Last Friday we started a new batch of wine, a dry Johannisberg Riesling. We got off to a faster start than our first batch. Just a little experience made things go quite a bit smoother than the first time around. We got our equipment set up and sanitized and broke out our new spoon to stir in additives.
After we got everything prepped it was time to pour the juice from the kit bag to the bucket, which is when things went horribly wrong. The juice bag had about four gallons of semi-concentrated juice. To that we were supposed to add about two gallons of water to make up the six-gallon total for the batch. I wound up losing the spout on the bag and pouring about half a gallon of juice all over the dining room floor.
It was kind of like the scene in A Christmas Story when Ralphie knocked the lug nuts into the sewer drain, and, like Ralphie, I didn't say "fudge." The thing about concentrated riesling juice is that it is apparently saturated with sugar. Everything the juice touched turned incredibly sticky. After cleaning up most of the mess we had to figure out what to do with the batch we had. Our specific gravity was way off, and the balance is probably going to be thrown off on the final product. To get the specific gravity up to the level it's supposed to be at we had to add THREE POUNDS of sugar. We should be close to finishing up the primary fermentation after a week. We'll see how things turn out.
After we got everything prepped it was time to pour the juice from the kit bag to the bucket, which is when things went horribly wrong. The juice bag had about four gallons of semi-concentrated juice. To that we were supposed to add about two gallons of water to make up the six-gallon total for the batch. I wound up losing the spout on the bag and pouring about half a gallon of juice all over the dining room floor.
It was kind of like the scene in A Christmas Story when Ralphie knocked the lug nuts into the sewer drain, and, like Ralphie, I didn't say "fudge." The thing about concentrated riesling juice is that it is apparently saturated with sugar. Everything the juice touched turned incredibly sticky. After cleaning up most of the mess we had to figure out what to do with the batch we had. Our specific gravity was way off, and the balance is probably going to be thrown off on the final product. To get the specific gravity up to the level it's supposed to be at we had to add THREE POUNDS of sugar. We should be close to finishing up the primary fermentation after a week. We'll see how things turn out.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment