Strawberry wine problem...

[Sirthomas42]

I made a batch of Strawberry wine a little while ago (our first fruit wine). A month or so ago, I racked it from my primary into a 5 gallon carboy. SWMBO and I are getting ready to rack it again, but there are a TON of sediments at the bottom. Looking around the carboy, there's 3 to 6 inches of sediment at the bottom, that looks like purple sand. (the wine itsl

My question is, if I rack it to another 5 gallon carboy, there will be a ton of headspace. What would I top it up with? It's not like I have a ton of strawberry wine analogs around. I had thought of topping up with Strawberry-Apple cider, but I don't know what that would do to the taste.

Or, would it be better to rack it to a smaller carboy? (we have several 1 gallon jugs we could use). I really don't want to screw this up, so any advice would be appreciated. Thanks!

 

[Yooper]

My recipes usually allow for adding water to fill the headspace, but if yours doesn't there are several things you can do.

One is rack to a three gallon carboy, with a gallon jug and a wine bottle for "top up" for next time (you can buy stoppers for all the different sizes, and still use an airlock). Or you can sanitize a bazillion children's marbles to help fill the headspace. Or you can top up with a neutral white wine or water to fill the headspace.

 

[mmadmikes1]

If it hasn't been stabilized the apple/strawberry will ferment( not necessarily a bad thing). It would work fine if you dont want to add water. Strawberry always has a lot of fall out. I usually go primary to 6 gallon to 5 gallon with extra at end for final top off

 

[Sirthomas42]

Yeah, it was one of the first batches I made... we started in a 6 gallon primary and racked to a 5 gallon secondary. We ended up with maybe 1/2 gallon extra at the bottom of the primary that we threw out. Wish we had that back. I've learned a lot since then, so my next endeavor will be better.

What funny, is I, uh, didn't keep good records then, so I'm not entirely sure which recipe we used. I suspect it was one of Jack Keller's, but I can't be certain. Tomorrow's our racking day, I think we'll just rack this to a 5 gallon carboy and top up with water. If I did the math right, it should be 14% ABV, which, if diluted even from 4 gallons back up to 5, should be just over 11%. (right?)

Thanks for helping a noob, guys!

 

[mmadmikes1]

Don't put that much water in, Please. Go buy a can of wine save(canned co2) and fill air space with co2. It will protect it and you won't have watery wine

 

[Sirthomas42]

We found some strawberry juice, so we topped it up with that after racking. I knew adding it would add fermentable sugar to the mix, but nothing happened... until yesterday. It started bubbling like crazy. It was crystal clear, but now it's a little cloudy. Must've taken the yeast a couple weeks to wake up, repopulate, and begin fermenting again -- especially considering what's in the carboy is already ~11%.

 

[Reaver]

Yooper had it right. Sounds like you got it taken care of. SHouldn't take long to ferment out the juice.
I too am working on the "downsizing due to racking" learning curve. I'm going to pick up some decorative marbles or glass stones on the next big sale at the Micheals/ ACmoore/ Hobby Lobby. I've picked up a 3gal carboy and a mess of Growlers and Gallons. My problem is I always maximize my usage. So it's always a juggle

 

[boo boo]

Don't put that much water in, Please. Go buy a can of wine save(canned co2) and fill air space with co2. It will protect it and you won't have watery wine

I don't bother topping up with anything either.
I use CO2 to fill the headspace and usually rack to a smaller carboy.

 

[Sirthomas42]

Yeah, it was our very first racking. We siphoned off the bottom of the primary, taking all the lees to the secondary... and didn't think to put the extra in a bottle or jug, and just discarded it. Now we know better

 

[casebrew]

I don't degas, so I've always figured there is enough CO2 coming out of the wine that worrying about topping up is unnecessary.

Otherways, if you are not flushing the carboy with CO2, you are still getting six gallons of air in there. Leaving some head space, and installing an air lock, you are getting one gallon of air in there.

But maybe I'm just a slob. My goal is to brew better wine than Two Buck Chuck. So far, so good, for 25¢ a bottle. And if I want to impress the kind of people that are impressed by cheap wine in a bottle with a cork, I put in a new cork, 50¢ per bottle then!

So I guess I wouldn't know air damaged wine if I had to spit it out.

 

[Sirthomas42]

So, today is racking day. Racking our Strawberry, Blueberry Cider, Blueberry Mead, and Skeeter Pee. But we won't get to rack our Strawberry... there's a good 2 inches of lees on the bottom of the carboy -- no big deal. But when I moved the carboy from the spare bedroom to the kitchen, I must have disturbed some trapped CO2 or something. We saw a half dozen golf ball sized meteors of lees rise up from the bottom and explode when they hit the surface. One by one they rose up and exploded distributing a ton of lees throughout the wine. Has anyone seen this before?

Guess we'll wait a week for it to clear again before racking. I shoulda taken a picture before, it was the beautiful deep dark crystal clear red.