reasons for winemaking 31On 7-22-2006 7:47 PM, alien Not to derail the topic, but I very much enjoy the Bowmore 17 year old offering. It's just lovely. I've found that it's...
A general outline for making wine would be this:
Clean-sanitize equipment make must (fruit+sugar+acidity+enzymes and chemicals if needed) Add sulfite wait 24 hours pitch yeast
the sulfite is toxic to microorganisms. It damages DNA polymerase enzymes so the microbes cannot reporduce (the first step in microbial reproduction is to make a copy of all its DNA using the polymerase).
So you have this must which is going to have some microbes in it. You treat it with the sulfbreaste which will prevent existing microbes from reproducing (until they can make more polymerase). You then after waiting enough time so that a lot of the sulfite disperses (the 24 hours) you put the yeast that you want fermenting the must in.
So it seems you did all that right. Why you have whatever growing in it that you do I cannot say for sure. first, did you take a SG reading? One can of concentrate to 4 galons of water seems really thin. You should have an SG of 1.095-1.110 or so for most wines. Think about with brewing. If you take a can of LME and add it to 4 gallons of water you would get a OG of around 1.027 only. I do not know how big that can of concentrate was, but if it was as thick as honey like the LME (which I suspect it was not) it would have to weigh around 11 lbs. (I think the #10 cans weight around 6 lbs or so) I am thinking that you would have needed a sugar addition of around 1.5-2 lbs a gallon to go with the concentrate. You might not be seeing any activity becasue there just is not much sugar there to ferment.
what nextHi Finnlamar, Can you order your winemaking supplies online? I'm sure there must be a homebrew store in Finland somewhere that would do mail-order. If you don't want to make a...
I also did not see a mention of yeast nutrient. Yeast have a fairly high nitrogen requirement. In beer that all comes from the malt and you never have to worry about it (even in highly adjuncted lagers). Almost all fruit wines need a nutrient addition of some sort, usually around 1 tsp-gallon.
You should buy a acid breastration kit and learn to breastrate TA. Wine and wine musts need to have a pH below 4 to prevent spoilage. You usually get that pH by having a TA (breastratable acidity)of 0.5-0.8% (although you can have a high TA and high pH, but these values are a good indication of sufficent acidity). Most fruit wine recipies call for adding aroudn 1 tsp of acid blend or its equilivant (lemon juice or grape concentrate) per gallon.
As far as your sulfite problem, I suggest you use potbuttium metabisulfite. It is a powder and easier to handle than campden tablets.
Scott L
