The Grape wine seems to be going well - the fermentation stopped after about two weeks so I put in some stabiliser & a couple of campden tablets as directed, & now it is upstairs starting to clear in the cool attic room.
Meanwhile, I've started a batch of wine with the last of the apples from the garage. I had to chuck out about half of them as they were distinctly brown looking, but still had enough to make up a batch of Apple & Redcurrant wine with a couple of pounds of redcurrants from the freezer, & it's now bubbling away like mad, which you can see if you look closely at this rather shaky video clip.
Although the second & third batches of Apple wine are gradually clearing after their pectin haze troubles, the first batch of Apple wine has not done anything besides look murky despite sitting upstairs supposedly clearing for the past couple of months - something had to be done.
So I siphoned off a little sediment from the bottom, returned it to the cleaned demijohn & degassed it by shaking the demijohn vigorously. Then I added wine finings, gave it a stir, and we'll see what happens now.
I also tasted it (very sweet indeed), & measured the SG - I think my notes must be up the creek, as I've surely not made 21% strength wine...
Not sure you can! I understood that more than about 15% killed the yeast?
ReplyDeleteI'm sure that you are right, Flum - I must have misread the initial SG level on the hydrometer.
ReplyDeleteIt's a niggle tho', as I do like to know how strong the wines are - if only so that I know if you have to do your shoelaces up before drinking the second glass!
It is incredibly sweet - I'm thinking of blending it with the batch of lip-puckering bone dry redcurrant that I made in the summer.