Super spicy ginger wine

[wildhair]

A natural born winemaker indeed & you certainly got the title right - Super Spicy it should be. Adding the extra sugar and sultanas will feed the good little beasties - and thereby increase the alcohol content, but somehow I doubt that your averse to that. You chose the right yeast - SN9 can tolerate up to 18% ABV. It will, however, make difficult to calculate the final % ABV - someone smarter than me with better math skills may be able to help with that one. This is sounding a lot how my first batch of Dragon's Blood went. I'm a bit surprised you didn't use the zest from the oranges and lemons, tho..............you know what mom said.

If you don't already have it - you will be needing a large secondary carboy (6.5 or 7 gal) and/ or a couple smaller ones to rack the wine into............ once the "hot tub" action stops - likely in a few days at the pace it's going.

Growing up in the '60's was different than today. We didn't have "safe spaces" and counselors for stuff like that. My dad told me there was 2 ways to deal with a bully - put up with it or kick the bully's arse. I chose option B - I suspect the ginger kids you knew had dad's like mine.

This is far and away the most entertaining thread of any kind I have read on any forum. I eagerly await the next chapter of Aussie Winemaker - The Chickens and the Angry Neighbors.

 

[Shayne Edwards]

Glad to see you are true to your word Mr Wild Hair and are sticking to the bitter end. As for option B, you are so right, a Ginger mate Robbie got taught to box by his old man from a very early age and in a touching and moving ceremony at age 15 his dad handed over the family set of brass knuckles. It nearly bought a tear to my eye, thankfully I stopped taking the pith in time and that didn't happen.

Unfortunately, my notes from the wine making process really go down hill from here but I will do my best to relate what happened.

Thurs 20th April PM
Left the wine alone.

Friday 21st April AM
The must is still fermenting but not as vigorously, however the cap had seemed to have moved even further up the primary fermenter (maybe because I had the reading glasses on) and now I'm starting to worry about having enough space as I was planning on adding more sugar to the fermenter to meet the readings from Papas video on You Tube. Looking back at the notes, it looks like I found another blog on the internet, did some calculations and decided that I needed 8kg of sugar as a target amount to match Papa's recipe.

I took a reading with the hydrometer which was hard work as I had to stick the turkey baster down through the cap and try to draw liquid without fruit pieces blocking it up. There was a lot of fruit in this must.

Just a little aside here, why is it that every time I try to take a reading, the gauge I want on the hydrometer always ends up facing away from me? I suspect I look a little like a dog chasing it's tail as I hold the tube holding the hydrometer up to my eyeline and spin in a circle trying to get a sighting on the right part. Got it eventually and it is down to between 1.01/1.02 already.

Did I mention I tend to panic a little as a result of my previous failures, so with the concern around running out of space in the fermenter and because the banana segments looked really manky, I decided to remove some of the fruit cap (mostly the banana though)
I scooped out a little over a litre of fruit, put it in a bag and that amount hardly made a dent in the fruit that floated up to replace it.

On Papa's video, he talks of giving the spent fruit to his chickens. Of course, that was the left overs after having been squeezed dry. Turns out it was another thing that I didn't think through very well. I'm guessing the swollen fruit at that point may have had an ABV over 5 %. One of my neighbours keeps chickens and we have a good relationship, keeping an eye on each others places, sharing jams and pickles, the occasional tasty ale. So I gave him the fruit to add to his chook food. I will come back to this later.

So with my new goal of 8kg of sugar, I added another 2 tspns of yeast nutrient and 2kg of white granulated sugar. Grabbed the drill and coat hanger piece and whipped the b'jesus out of it trying to dissolve the sugar. Of course, with a translucent fermenter I was just guessing when it was dissolved. Got ready for work and did a reading before leaving. Back up to 1.04.

 

[Shayne Edwards]

OK the notes get really sketchy from here on and after the reading on this forum, I suspect that my mistakes really started multiplying from here on, mostly these were driven by my Skeeter pee run that had just gone from smelling delicious to something akin to burnt plastic or paint flashing off. Basically the panic around failure started to build again, combine that with a fairly complete lack of understanding and this is how I reached the following stuff ups.

Sat 22nd of April PM

Tested the must and it was down to 1.01 again. Added another teaspoon of nutrient and 2kg of granular white sugar went nuts with the drill, after it settled, checked hydrometer again and it was back up to 1.03. The level in the 30 litre fermenter was up over the 28 litre mark after this addition.

Sun 23rd of April PM

Tested the must again back down to 1.01. Added another teaspoon of nutrient, 2kg sugar and whipped it for ages trying to dissolve the sugar without really knowing if I had properly or not. Sadly, I didn't record another reading as I thought I had added pretty close to the target amount of sugar. At this point the fermenter was so full it was nearly touching the lid, so I couldn't add anymore sugar anyway. I suspect the wine making gods sometimes just take pity on poor fools and stop them from stuffing up any further. Maybe 90 litres of mistakes was enough laughs for them

Every 2kg of sugar seemed to lift the reading by .02 anyway and the yeast seemed to get through it every 24 hours.

So hang in there with me while I finish this story off and don't forget about the poor bloody chooks, that's still coming.

 

[wildhair]

First - I'm upset that you held back on the Drunken Chickens and Angry Neighbor chapter of this odyssey. I was REALLY looking forward that, but I may have guessed the ending.

Second - couple things I learned along the way - much of which is personal preference and/or opinion, so do with it what you will.

A. Put the fruit in mesh bag or NEW pair of ladies nylon stockings. It's easier to get to the liquid for testing the sg & easier to squeeze the bag some every day to get maximum juice from it............ and yes, I know there is a joke in that last sentence.
B. Scoop out the liquid and pour it thru a mesh screen or tea strainer FIRST - then put it in the hydrometer tube. You'll get a more accurate reading with out all the bits of fruit in there.
C. Make the sure the hydro tube is on a level surface - then give the hydrometer a spin. As it slows down and stops bobbing - you can get the reading. It's very hard to hold it level, especially if Mr. Beam is helping - and surface tension will want to make the hydrometer "stick" to the side of the tube. Then the reading is not accurate.
D. Put the fruit from the fermenter on the compost pile - the yeast and enzymes will make it break down faster, you get better compost for the garden and it will keep the neighbors chickens from getting hammered..................figuratively, of course.
E. As you add more fruit & nutrient - you should also add more pectic enzyme to help it clear later on. Which you may want to do now. Personally - I use Fermaid-K to give the good "wee invisible beasties " a supercharge rather than just nutrient.
F. Don't forget to check the ph - it's easier to adjust it when you start then when the wine is done fermenting - but some folks do it that way.
G. A long spoon, wooden or plastic rod for stirring will let you "feel" and listen for undissolved sugar on the bottom better than the drill and whipping the daylights out of it can.

We never had heirloom brass knuckles passed from dad to lad, that sounds like a lovely tradition. All I got was some advice from my dad - "Avoid a fight when you can, but when you can't - then fight to win". It's not Plato - but it worked.

Now - on to the chickens and the angry neighbor...................

 

[Arne]

Just a little aside here, why is it that every time I try to take a reading, the gauge I want on the hydrometer always ends up facing away from me? I suspect I look a little like a dog chasing it's tail as I hold the tube holding the hydrometer up to my eyeline and spin in a circle trying to get a sighting on the right part. Got it eventually and it is down to between 1.01/1.02 already.

I believe the factories build this into the hydrometers. Think it is just probably just to test your patience. but each and every one I have ever used does the same thing. Arne.

 

[Shayne Edwards]

First - I'm upset that you held back on the Drunken Chickens and Angry Neighbor chapter of this odyssey. I was REALLY looking forward that, but I may have guessed the ending.

Second - couple things I learned along the way - much of which is personal preference and/or opinion, so do with it what you will.

A. Put the fruit in mesh bag or NEW pair of ladies nylon stockings. It's easier to get to the liquid for testing the sg & easier to squeeze the bag some every day to get maximum juice from it............ and yes, I know there is a joke in that last sentence.
B. Scoop out the liquid and pour it thru a mesh screen or tea strainer FIRST - then put it in the hydrometer tube. You'll get a more accurate reading with out all the bits of fruit in there.
C. Make the sure the hydro tube is on a level surface - then give the hydrometer a spin. As it slows down and stops bobbing - you can get the reading. It's very hard to hold it level, especially if Mr. Beam is helping - and surface tension will want to make the hydrometer "stick" to the side of the tube. Then the reading is not accurate.
D. Put the fruit from the fermenter on the compost pile - the yeast and enzymes will make it break down faster, you get better compost for the garden and it will keep the neighbors chickens from getting hammered..................figuratively, of course.
E. As you add more fruit & nutrient - you should also add more pectic enzyme to help it clear later on. Which you may want to do now. Personally - I use Fermaid-K to give the good "wee invisible beasties " a supercharge rather than just nutrient.
F. Don't forget to check the ph - it's easier to adjust it when you start then when the wine is done fermenting - but some folks do it that way.
G. A long spoon, wooden or plastic rod for stirring will let you "feel" and listen for undissolved sugar on the bottom better than the drill and whipping the daylights out of it can.

We never had heirloom brass knuckles passed from dad to lad, that sounds like a lovely tradition. All I got was some advice from my dad - "Avoid a fight when you can, but when you can't - then fight to win". It's not Plato - but it worked.

Now - on to the chickens and the angry neighbor...................

Good advice and some absolute laugh out loud moments thanks for this. Apologies for the lack of writing my darling girl is not home nights at the moment and I am being Mr Mum for my little bloke. Dinner, home work etc. That said I have him working on a history assignment right now, I can only hope he will be writing as quickly as me for the next short while.

 

[Shayne Edwards]

Just a little aside here, why is it that every time I try to take a reading, the gauge I want on the hydrometer always ends up facing away from me? I suspect I look a little like a dog chasing it's tail as I hold the tube holding the hydrometer up to my eyeline and spin in a circle trying to get a sighting on the right part. Got it eventually and it is down to between 1.01/1.02 already.

I believe the factories build this into the hydrometers. Think it is just probably just to test your patience. but each and every one I have ever used does the same thing. Arne.

Thank you Arne, I was truly starting to think it was just me and that Dionysus and his Roman mate had painted a target on my back. Ok back to the story quickly before I have to don my housewife frock again.

 

[Shayne Edwards]

As I said earlier I made so many stuff ups on this wine run and I promised absolute honesty, so here is the rest of it. Just quietly it feels like I'm wearing a hair shirt right now but a man's word is a man's word, at least until I pop the frock back on shortly. (If my missus reads this, I am in so much trouble.)

Firstly, the notes I took in this last stage just plainly suck, but bear in mind the Skeeter Pee batch had stopped smelling good and quite frankly I was beating myself up over not continually checking a hydrometer reading from it. I was thinking that I hadn't hit it with Campden tablets and wine stabiliser in time to stop the "wee little nasty invisible beasties" from having their way with my batch of wine.

With this in mind and having had no bubbles in the trap of my ginger wine and in all honesty, no bloody idea what I was doing, I mixed up 4 cambden tablets with two heaped teaspoons of wine stabiliser and added it to the must (30litres still including all the fruit). Now before your castigate me, I checked the must a couple of times before this and it seemed like the ferment had stopped and was just degassing. I was more than likely wrong, and I didn't do another hydrometer check and I was back to panicking again.

Now did I tell you earlier just how much I love my partner? I had mentioned to her how I needed to strain the must, apparently I was also eyeing off the lace curtains in the study. I don't recall asking if she thought I should give them a wash but after 25 years together, well you get the picture. Anyway she surprised me with a square yard of curtain netting for the straining and I ran the must into another 30 litre container through the netting and a colander.

This time when I removed the fruit ( unlike the first batch given to my neighbour), I squeezed the fruit as dry as possible and extracted as much juice as possible. Like last time I bagged it up to take over to my neighbours chickens (chooks). I knocked on the neighbours door, feeling proud as punch around my recycling efforts.

While I didn't expect a medal, my neighbour took the bag, walked over to his bin, dumped it, said," Goodnight Shayne," and shut his door.

Apologies, need to go check on the little man's home work.

 

[sour_grapes]

I was thinking that I hadn't hit it with Campden tablets and wine stabiliser in time to stop the "wee little nasty invisible beasties" from having their way with my batch of wine.

I haven't been following this closely enough to know what your goals are, so forgive me if this does not pertain to you. The comment above makes it sound to me like you are trying to stop the fermentation at a point where there is still some residual sugar left. It is not really practicable for a home winemaker to stop an active fermentation. The Campden tablets and stabilizer will not kill your yeast. (It may slow them down, and inhibit their reproduction, but there still will be a colony of yeast there to continue the fermentation.)

 

[wildhair]

[QUOTE="sour_grapes, post: 689670, member: 29562"...........makes it sound to me like you are trying to stop the fermentation at a point where there is still some residual sugar left. It is not really practicable for a home winemaker to stop an active fermentation. The Campden tablets and stabilizer will not kill your yeast. (It may slow them down, and inhibit their reproduction, but there still will be a colony of yeast there to continue the fermentation.)[/QUOTE]

Yep, that one took me by surprise a bit, too. I read that and went - He did....... WHAT?? LOL

Remove the fruit, let it sit and settle a bit (maybe a day), then rack into a secondary and put it under airlock to FINISH fermenting. The final fermentation - from 1.010 to .990 - can take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks. Since you added the Campden and sorbate - it may take your Super Spicy ginger wine a tad longer for finish the ferment.

And Shayne - by "wine stabilizer" - I'm guessing you mean potassium sorbate? It would be much too early to add that. I generally add that right before I backsweeten and after racking several times - either when the wine is cleared on it's own or after I add clearing agent. Fortunately - you didn't add a lot.

So - what is the sg now?
Did you rack it into a secondary vessel?
Did you get it under airlock?

And what the hell happened to the chooks?

 

[Shayne Edwards]

Oh shite, Messers Wild Hair and Sour grapes , it appears that I've made even more mistakes than my reading on here has led me to believe, sorry to say but it probably gets worse from here on. The carriages from the rear have nearly finished crashing up through the dining car and locomotive, all that remains to be seen is if there are going to be any survivors from this wreck. (and what happened with the chooks )

 

[Shayne Edwards]

Did I mention that I make bloody fabulous sauerkraut, kimchi, tomato relish, pickled cucumbers, fruit cordials and jams. However, wine??? Not so good. That statement is me trying to add some padding to the hair shirt I've donned while sharing this story. It is really starting to itch.

So if you have the time, come along for the last of this sorry tale, I hope to finish it by tomorrow as I will be having another crack at Skeeter Pee by then because I am nothing less than stubborn.

Ok, if you recall I had 30 litres of fruit must that I added campden tablets and wine stabiliser (Potassium Sorbate). I transferred to another 30 litre drum after filtering and squeezing. There was lots of fruit and from memory I ended up with only approx. 25litres in the next container.

I left it for about a day and then grabbed the drill and pretended I was a sadistic dentist,in an attempt to de-gas it.

I had a two part clearing agent in the fridge called Kwik Klear, I added this as per the instructions and left it for 2 days. It occurred to me later that I might have let the KK return to room temp. before using it. On the instructions it said for stubborn wines to add another dose. It was around this time I drew off a sample and took it to the Scottish bloke mentioned earlier, aside from saying he couldn't drink a whole bottle, he also said it felt like it hadn't been degassed properly and it still tasted sweet nor had it cleared. He also showed me his chanter, along with a nice local news story about his bagpipe playing.

So I went nuts with the drill again before adding more Kwik Klear, I could see the must/wine clearing and after 2 days I transferred to my newly purchased 23 litre glass carboy under a water trap. There has been no further evidence of fermentation and it continues to clear. While product names seem to vary between OZ and the US, apparently gravity works the same way. At this point, I am rather proud of myself for not attempting a breast joke, mostly because I'm afraid my darling wife may eventually read this and living to a ripe old age is one of my goals.

If you recall, the notes around the back half of this, are absolute rubbish, but I can see where I tried to calculate ABV. It reads 13.3 X 1.3 = 16.99% . So maybe the ferment really had finished???? Of course, this could also be a case of straws and grasping.

When I looked into the second fermenting drum after transferring to the carboy I could see maybe a kilo of undissolved sugar along with some gross lees and must, all up there was around 2 litres thrown out.

Tomorrow, I will try and post a photo of what the wine looks like now, along with a hydrometer reading and a couple of burning questions. Oh, and what happened with the chooks, apologies Mr Wild Hair.
Good night all.

 

[wildhair]

I also make jam and other assorted tasty delights - few of those skill sets apply to wine-making I have discovered. The one impression I get from having followed your post from it's beginning, is that you seem to be trying to rush the wine along.....trying to force it into becoming wine instead of allowing the various steps sufficient time that each requires to perform properly so the juice BECOMES wine.

Other more knowledgeable and experienced winemakers may have other opinions, and I would hope they would step in a correct me if I steer you even further down the path of despair - but here's my $.02.

First - your wife is likely an amazing woman. Since she is a Scottish lass, that is already implicit, of course.

Second - on the comments of the wise Scottish bloke who showed you his chanter.........whatever that is............
".......he also said it felt like it hadn't been degassed properly and it still tasted sweet nor had it cleared."
The tiny bubbles are likely CO2 - the result of the wine still trying to ferment the residual sugar - in spite of your persistent attempts to "stuff it up" and whip it to death. I often get those bubbles when I rack the first time.......because it's still fermenting.
The fact that it still tasted sweet ~ and that you had undissolved sugar in the bottom ~ confirms it had not yet consumed all the sugar, which moves calculating the % ABV into the very advanced mathematics class.
And the fact that it had "not yet cleared" is not surprising since you had just added the clearing agent the day before, no? To clear of it's own volition, wine can take months. Clearing agents can help a wine clear after you've allowed some time for much of the suspended particulate to settle out first....like a couple months. Clearing agents often take a few days to a couple weeks to clear a wine.

Third - you have promised info the bloody drunken chooks for 3 days now and I'm still left puzzling over their plight. I fear they have come to an untimely end.

You may want to consider getting a few books on wine making - Terry Garey's - the Joy of Home Wine Making is a good primer. Jack Keller's WineMaking website is a source of great info, both basic and advanced. http://winemaking.jackkeller.net/

If you haven't already dumped it - I would stick an airlock in this Mad Max Wine experiment and put it somewhere you won't fiddle with it for a month. Then see how it is. Or what it is.........
And maybe, in the meantime, start with something smaller & simple - a gallon of basic apple wine, or a wine from fruit juice concentrate, or a wine kit??

Now - did the chooks survive their drunken ordeal or NOT?

 

[Shayne Edwards]

Lets talk about annoyed neighbours, drunk chooks and the unforseen perils of wine making, if you have soldiered through this whole thread you will recall how, without much thought I gave a much liked neighbour a bunch fruit must full of alcohol to feed to his chickens. I, with hand on heart, can assure you that the gesture had no malice in it, rather, it was just purely not thought out very well. Apparently the road to hell really is paved with good intentions.

The neighbour and I used to share pickles, preserves, produce and the occasional ale together.

When I squeezed and removed the rest of the fruit from the must and took it over for his chooks I received a very cold shoulder and since that point the cheery waves from his front yard have stopped, I haven't enjoyed a single free range egg let alone a friendly conversation.

What the hell happened I hear you ask, well............ we have a few cat owners around us who tend to let them roam free 24 hours a day and while they aren't technically feral, I wouldn't like to be elderly and slip in the shower while breaking a hip and be unable to move with one of them in the house. Now I know from previous conversations that one of them continually jumps his fence and has a go at his beloved chooks. The chooks apparently either scatter going nuts or retreat to the pen and defend themselves on mass.

This part comes second hand from another neighbour, apparently after the chickens ate the alcoholic fruit, said cat, had another crack at organising himself a KFC dinner. The chook owner came out to find the chooks accessing their racial dinosaur DNA and taking on the bloody cat. I'm told that aside from a few lost feathers nothing really went too badly. Except they haven't laid an egg since and I am to blame.

Have to tell you, I miss the relationship with my neighbour but I'm really going to miss those free range eggs.

In case you missed it, the last line was an attempt at a joke. I'm sure all will be fine soon, his lovely wife loves my non-alcoholic ginger beer. Next week, I will make a fresh batch, drop off a dozen bottles and I'm sure all will be forgiven.



.

 

[wildhair]

So the chooks got drunk and decided to fight back - good for them! Farm cats are fine if they keep to the business of rodent control, but they do a lot of damage to our wild turkey and pheasant populations here - killing the chicks and poults before they can fly.

I'm sure he'll get over the drunken chooks vs. feline brawl and the eggs will come rolling in again.

Now - how's the Super Spicy Ginger Wine concoction going?

 

[Shayne Edwards]

 

[Shayne Edwards]

Well the photo above was from this morning, it's been sitting under an air lock in a 23 litre glass carboy for almost 2 weeks. There is approximately half an inch of lees at the base and what I suspect is too much head space. You will notice a 750ml bottle of commercial ginger wine sitting next to it and a question to follow shortly.

As I stated at the start of this story, every little stuff up I managed and boy howdy, there were plenty, (I think the only thing I didn't do wrong was take a "Kitchen Wiz" in the primary) all happened before I stumbled across this great forum and the wonderfully helpful people upon it. Unfortunately, all the excellent advice given around this particular train wreck of wine making will only get to be applied to my future efforts. Yet despite all the worst of my efforts there is a wine of some sort sitting there and with care it might survive to bottling. I hope the story bought a smile to your faces at some point, lord knows some of the replies had me laughing (Mr Wild Hair), and maybe other beginners might read this and think "Hell, maybe I'm not so bad at this caper!"

Should I use the commercial wine to top up the carboy?

Given the amount Campden tablets/ winestabiliser I used and when I added it, should I add more if I top up?

With the amount of lees, can I still leave this for 3 months before racking?

Kind Regards,
Shayne
PS Mr Wild Hair, you are right I have an amazing Missus, her only real failing is her taste in men and I say Cheers to that!!!

 

[wildhair]

Well, I for 1 enjoyed the story and it's good to see the "alleged" wine in a carboy. Yes, you may have a bit too much head space.
Did you taste it recently? Is it still "a wee bit too sweet" or will you need to sweeten it later?
If you are NOT going to sweeten it - then I would let it sit another 2 weeks and rack it off the lees, then top up with the store bought wine. If it worries you - pop the airlock and top it up w/ the store bought wine now.

If you ARE going to sweeten it - rack it off in 2 weeks, then top it up with "sweet water" - a 1:1 sugar / water mix. I don't always use sweet water because it can dilute the wine, but in this case - that might not be a bad idea. That's a lotta ginger in that carboy! It's MUCH darker than my Lemongrass-ginger wine.............which I have an itch to taste for some reason.

I don't like to add too much potassium metabisulfite (Campden tablets) Some add it at every racking - I usually add a bit every other racking. You added about 1/2 tablet per gal last time - the general rule for wine is one Campden tablet or 1/8th tsp of potassium metabisulphite per gallon. I would NOT add any at the next racking (in 2 weeks) and no more potassium sorbate (stabilizer) unless and until right before you backsweeten.

Then let it sit another month or 2 and rack it again. It should be getting clearer each time you rack it. If it still hasn't cleared, about 2 weeks before you plan to rack it the next time - add some Sparkaloid to it. Let it sit 2 weeks, and it should be clear. If it is - rack it and add your Campden tablets (and 1/2 t per gal potassium sorbate if you are going to backsweeten.) Then you can bulk age or bottle.

Good luck and thanks for sharing the story! It was truly an epic for the ages! LOL

 

[Shayne Edwards]

Mr Wild Hair, isn't that funny..........I've got an itch to taste your Lemon Grass and Ginger wine too!!

Thanks for all the advice and hanging in to the bitter end with me. I will probably post some more feed back as the wine moves through it's clearing/aging process. At this point, I find myself hoping to end up with something which will compliment an Asian style soup like Laksa or Tom Yum, sort of how you use sherry with a European clear style soup. Time will tell.

 

[wildhair]

Time is your friend...........most of the time. Keep us posted.
I enjoyed reading the entire escapade and I hope some of the suggestions will be useful........ in future batches. Good luck with the neighbor!