sddingman
Member
- Joined
- Aug 12, 2020
- Messages
- 11
- Reaction score
- 5
Hi all, long time wine consumer, first time wine maker.
I was always curious about homemade rhubarb wine and I found a great book on 1 gal wine batches. I am trained as a chemist, and did some home beer brewing a while back, so I thought, this is easy.
Followed the recipe (3.5 qts chopped rhubarb, 3 lbs sugar, 1/2 lb white raisins, yeast) and after mixing in the primary and saw fermentation by that evening.
Due to personal timing issues, I let the primary fermentation go 14 days, but it smelled good so I racked to the secondary, but I only got out a little over 3/4 gal of liquid back. Did a sugar water make up and let it set for a few days. No further activity was occurring so I racked again to separate sedimentation and let age, but I checked my wine with a hydrometer...only 10% . OH NO...it was supposed to be north of 15% (trying to make organic wine with no sulfites)
I was not sure what to do so I added more yeast (the wine tasted sweet yet weak). Maybe my yeast packet was bad? Should I move it back to the primary or can it ferment in the secondary (w airlock of course).
HELP.....any advice welcome.
Sean
I was always curious about homemade rhubarb wine and I found a great book on 1 gal wine batches. I am trained as a chemist, and did some home beer brewing a while back, so I thought, this is easy.
Followed the recipe (3.5 qts chopped rhubarb, 3 lbs sugar, 1/2 lb white raisins, yeast) and after mixing in the primary and saw fermentation by that evening.
Due to personal timing issues, I let the primary fermentation go 14 days, but it smelled good so I racked to the secondary, but I only got out a little over 3/4 gal of liquid back. Did a sugar water make up and let it set for a few days. No further activity was occurring so I racked again to separate sedimentation and let age, but I checked my wine with a hydrometer...only 10% . OH NO...it was supposed to be north of 15% (trying to make organic wine with no sulfites)
I was not sure what to do so I added more yeast (the wine tasted sweet yet weak). Maybe my yeast packet was bad? Should I move it back to the primary or can it ferment in the secondary (w airlock of course).
HELP.....any advice welcome.
Sean