final gravity

[Countryboy73]

I finaly made my first batch of wine and have a final reading of .996. I wasn't able to get a starting gravity cause of not having a hydrometer. Is the .996 good?

 

[saramc]

Yes, fabulous!! So spill the beans about your batch. We love to hear all about it.
First batch excitement and all.
Sara

 

[Countryboy73]

Cool. It's a hard ice tea. When I'm done its going to make about 3 gallons, it's just under 2 gallons now. There's not much of a tea taste, I haven't back sweetened it yet. I'm going to boil more tea and add it in with some art. sweetener. I'm working on bottling it now, half in 2 ltr bottles and the rest in 1/2 ltr bottles. I've had it in the primary for4 weeks now.

 

[Countryboy73]

I finaly got it bottled, I used 2 ltr coke bottles for it, I topped it off to make 2 gallons. It has a slight bitter tea taste, I let the tea steep to long before topping it off, but the taste is ok with me, I don't know how my wife is going to like it though.

My recipe was
32 tea bags
4 1/3 cups sugar
1 packet lalvin k1-1116 yeast
2 1/2 gallons water
1-2 1/2 gallon Mr Beer keg

To top it off I used
8 tea bags
1 1/2 qrts water
Back sweetened it with
2 1/2 cups of splenda, well the Wal-Mart brand it was cheaper.

I did several taste tests during the 5 weeks of brewing it.
I could've put more water to top it off to 3 gallons but I didn't want to drop the alcohol level to much. I was really impatient waiting for it. But the wait was well worth it. I see this being done again in the near future, but it'll be a 5 gallon batch next time. But for now I've got a few batches of beer to make for a weekend trip the last weekend in April. Bottoms up everybody.