advance for any thoughts or advice!!
-Owl.

 

[BernardSmith]

If you added K-meta the day before you pitched the yeast then I would not be worried about mold or wild yeast. You may need to add pectic enzyme after the fermentation is over (not sure if the enzyme will work with yeast ) to help break down the fruit pectins and so help clear the wine... Also for any future attempt you may want to freeze the berries before fermenting them as the freezing and thawing will help extract more juice (and so more flavor) from the berries.

Don't know how much sugar is in the strawberries but 1 lb of sugar in one gallon of water will raise the gravity of the water by 40 points (1.040) and 2 lbs in 1 gallon will raise the gravity by 80 points (1.080). Not clear from your post how many pounds of sugar you have added total and what the total volume of water is but if you know that then you will have a fairly good idea of the starting gravity - assuming strawberries have very little sugar...

 

[TemperanceOwl]

If you added K-meta the day before you pitched the yeast then I would not be worried about mold or wild yeast. You may need to add pectic enzyme after the fermentation is over (not sure if the enzyme will work with yeast ) to help break down the fruit pectins and so help clear the wine... Also for any future attempt you may want to freeze the berries before fermenting them as the freezing and thawing will help extract more juice (and so more flavor) from the berries.

Don't know how much sugar is in the strawberries but 1 lb of sugar in one gallon of water will raise the gravity of the water by 40 points (1.040) and 2 lbs in 1 gallon will raise the gravity by 80 points (1.080). Not clear from your post how many pounds of sugar you have added total and what the total volume of water is but if you know that then you will have a fairly good idea of the starting gravity - assuming strawberries have very little sugar...

Thanks for your response, Bernard. In total I added 10 lbs of sugar and 4-3/8 gallons of water to the 35 lbs of berries. That's a little over the 2 lbs per gallon you mentioned. Thanks for the rule of thumb of raising the gravity by 80 points, too. That's helpful. These strawberries were very sweet tasting, large and every one of them was peak ripeness. No green ones at all. According to the recipe, the expected starting SG was supposed to be about 1.090, which falls right in line with your number. That's what I'll assume, then.

You said you aren't sure if the pectic enzyme will work with yeast. I did add 1-1/4 teaspoons of pectic enzyme along with everything else in the recipe that second night, 24 hours after the k-meta. Was that supposed to have gone in 24 hours before the yeast along with the K-meta to do its job before the yeast was pitched?

Thank you for your response and the reassurance about the mold. That makes me feel better.

 

[BernardSmith]

I generally try to add pectic enzyme about a day before I add the yeast but that is really only because I want the enzyme to help rupture the fruit cells and so force more of the juice to be extracted. I think you can add the enzyme even an hour or so before adding the yeast and the truth is that I don't know for sure that the yeast or fermentation inhibits the action of the enzyme. But I suspect that even if it does the fact that there is what is called a lag time between pitching the yeast and the yeast reproducing and becoming active still allows you some time.. Wish I knew more bio-chemistry (I am a social scientist ).
According to USDA figures there are 7 g of sugar in about 150 g of strawberries and with about 450 g in a lb (so very approximately 1 lb of strawberries will contain about 21 g of sugar) and if we agree that 1 lb or 450 g of sugar will increase the gravity of 1 gallon by 40 points then 35 lbs of strawberries will contain 21 *35 = 750 g or about 1.5 lbs of sugar and if that is mixed in say 5 gallons of water that will be equivalent to about .3 lb of sugar or about 13 points per gallon (very roughly) so by rough calculation I would agree that your starting gravity is going to be pretty close to 1.090...
Bottom line? No snafu...

 

[TemperanceOwl]

... so by rough calculation I would agree that your starting gravity is going to be pretty close to 1.090...
Bottom line? No snafu...

Thanks for the encouragement and guidance! It was a really fast ferment, and dropped below 0.995 by Monday night - only 4 days after pitching yeast! I went ahead and transferred it to carboys then, and it is looking very pretty, and already starting to clear.
Thanks again!!