First off let me just say that my GF and I are totally not making wine to satisfy our sophisticated palates.
We pretty much are doing it for fun and to use as cheap Holiday gifts Being poor college students made this both fun and beneficial.
I bought my GF a simple wine making kit and all the chemicals suggested by the local brew store last x-mas along with making her a 36 bottle wine rack which turned out pretty damn nice for my first attempt at wood working.
We have had a batch of Welch’s going in the primary fermenter for 5 days now. 6 gallons in all. With 5 lbs of sugar and a packet of bread yeast. I know that bread yeast isn’t the best choice but we didn’t get any instructions with the kit so I went off of instinct . I made sure everything was sterile with supplied chemicals and stirred the sugar into a gallon of boiling water and added that to the juice, let it sit for 4 days and then added the yeast with the air lock. After yeast colonies were visible on the surface we racked the juice into the glass carboy and it has had the airlock bubbling ever since.
Now on to the questions.
1. Does the glass carboy need to be covered or in a temp sensitive place?
2. How do I know when the fermentation has been finished? I didn’t do any readings when I started the batch out of ignorance. Can I still test it now to check for a favorable reading which would signify it’s time to bottle?
3. Do I need to add 1 crushed up campden tablet per gallon to the juice before bottling?
4. Should my juice be a dark purple color or should it clear up? I have read on here a few different people stating different things.
5. How much air should there be between the juice level and the rubber airlock cork? Do I need to purge the O2 with CO2 if I have about an inch of space?
Heres a pic of the current set-up, We dont have a basement or anything in the tiny apartment so the corner of the dining room will have to do. I vented the yeasty smelling yeasty gasses to the window, is that too weird? Im super paranoid about the airlock leaking so I figured I would beef it up with some baggies and rubber bands. Dont mind the date, I cant figure out how to change it on the camera.
Thanks guys!
We pretty much are doing it for fun and to use as cheap Holiday gifts Being poor college students made this both fun and beneficial.
I bought my GF a simple wine making kit and all the chemicals suggested by the local brew store last x-mas along with making her a 36 bottle wine rack which turned out pretty damn nice for my first attempt at wood working.
We have had a batch of Welch’s going in the primary fermenter for 5 days now. 6 gallons in all. With 5 lbs of sugar and a packet of bread yeast. I know that bread yeast isn’t the best choice but we didn’t get any instructions with the kit so I went off of instinct . I made sure everything was sterile with supplied chemicals and stirred the sugar into a gallon of boiling water and added that to the juice, let it sit for 4 days and then added the yeast with the air lock. After yeast colonies were visible on the surface we racked the juice into the glass carboy and it has had the airlock bubbling ever since.
Now on to the questions.
1. Does the glass carboy need to be covered or in a temp sensitive place?
2. How do I know when the fermentation has been finished? I didn’t do any readings when I started the batch out of ignorance. Can I still test it now to check for a favorable reading which would signify it’s time to bottle?
3. Do I need to add 1 crushed up campden tablet per gallon to the juice before bottling?
4. Should my juice be a dark purple color or should it clear up? I have read on here a few different people stating different things.
5. How much air should there be between the juice level and the rubber airlock cork? Do I need to purge the O2 with CO2 if I have about an inch of space?
Heres a pic of the current set-up, We dont have a basement or anything in the tiny apartment so the corner of the dining room will have to do. I vented the yeasty smelling yeasty gasses to the window, is that too weird? Im super paranoid about the airlock leaking so I figured I would beef it up with some baggies and rubber bands. Dont mind the date, I cant figure out how to change it on the camera.
Thanks guys!