How long to wait before attaching the airlock?

[RighteousDrinker]

It's pomegranate wine siting in a 1 gallon container.

 

[peaches9324]

how long has it been fermenting and whats the sg?

 

[brottman]

Typically you would attach the Airlock once your SG is down to around 1.03. You don't necessarily have to wait for this, though.

 

[vacuumpumpman]

From reading your last posts - I believe you don't have a hydrometer - correct ?

So when you see that the fermentation has definitely slowed down - then put an airlock on it

 

[RighteousDrinker]

From reading your last posts - I believe you don't have a hydrometer - correct ?

So when you see that the fermentation has definitely slowed down - then put an airlock on it

How long does it usually take for the fermentation to come to slow?
Right now it is bubbling at a slow rate, i see some bubbles here and there, not much action right now.

 

[vacuumpumpman]

there are alot of factors to your question - Taste the wine - do you taste any alcohol or is it still sweet ?

 

[RighteousDrinker]

there are alot of factors to your question - Taste the wine - do you taste any alcohol or is it still sweet ?

I haven't tasted it but it sure does smell like alcohol like beer!

 

[vacuumpumpman]

I haven't tasted it but it sure does smell like alcohol like beer!

You really need a hydrometer !

 

[RighteousDrinker]

You really need a hydrometer !

Agh! I know! I haven't got the time to though.

 

[theoriginalrods]

About 6 weeks ago I started a batch of pomegranite wine with pom juice and put the airlock on right after adding inverted sugar and yeast. It fermented just fine and tastes pretty good, just needs to age more.

I make a lot of wine with juice instead of fruit for the must and it"s much easier. Clears up quicker, don't need campdem tabs and only needs to be racked one time if at all. I don't have a hydrometer and usually airlock at 1-3 days if not immediately (like edworts apfelwein). Have made 15+ batches and haven't had a bad one yet.

 

[theoriginalrods]

I should add that I use one gallon carboys for fermenting. I did make about 6 batches of blackberry wine and waited about 5-7 days before putting on the airlock. Then I siphoned the wine into a clean one gallon carboy after 2 more weeks to clean off the must. I bottled after 3 months and am aging the bottles in my wine cellar (garage). I drank a bottle last night and it was very drinkable but slightly bitter.

 

[BernardSmith]

Hi theoriginalrods, Interesting points. But here are some alternative approaches and the reasons for them.
The idea that a number of folk on this forum subscribe to is that there is an advantage*** to allowing your wine to be exposed to the air during the most active days of the fermentation and that is that incorporating air into the liquor is important for the yeast (any air in the must is quickly taken up by the yeast in the first hours after you have pitched the yeast and the yeast in fact need air to repair their cells and reproduce) and having a fermenter that is easy to get into does not inhibit you from stirring the liquor and so ensuring that any fruit is continually kept in contact with the yeast and is kept nicely moist and so won't spoil in the air. Brewers tend to bang a bung in early. I guess they have their reasons but vintners are perhaps more laid back. But that said, there are wines that really need months to age and there are yeasts that autolyze (break up and self consume) leaving waste products that produce off flavors and when aging and autolysis combine the best way to deal with the problems that likely ensue is to rack your wine. Racking every two or three months is perhaps good practice. And that said, one additional advantage of racking is that it also gently removes live yeast from the wine (folk who rack from the primary to the secondary too early often find themselves with a stalled fermentation because they have removed too many of the active yeast cells) and the advantage of removing yeast in this way is that after two or three or more rackings there are virtually no active yeasts in the wine and so if you want to back sweeten the wine then the addition of K-meta and K-sorbate is far more likely to work...

*** the other advantage is that when you use a towel-covered bucket to ferment even a gallon of must there is no possibility of creating either volcanoes in your carboy or - far worse - rockets where the CO2 builds up beneath a blocked bung and the energy channeled through the narrow mouth of the carboy is enough to blast the airlock up to your ceiling with pints of the wine following closely behind re-painting your ceiling as if a canvas by the hand of a maniacal version of Jackson *******.

 

[theoriginalrods]

Hi Bernard. Thanks for the info. I'm still new to wine making and appreciate any new info as well as all the content posted on the net. Sounds like waiting at least a few days before putting on the airlock would be beneficial. I've been thinking about getting a 5 gallon wide mouth glass carboy/fermenter to make things easier as I'm sure I'll want to make some more blackberry wine this summer. There is an abundance of wild blackberries here and I hate to see them go to waste.

 

[PhilDarby]

I know this is an old post but its a good question I think, ive been home brewing for 30 odd years and have always put the airlock on straight away after pitching the yeast, influenced by black fly infiltration of my home brew, recently ive read to leave the airlock off for approx. 5 to 7 days to allow the yeast to breed, because although yeast can multiply in the absence of oxygen apparently it reproduces faster in the presence of oxygen, so in that respect this is a very good question, and the reason for the delay is to encourage reproduction of the yeast and hence a strong culture within the fermenting vessel.

Anyway with this in mind I would suggest around 3 to 6 days depending on how abundant black flies are at the time of brewing and whether they can get near your brew eg if its in a cupboard in another cupboard or somewhere that the flies physically find it hard to get to your fine in winter in the uk there aren't many flies so its not a problem so your region u live in will influence your choice as well.