Help please

Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum

Help Support Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

Kadravyn

New Member
Joined
Dec 26, 2016
Messages
2
Reaction score
0
OK so it's my first time making wine and I went with strawberry. I'm using glass jugs and sealing them with balloons. It's been a little over a week and one of my balloons is delayed and there is mold growing on a floating berry in the other... Is this normal? What did I do wrong if not and how can I fix this?
 
As a rookie wine maker, I'd say you need to be stirring/shaking your bottles daily. Some would say twice a day. Can you fish the moldy piece out?
Go to the wine recipes and read several. They will give you some procedural help.
 
Hi Kadravyn - and welcome. What recipe did you use and what was your protocol (method)? The only way for anyone to offer you any useful advice or help is to know precisely what problems we may be looking at. Thanks
 
OK it was brought to my attention that I should include this so:
I used 2lbs of strawberrys, one gallon of distilled water, and 5 cups of sugar to make my wine. I cut the strawberries up and put them in the glass jugs and boiled the water and sugar then poured that over the berries. I sealed the jugs with balloons.
 
OKay - so two pounds of strawberries in a gallon of water? That is a very thin flavored juice. Did you taste the juice before you pitched the yeast? Taste it now. It won't do you any harm.

Strawberries have only a hint of flavor once you remove the sugar. And although diluting fruit juice to make wine is something many folk on this forum do - in my opinion they do this without much forethought. Would they (or you) dilute any fruit juice unless that juice was sold as a concentrate? My money says they wouldn't so why do they dilute the same juice when they are making wine?

Again, my opinion, but you want to use water only for cleaning your equipment , not for making wine. Do those wine makers who own vineyards and make wine from grapes dilute their grape juice? Why would you want to dilute your fruit? Again, my opinion but you want to make wine from fruit juice and not from water - so you might want to use about 10 lbs of strawberries for every gallon of wine. Ten pounds of strawberries will produce about a gallon of juice if you freeze the fruit, add pectic enzyme and allow the frozen fruit to thaw.

The other problem I see is that you chose to use distilled water. Distilled water is good for calibrating your pH meter and for dissolving rennet when making cheese but yeast need the minerals, and distilled water has had those minerals removed. Whenever you choose to dilute your fruit with water (or if you are making wine from flowers - hibiscus, elderflowers, lavender, lilac, for example) and so you use water to extract the flavor , color and aroma you want to use only spring water (water that does not have municipally added chlorine or chloramine or fluoride).
Last point, rather than measure sugar by the cup use a scale if you can get one. One pound of table sugar dissolved in water to make a gallon of liquid will raise the specific gravity of that gallon by 40 points. Forty points of gravity when it comes from sugar will potentially ferment to give you about 5% alcohol by volume (ABV). You need an hydrometer to enable you to measure the starting gravity (the density) of the must (the juice to be fermented) to know the potential strength of the wine you are about to make. A lot of sugar will give you a strong wine...but when you are making the wine you need the flavors and the strength of the wine and the acidity of the wine and the wine's sweetness or dryness to all be in balance: you can easily make a wine that is far too strong for the flavors it carries. Looks like you are making a wine with a starting gravity of a little over 1.090 (1 cup of sugar weighs very approximately - what? 7 oz? so 5 Cups = 35 oz and 35 oz is about 2.25 lbs). So assuming the yeast (you don't say what strain of yeast) can ferment that amount of sugar then you will have a wine finishing at about 12% ABV - but that is not a lot of flavor (2 lbs of strawberries) for such an alcohol rich wine...
Here's what I might do.. You don't need to but... If strawberries are too expensive or are unavailable I would look for some strawberry jam that does not have any sorbate added as a preservative and add this to your wine. Best if the jam was made without high fructose sugar but that is another story. Adding 1 lb of jam will improve the flavor. BUT .. if you do decide to add jam then you want to first add pectic enzyme to the jam to help break down the pectins that have been encouraged to set during jam making. Pectins in wine result in a hazy wine that is difficult to clear. The enzyme will break down the pectins but this enzyme does not work very well in the presence of alcohol. So you need to add the enzyme about 4 - 8 hours before you introduce the jam to the yeast -
Good luck!
 
Back
Top