Hello there,
I'm completely new at home wine making, but I've been reading a lot about it lately and find it to be completely fascinating.
I ought to preface my question by stating that I have not yet bought a wine making kit. I've picked out a 1-gallon kit that I'm planning on buying soon (that is, when my next pay check comes in...).
In the mean time, however, I wanted to see if I could make wine the science-experiment way with 3 cans of frozen grape juice concentrate, sugar, and (*gasp*) baker's yeast. So please, just bear with me on this.
The question...
The instructions that I found to make wine told me to hydrate the yeast before adding it to the juice. Though I THOUGHT that I correctly followed the instructions to hydrate the yeast, I must have done something wrong, because after 12 hours, nothing really happened. The instructions said that if nothing happened, I ought to try adding more yeast.
So I opened up another packet, hydrated it -- correctly, this time; I could tell a difference from the first attempt -- and added it to the grape juice. Immediately it started fizzing and bubbling.
However, just under a week later, it's almost completely stopped bubbling, and I don't hear it fizzing any more. I thought this bubbling thing was supposed to take 2-3 weeks?
Is it possible that: a) I "over-yeasted" - I should have started from scratch with the new yeast, or b) it doesn't take as long with only a gallon (as opposed to some of those 6 gallon kits)?
Like I said, I know this is only the science-experiment way of doing it, but I DO plan on buying the kit soon. Besides, I think that knowing why mine has stopped fizzing after only a few days will perhaps help when I DO have the kit.
Thanks so much!!