Before I begin. 107

I am learning fast. In the past hold on to your hair I have attempted to 'stop' wines with Campden tablets at an SG chosen to give a desired level of sweetness. The result has been that when they were bottled, the wine took up oxygen from the air and before too long corks were popping out of the bottles.

I now realise from your advice that the method should be to begin fermenting the mash at a predetermined SG, ferment most of the sugar out on the mash, then strain and transfer the wine to final fermenting vessels until all sugar is used up. Then use sorbate and added sweetener in the way you suggest to finish the wine ready for bottling.

I shall be reading this all up again 'before I begin' at least it is an acceptable way of being 'driven to drink' (!) Yes, we talk differently across the pond, and we don't all use the same expressions. My own definitions are thus: A 'jug' is mostly a small open china or glbutt vessel used for serving milk or water at the breakfast table, or a pint beer glbutt with a handle; a 'carboy' is a very large globular glbutt vessel sometimes encased in wicker, used for storing distilled water or other chemicals, or a smaller version without wicker used as a terrarium for growing plants in an enclosed system; a 'bucket' for winemaking purposes is a 3 to 6 gallon plastic vessel with a fitted lid used for initial fermentation; a 'demi-john' is a one gallon glbutt vessel used for finally fermenting wine with a fermentation lock added. I will in future try to refer to initial and final fermentation vessels.

We do have a 'john' as distinct from demi-john, but that is not used in winekaking other than for disposal after drinking. :-)

Again my thanks to all. -- Alan Gould. North Lincolnshire, UK.