HI EVERYONE, JUST JOINED!!!!

[windyoolie]

HI EVERYONE!!!!!!!! new to this so please bear with me, i have visited the site several times and have done the alcoholic water several times, on the go at the moment, rice and raisin and also a wine off this site but need to know what to do next. is this where i post the question? :scratch: :scratch

[ina]

Hiya Windyoolie, welcome!

And yes, you are in the right place for a question of that kind - but maybe you need to be a bit more explicit? What exactly have you done so far with your wine?

[windyoolie]

orange juice, etc and all that stuff in demi john bubbling away merriley but at the end of print off (by the way it was off someone called adams) it tells you that you will have a thin deposit on bottom of demi john and then says we can talk about how to get off that deposit and if i taste the wine now it will be grotesque, it needs to be sweetned- something else we can go into later. however do not know to get back to this adams to ask how to carry on!!i know how to syphon off and bottle but dont know how much sugar to add and when and if?!! is this all a bit too much? really enjoying making wine and stuff though didnt know it could be so enjoyable as well as drinking it! many thanks wendy

[MKG]

Hi Wendy ...

The first thing is to get your wine off the deposit - and as you say that you know how to siphon, then you don't need any guidance there. But after you've done it, you need to rest the wine for a week or so to restabilise (I assume that you know to top up with water so as not to leave a large air gap).

Now it's suck it and see time. Taste the wine. It will, with about 95% probability, be almost undrinkable. But try to make a reasonable judgement about what it is which is making it undrinkable - is it too bitter, or is it too sour (acidic)? Both of those characteristics will improve with age, but not always to the point of drinkability.

Now decide what you want to do with it. Sometimes, you'll make wine which ends up too sweet, and the best thing to do with that is to blend it with a wine you already have but which is too sour. On the other hand, sometimes you just want a drink. Now the fun starts.

Dissolve 4 ozs of sugar (about 100 grams, I think) in a little hot water. When it's cool, add it to your gallon of wine (there you are - to get it in, you must already have drunk some) and stir gently. Taste again. Is it acceptable now? If yes, store it for another week or so if you can then get merrily pissed. If no, repeat the process - noting that to get the second lot of sugar into the wine, you have to drink a little more.

Imagine the fun you're having if you have a dozen demijohns on the go.

Once in a while, you'll make a wine which is gorgeous from day one. That won't happen often. You'll also make wines which are far too acidic, and those you adjust with precipitated chalk. Sometimes the wine will just taste flat - additional tannin and a bit more maturation takes care of that.

But most of the time, it's sugar additions which are important. If you want, you can take the adjustments down to 2 ozs at a time, but I've always found that 4 ozs is about right.

[windyoolie]

thanks so very much for the info, didnt know bout topping up so that there isnt a large air gap, my wine that i put in the demijohn on monday was very very slow but now ive topped up with water is bubbily much faster, hope it hasnt spoilt though, only a couple of days. also when you say to restabalise in a fresh demi john do i need to fit the air lock? is this also the same term as de gasing? sorry to ask you so many questions but a bit thick?! need clear prescise instructions, such as when you fry an egg remember to crack it out of the shell first!!! thats my type of iq!!and finally just noted your name and are you the adams that i copied the recipe off? many many thanks, best wishes, wendy.

[MKG]

Hi Wendy ... you had me confused there! The thing at the bottom of my posts is a quotation by Douglas Adams (of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy fame) rather than me.

The short answer to your question is yes, you do need to refit the airlock (or a bored bung with the hole plugged with cotton wool). Never ever make an airtight seal on wine unless you are 100% certain that all fermentation activity has stopped and will not restart. And no, stabilisation isn't the same as degassing - you will only need to degas if you want to drink your wines very young (and I'm actually still not at all convinced that it does anything but introduce air and so degrade the wine anyway).

I'll give you more info later, but this has got to be a quick one because I'm off in the early hours for a week in sunny Whitby.