Newbie wine making instructions

[ojay54]

Not really my business,but anyone reading this around Worcs,forget ebay,on a 5 mile trip to Ludlow today,I passed enough hops lying in the road to fill 5 or 6 binbags!

[Odsox]

OK Mike, help needed please

Against all advice I am in the process of turning some of my grapes into wine.
I have pressed the juice out of umpteen bunches and now have about 6 litres of juice.
I tested it to the best of my ability and the SG is 1.06 @ 21 C and acidity is 3.1 pH. According to the hydrometer that would make a wine of just under 10%, so how much sugar should I add to get it to about 12% or slightly under. ?

[MKG]

About 6 litres? And you want accuracy?

12 ounces, Tony (340 gm).

The acidity is a bit low (should be between 3.3 and 3.7) so a squeeze of a quarter of a lemon may come in handy.

Using your figures, it would be only 10 ozs of sugar - but I think your expection of 10% from an SG reading of 1.06 is a tad optimistic. Your reading temperature is a bit high and that tends to thin out the juice but, even so, I'd put you a percentage point over on your expectations. The extra 2 ozs will take care of that.

You're getting very adventurous?

[Odsox]

Thanks again.
I just checked and it's "just" over 5 litres, so probably 10 oz then.
I'm a bit confused by your lemon suggestion though, won't that make it more acidic ?

[MKG]

Just shows how stupid a person can get when trying to do three things at once

Yes, you're right. Don't add any acid. Let it ferment out and taste it. It should be, at least, crisp. If it's over the top on acidity, there's a few simple ways of dealing with it.

[Odsox]

Right, I added 2 tablespoonfuls of citric acid crystals as I don't have a lemon, is that enough ?
Oh hang on you've already posted ........ umm, oh.

[MKG]

You could market that as cutlery-cleaning dip.

[frozenthunderbolt]

Too acid? Try adding a few Tblspn of (boiled to sterilize) grit that that you would give to chickens - neutralizes some acid with little impact on taste.

[Odsox]

Roughly how long does it take wine to clear ?
I started the apple wine the first week of September and it ceased working about 3 weeks later. I did add pectolase at the start but it's still pretty cloudy, so does it take days. weeks or months to clear?

Update on the rest, the apple & raspberry has also stopped working and still cloudy and the 10 litres of grape is still slowly working, but only on sunny days, as it's in the unheated conservatory (the only place I could find room for it)

[Brewtrog]

Some wines can take months to clear. Racking it off the lees helps (if you haven't already). Once off the lees you could degass it to get any CO2 out of the wine, which does help it to clear faster, but is a faff to say the least, especially when the wine will clear on its own. Putting it in a cold place does also tend to help.

[Odsox]

Thanks Brewtrog, I'll leave well alone then.
With winter on it's way it should be fairly easy to find a cool (frost free) place to store it.

[MKG]

Take the earliest of the apple wines out to the unheated conservatory and bring your grape wine in - that'll give your grape wine a bit of warmth to finish with and give the apple a chill. As you've added pectolase at the outset, it should clear soon (but apple wines are - you know - a bit like growing parsnips).

Have you tasted anything yet? If you do, don't make judgements at this point - the wines will be pretty raw. But you can make broad assessments like "far too acid" or "no flavour at all". Have a go and get OH to take a piccy of you just at the moment of first taste

EDIT: In fact, get BOTH of the apple wines out into the conservatory. The tiniest thermal current can retain a haze for you.

[Odsox]

OK, I've done that, transferred the 2 apple wines to the larder. If I get it in the neck when She gets home for clogging up the larder with bulky unnecessary items I will say you told me to do it.
Seeing as you asked, I just had to sample some and they both taste just like I remembered homebrew wine tasting like. But I am willing to wait for several months to see if it gets better.
I also tasted the grape wine, even though it's still working, and it's rather nice. Even with the yeastiness it has flavour and a very nice acidity about it, rather like a Moselle. So far I'm impressed by that one.
How long do you think it will take for the grape wine to be drinkable after it's stopped working? I need to know by next March at the latest if I'm going to allow twice as many grapes to grow next year by allowing the 2 new rods to stay.

[MKG]

Some people

If you're impressed at this very early stage, it's going to be a good 'un. What more do you want?

Plant more grapes!

EDIT: And back-sweetening is perfectly allowable and, more to the point, desirable in an apple wine. You have to develop the ability to say "Jeez, that's rough - if only it was a tiny bit less tannic ... Oh!"

[Odsox]

A bit of an update.
I ended up making 12 bottles of wine from my "spare" grapes, and as this year's grape harvest is fast approaching I thought it might be a good idea to taste a bottle to see what it's like.
Well, it has potential (which is a polite way of putting it). It has the immediate taste that I associate with home made wine, but with a wonderful flowery after taste.
So that didn't help at all. I wanted to know if it is worth making some more this year and now I don't know what to do. If the rough "home made" taste disappears over time to leave the nice floral taste then it is definitely worth making some more, but if the fresh flowery taste disappears and leaves the "home made" taste then it's a waste of time.

I think I may well leave it this year and taste again in a years time, but as I allowed another rod to grow on the vine, I shall have nearly twice as many grapes then (2016) and what do you do with several hundred bunches of grapes