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MA-Honey

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I started making my first wine on January 12. It is a kit wine. My numbers for sg have been significantly different than what the kit says so I want to make sure I didn't mess it up. According to the kit, the initial sg should be 1.048-1.052, 1.010 after primary fermentation and .996 at stabilizing. My numbers were 1.042, .994 and I haven't stabilized. I have used hydrometers before and I know I am reading it right but is there something that I should do or should have done?
 
I started making my first wine on January 12. It is a kit wine. My numbers for sg have been significantly different than what the kit says so I want to make sure I didn't mess it up. According to the kit, the initial sg should be 1.048-1.052, 1.010 after primary fermentation and .996 at stabilizing. My numbers were 1.042, .994 and I haven't stabilized. I have used hydrometers before and I know I am reading it right but is there something that I should do or should have done?

There isn't much difference between .994 and .996, so it sounds exactly right. It might go down a tiny bit more, but it sounds like it's just about done.
 
I read somewhere that if this happens that you should stir it every couple days. Also I have another 5 days till I should be stabilizing it. Do I stir it or just let it be?
 
I read somewhere that if this happens that you should stir it every couple days. Also I have another 5 days till I should be stabilizing it. Do I stir it or just let it be?

Do NOT stir! Whatever you do, don't agitate, stir, mix, or otherwise oxygenate the wine.

It's done. It might drop a couple more points, but it's pretty much done. All stirring will do is ruin a perfectly good wine.
 
Yooper said:
Do NOT stir! Whatever you do, don't agitate, stir, mix, or otherwise oxygenate the wine.

It's done. It might drop a couple more points, but it's pretty much done. All stirring will do is ruin a perfectly good wine.

What about degassing yooper. You have to agitate it to degass the wine. I am also new and on my first wine kit.
 
Ridenour...do you plan to age this in carboy for a bit? If so, say 90 days or more, 6 months even better, 9 months great and you will find that time is a natural degasser. I age everything now for at least nine months and rarely have an issue with degassing.
But a kit will benefit from some extended kit in carboy. What kind of kit are you making?

Sara
 
What about degassing yooper. You have to agitate it to degass the wine. I am also new and on my first wine kit.

Degassing is done in a carboy, and you add campden to it to keep oxygen from binding with it.

I've only degassed wine kits, for the most part, and that's because they are rushed to the bottle.

For "real" wine, I've actually only had ONE that needed degassing in all the years I've been doing this. I have no idea why that one batch held on to the gas for so long, but that's the only one in over 200+ batches of wine.

I'm not a degassing fan, but when done as part of the kit in the directions when k-meta is added, no harm will come to it.

Otherwise mucking about in the wine, stirring or shaking, or not topping up appropriately is a bad idea and in almost all cases a "fix" like that for a wine that is perfectly fine will compromise the wine.
 
According to my wine kit, degassing is part of the 3rd stage.

1st stage, make it, let it ferment for necessary time, let mine go 8 days
2nd stage, rack it to a new carboy, let it sit for 10 days
3rd stage, add packets 3 and 4, and then it says "Winexpert kits require that you stir the sediment back into suspension. etc"

this is the stage where mine says to de-gas it and mix the sediment back in, so you have to stir it vigorously

Not sure about your kit, but that is how mine works.

After it is fully degassed is when you add the last packet
 
I am making an island mist peach Chardonnay. But thanks Sara and yooper that helps a lot. I also have a 1 gallon batch of edworts apfelwein I just started 2 days ago. I'm so excited to try them both. Waiting sucks but it will be worth it.
 
Oh God. I wish I would have read this. My wine kit says in the "tips" section to stir it every other day during primary fermentation, and on the second stage you can continue to do it, but it's optional, so that's what I've been doing, but I will stop doing it. I will just degas when I add the stabilizers, and I like the idea of just letting it age out to degas. 6 months or so is about right? If I'm not stirring it, how can you tell if it is sufficiently degassed? Do you add the stabilizers and then age out, or do you add the stabilizers after it has aged, but before bottling? How long before bottling would you add them in that scenario?

THANKS!
 

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