Beginner from Williamsburg, VA!

[zrhanson]

Hello all!

SO my name is Zach, and I haven't really lurked much on the forums here TOO MUCH, but I think I'm going to start after I make this post. I've been here a few times just to look for random tips (whenever Google sent me here) and it seems like a great place full of smart people! Anyway, I'm a college student here at William and Mary, originally from central PA, and after talking to my Pap I decided to follow in the family footsteps and make myself my own little batch of wine, following one of his old recipes for a strawberry-dandelion wine. So, being a poor college student, I bought what I could afford, used what I already had, and I just racked my wine into the secondary fermentors. I was just hoping you all could possibly help me in determining whether or not my Wine will come out awful, or potentially delicious? Here's what I've done thus far:

1) Picked a ton of dandelions and got their petals off. Then I froze them for later (when the rest of my stuff finally arrived). (It was maybe a quart or two of petals?) Then I boiled them with some slices of lemon and orange and a bit of sugar for about 30 minutes.
2) Smooshed up 3 lbs of strawberries, added about 3 lbs of sugar (minus what I put in to boil with the dandelion petals), and a pound of golden raisins (for body? One site was very adamant that I do this). Added yeast nutrient and pectic enzyme. Waited for my dandelion mixture to cool down a bit and put that in. This was all in a smallish ACE harware bucket.
SIDENOTE) Everything I used I first cleaned with Clorox Cleanup, then rinsed the crap out of it to make sure all traces of bleach were gone.
3) Waited about 12 hours, activated my Lalvin EC-1118 yeast and mixed it in. Covered back up the bucket with a towel and let it sit for 6 days, stirring it twice a day.
4) This brings us to today. I strained the mixture through a colander into another plastic bucket, and siphoned it into my two moonshine jugs (er, sorry... carboys) which are 1 gallon and .5 gallons. Neither was quite at the top, so I put some warm water in each one to get it to about 1-inch from the bottom of the cork.
5) I put corks in each with one of those s-style fermentors and now they're sitting in my closet.

Now I know, this all seems pretty jerry-rigged and amateur... but it IS my first time. And hey, this is kinda fun for me. I'm just wondering whether or not doing all of this work is going to pay off, or if I'm just going to end up tossing all of my labor down the drain! Thanks!

I'm quite excited to see how this all turns out, and if it IS nasty, I hope all the help I can get here will help me make a palatable product sometime in the future!

-Zach

 

[zrhanson]

I do suppose it should be mentioned that wine is now bubbling out of the top of one of my carboys through the airlock... I'm going to assume this is bad. Please help?!

 

[robie]

Sounds like fermentation is still too active for the wine to be placed in a carboy, at least in one where the wine level is so high.

Maybe better to put it back in the bucket until fermentation slows some more or don't top off in the carboy. Top off only when it is racked to clear the wine. Topping off is not necessary during primary or secondary fermentation.

Do you have a hydrometer? It is much easier to know where fermentation is when you have a hydrometer. I know you are on a tight budget, but I'd springs for a $6 hydrometer. The idea is to rack from primary to secondary only when the specific gravity (SG) is 1.020 or lower. Of course this maybe different for your specific fruit wine. What do the instructions say about it?

 

[Rocky]

Zach, welcome to the forum. Never knew anyone who lived in Williamsburg! I guess I only know the old city.

You have two choices as to what to do with your wine. Put it back into the fermenter and take it down to SG 1.020 (if you have a hydrometer) or lower before moving it back into the carboy. Secondly, you could take about a hlf pint or two out of the carboy. There is so much CO2 coming off right now, you probably don't need the airlock on the carboys right now. There is a layer of the heavier CO2 gas on the surface so penetration by O2 is unlikely.

Sorry Robie, I did not see your reply.

 

[zrhanson]

Thanks for your replies! Can you happen to point me to a place online where I could buy myself a hydrometer online? And possibly inform me how to use one? It's looking more and more like that is something that will prove to be fairly necessary for me to use.

As for this batch, I took some out of the 1 gallon carboy (the one that was bubbling over) and now everything seems to be working fine. What I think I'll do from here is get me a hydrometer and test the SG of each batch. If it's too high (low?) I'll put it back into the bucket and go from there... this is much more complicated than what my pap ever told me! Ha ha.

On a side note, the liquid in there is an amazing color and I'm very happy with it. I hope that it retains this whenever it clears!