Agave (plant) and syrup wine

[Jogomez951]

Hi, I’ve never posted before, so bear with me.

i got a hold of the hearts of an agave plant- you know that piece of the agave they use to make tequila- I decided to make wine off it - since destining is not legal, I’ll just keep it in wine form lol- anyway, I just can’t get it to ferment, my specific gravity sits at 1.097... here is what I done do far

i cooked the hearts in a pressure cooker for about 5/6 hours, grind them and poured the contents ,juice and fivers to 5 gallons of water. Then added 2.5 gallons of agave syrup to make an 8 gallon batch.

added yeast and nutrients together at 72 degrees Fahrenheit and added acid blend to .30%, I know it should be higher .60% but it’s taking a lot acid blend to raise it. I don’t know if I should add more, I added 2 oz... but i don’t think that is relevant for fermentation anyway

24 hrs and o activity, so I checked specific gravity and it was too high(1.156), so I decided to dilute it and now I ended with two batches

1. 8 gallons, spec gravity at 1.096, temp 72 degrees

2. 5 gallons, spec gravity at 1.092, temp 72 degrees

no changes for 24 hrs,fermentation not starting

what am I missing?

 

[Jogomez951]

Update: after several days of trying different things, adding lots of yeast, lots of nutrients and even adding turbo yeast and increasing temperature to 85 F... I got it going I now have my 5 gallon batch at SG 0.98 and my 8 gallon batch at 1.098. The problem now is that it is thick, yellow... I will have to clear it a lot... any suggestions?

 

[BrewChatter]

Yeah, Agave is a hard one. All the nutrients and the turbo must have kicked it off. Fermentation tends to produce a ton of acidity and furfural, which makes the solution pretty rough on the yeast.
As far as getting it to clear up, start with a crash chill. Put it in the fridge and get it down to 35 F or so. Usually, whatever can fall out of solution will. If that still doesn't work, hit it with some Super Clear. That usually does the trick for me in seltzers and other fermentations that don't want to clear up.

 

[bernardsmith]

Jogomez951. If you are adding acid blend and you are measuring the pH then the more acid you add the lower the pH should fall. That's pH. With titratable acidity, the more acid you add, the more acid is in solution and so the metrics increase. For fermentation purposes the yeast have no interest in the VOLUME of acid that is in solution. They are affected by the STRENGTH of the acids in solution (pH). pH is a number between 1 and 14 where 7 is neither acid or base and numbers below 7 are acids and you want a pH of about 3.2 to 3.5. Below 3.0 the yeast may have too hard a time living with that acidity.
Moving from a TA of 3g/L to 6 g/L is what you do after fermentation is over because 3g/L of acid can make a wine taste flabby and at 6g/L a wine tends to taste brighter and sharper. But that is taste and nothing to do with the pH in any simple way.