thanksgiving wine.

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dozer

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What's up everyone first time poster just joined.. at the end of october the 29th or 30th I put together a batch of apple wine. I used some store bought apple juice and nothing but brown sugar. Having had a few drinks while watching my equipment sanitize I ended up opening some windows and the air temp in the house hit about 56 57 degrees f. My hydrometer read around 12-14 percent potential. I realised idk how to account for the temp throwing off the hydro reading. If anyone knows what's up I could sure use the help. This stuff is so dark at this point that you cant shine a light through it and see it on the other side. I kinda hopednitd be done fermenting by tomorrow so it can go to secondary and be consumed on thanks giving. We aren't real concerned about age around here and we tend to enjoy higher abv. To that point I really don't want to hear that I'm making prison wine or hooch or whatever. I have the means and the time to pretend I'm a vintner. Truth is I'm just a shade or two away from full blown redneck and I dont mind a young country wine cuz nobody else around here does either lol. One day the coroner will open me up and I'll be nothing but ec1118 inside lol. Any and all help appreciated. In time I I'd like to have enough carboy space to make a large amount of wine and age it.... maybe in 2020.
 
My only comment is that I don't think that you should worry about the temperature correction to your SG. The corrections really aren't that large, about 0.001 if I recall correctly, which is no big deal.

I totally agree Sour_Grapes. I've done the math several time using the correction charts and the on-line calculator. Any reasonable temps that a wine would be at (55 - 80) The difference is going to be well within what our eyeballs can discern. Example - Hydrometer calibrated at 60 degrees and you wine is 90 degrees (Wow that would crazy hot temp to keep any wine at for any amount of time. THEN you get a difference of .002 So that SG reading of .990 would correct to .992 if in fact your wine was at 80 degrees.

ONLINE SG CORRECTION CALCULATOR: https://www.brewersfriend.com/hydrometer-temp/
 
Hi dozer, and welcome. Thanksgiving is about two weeks away. If you started the wine a couple of days ago and the potential ABV was about 12-14% then we are talking about 3 lbs of fermentable sugars in each gallon of must (juice) and while a large enough colony of viable yeast could ferment this in about 10 days (not two or three), your apple wine is not going to clear for months - partly because it will be saturated with CO2 which will keep the fruit particles and yeast cells in suspension and partly because those particles are themselves so small and light that even without any gas to keep them in suspension it will take gravity a long time to force them to drop. What you might do after the specific gravity (AKA density) drops to 1.000 (or lower) which means that the yeast will have eaten all the sugars, is to put your carboy in a fridge. There the cold temperature will tend to force the yeast cells to drop to the bottom and as those cells drop they will push down on particles below them carrying them to the bottom too.
Another possible aid might be to go to your nearest LHBS (local home brew store) and buy some finings. I am not sure if the particles that are making your wine opaque are electrically positively charged or negatively charged or both so you may want to buy finings that are both and add these to your wine. They are designed not to add flavors (assuming you add them in appropriate quantities for the volume of wine you are making) and they will help clear the wine in about 24 hours but most of them need to be added after fermentation is finished and just before you bottle. The exception is bentonite (a clay) which you could add today.
Apples are full of malic acid and malic acid is a harsh acid. Apple wine (or cider) will have a bite because of this acid, but aged apple wine (or cider) tends to have less malic acid because for various reasons the malic acid is transformed into lactic acid and lactic acid is far less harsh. So drinking an apple wine when it is still green is a very different experience from drinking the same wine after 9 months to a year of aging.
Last point: truth is that you can drink any wine or cider or beer from the minute you add yeast to the minute you decide that the drink has over-aged and has become oxidized. There is nothing in the process or the product that will hurt you (all other things being equal), but wine making (and brewing) is a natural process and that natural process like every other natural process takes time. And there is really nothing you can do to shorten that time. Enjoy your apple wine with your friends.. but expecting a pleasurable drink to be ready in two weeks may be much like expecting a five year old child to behave like an adult...
 
I agree that you won't have wine. You can call it cloudy cider after a couple weeks. It will dry out pretty well but it won't clear in that length of time. I assume you used EC1118. I make a cloudy cider (Cornish style) that I usually ferment for roughly 10 days then either kill the yeast with sorbate or cold crash and keg. I also back sweeten for a semi-sweet hard cider. Taste is nearly identical to Cornish Rattler. It also makes a fantastic mulled hard cider. It can sneak up on you and bite like a rattler.
 
Pretty much the plan. Four weeks in the primary then I'll rack and crash til thanks giving day. Definitely correct on the insane amount of gas this producing, it's still bubbling out after 14 days. These little gallons are just to mess around and try thing's. I will say half and half brown and white sugar or just white makes it more appealing to the eye. I'm currently collecting honey for a real project. I have two 6 gal carboys ready to go and a cyser planned.
 
Hi dozer, and welcome. Thanksgiving is about two weeks away. If you started the wine a couple of days ago and the potential ABV was about 12-14% then we are talking about 3 lbs of fermentable sugars in each gallon of must (juice) and while a large enough colony of viable yeast could ferment this in about 10 days (not two or three), your apple wine is not going to clear for months - partly because it will be saturated with CO2 which will keep the fruit particles and yeast cells in suspension and partly because those particles are themselves so small and light that even without any gas to keep them in suspension it will take gravity a long time to force them to drop. What you might do after the specific gravity (AKA density) drops to 1.000 (or lower) which means that the yeast will have eaten all the sugars, is to put your carboy in a fridge. There the cold temperature will tend to force the yeast cells to drop to the bottom and as those cells drop they will push down on particles below them carrying them to the bottom too.
Another possible aid might be to go to your nearest LHBS (local home brew store) and buy some finings. I am not sure if the particles that are making your wine opaque are electrically positively charged or negatively charged or both so you may want to buy finings that are both and add these to your wine. They are designed not to add flavors (assuming you add them in appropriate quantities for the volume of wine you are making) and they will help clear the wine in about 24 hours but most of them need to be added after fermentation is finished and just before you bottle. The exception is bentonite (a clay) which you could add today.
Apples are full of malic acid and malic acid is a harsh acid. Apple wine (or cider) will have a bite because of this acid, but aged apple wine (or cider) tends to have less malic acid because for various reasons the malic acid is transformed into lactic acid and lactic acid is far less harsh. So drinking an apple wine when it is still green is a very different experience from drinking the same wine after 9 months to a year of aging.
Last point: truth is that you can drink any wine or cider or beer from the minute you add yeast to the minute you decide that the drink has over-aged and has become oxidized. There is nothing in the process or the product that will hurt you (all other things being equal), but wine making (and brewing) is a natural process and that natural process like every other natural process takes time. And there is really nothing you can do to shorten that time. Enjoy your apple wine with your friends.. but expecting a pleasurable drink to be ready in two weeks may be much like expecting a five year old child to behave like an adult...
I started on the 29th so that's about 4 weeks all in. I dont expect shelf quality by any means just hoping in the two weeks its been fermenting that primary is close to done.
 
I kill my yeast at about 10 days for the cider. I have a beer that racked on cherries that is still bubbling after 9 days. I had hoped it would be done this weekend but it looks like it will go on for awhile. I was hoping to have bottled and carbonated by Christmas.
 
I kill my yeast at about 10 days for the cider. I have a beer that racked on cherries that is still bubbling after 9 days. I had hoped it would be done this weekend but it looks like it will go on for awhile. I was hoping to have bottled and carbonated by Christmas.
I'm really trying to let this one go a few extra day's. Last time I went pure brown sugar it stuck and was basically mega sweet nasty brown juice.
 

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