First Watermelon Wine

[dking193]

I've started tying the amount of K-meta to the PH at bottling time but I know you do have to protect the wine during the fermentation process as the K-Meta drops with the lees over time.

I used 3 tablets at the beginning (3 gal batch) and was going to add more but decided against it this time until I get a good TA, PH and SO2 reading on this batch of wine. The fermentation went so fast, and my TA measurement was off, I figure I have time to add later. I'm updating my test equipment and should have it here next week. Also, I sanitized the carboy, racking equipment, hydrometer, etc with K-Meta/Potassium Metabisulfite and never rinse off, so I'm adding a little bit ~8ppm with just whats left on everything.

Just for the record I have added at each racking to be on the safe side with some of the wines I've made, but I've learned the hard way as wine starts to clear, you need to add less and less as the SO2 wont drop as much. I had one batch of apple that didn't taste great and had an off odor. My buddy tested it and found a PH of 3.3 and had 110ppm of SO2. I only needed 28ppm to protect it.

So much info on the web about this, but we learn best through trial and error. I suggest everyone log everything you do, and reference it next time to improve upon the last batch.

All this said, for the most part wine making is pretty easy. Throw yeast on juice and give it time to turn to wine, the exception is watermelon and blueberry. For these the mad scientist gets to come out and play.

 

[dking193]

Update on watermelon wine. It's been 17 days since I started and racked second time tonight. Here are the measurements.
SG = .990 (started @ 1.084)
TA = .60
PH = 3.6 (dropped from 3.71 start of fermentation)
SO2 = 32 (increased to 55 tonight)
Still had a great smell and better tasting than I would expect at this time.

ABV is ~12.7 before I topped off with some water and apple wine I made last year. Interesting note on the apple wine. Back in Mar-April I had a wine tasting with some friends. We tried 6 of the young wines from last fall and the apple wine I used to top off tonight was unanimously the worst of the bunch. Taste was okay but didn't smell like apple. Thats why I started topping off with water tonight, but decided to give the apple another try. So I opened one of my last two bottles and 3-4 months has really changed this wine. It now smells like apple and has mellowed greatly. I wish I had kept more. Just proves if we are a bit more patient and give our wines time to age, they will taste better.

As you can see from the pic below. The watermelon is clearing nicely on its on, and no it is not a red/pink wine. I had no idea it would be a white. I will let it clear completely and take another look in a couple of months.

 

[dking193]

Lets try pic again.

 

[Julie]

Looks really good, have you tasted it?
http://www.pinterest.com/pin/create/extension/

 

[fabrictodyefor]

I missed this thread till now, but enjoyed reading through all of it and really loved all the pictures. I would have never thought it would be that color, it is beautiful! I love all the updates and your detailed information.

 

[dking193]

Hey Jules, why of course I had to sample it! It has a subtle hint of watermelon smell and actually taste okay. Still gassy, but will settle out in time. I think this is going to be a nice wine. I'm very pleased it is working out. I don't think I will need to back sweeten it either. I'll make that call in a few months. I did buy some watermelon extract from olivenation as a backup plan...

Oh and by the way for those first time growers, I got some advice on when to pick the watermelons from the farmer up the road. He informed me the high PH might be because I picked them too soon. He uses 2-3 methods to tell when they are ready:
1) Check the tendril closest to the melon. The tendril, "pigtail" should be shriveled and dry (brown).
2) Gently roll over and look at the bottom. The color should not be white. It should be off-white or yellowing.
3) Just like birds know when grapes are ready to pick and attack them, so do the armadillos, raccoon and dear with watermelon.

The brix varied between 9-12 on the melons. The little round ones were higher than the larger long ones. I was on vacation last week and found upon my return the melons are now ready to pick, or should I say they were. Too bad they ate most of the sweeter small ones. (ref photo attached). I do have several of the larger ones they did not get, but that begs the question, why didn't they eat them? Not as sweet or too big to open?