Thank you all for your suggestions. I'm glad to see that a group like this
can come together and queue great ideas for making great wine.
I'll attempt to reply to everyone's coments and questions in this one post
so please bear with me.
>? Please check out Jack's homemade
>.wine site. He goes through how to deal with a stuck ferment, plus a lot
of
>other helpful info. http://winemaking.jackkeller.net/index.asp
Darlene, I oringally got the idea of dealing with a stuck fermentation from
Jack's site. In fact it was his site and personal advice that got me through
my first batch of wine (The mulberry wine). Looks as if his website is a
popular resource.
>Glad you skipped the toast part, but that
>should probably tell you something about the recipe in general.
Andy, The recipe was an old one, some of them dating back several hundred
years. I obtained it in a book about wine and fokelore. The book was
actually printed sometime in the early 60's. I read up on it a bit and then
looked at a similar recipe on Jack Keller's site to make sure the basic
ingredients were the same and they seemed to be minus the toast of course.
IMHO the only toast that should be associeted with wine is one with a glass
in the air
>The potential alcohol is a but pretty low. Is there a reason the
>recipe called for 4 pounds of sugar but you only used 2?
Once again I refer back to Jack's wonderful site. In my original mulberry
wine recipe I added half the sugar during primary fermentation. Let the
yeast chew on that the entire primary period of four days. Before I racked
into the secondary I added the remaining sugar. I plan to do the same thing
with the orange wine.
I'm certainly no expert on the matter but in my mind's eye I pictured the
yeast eating up as much sugar as it could in the primary period, so I
figured I would save the second half of the sugar for the fermentation that
makes alcohol. Also with being new to all this I read somewhere that its
possible for yeast to get stuck when the sugar levels are too high. Not
knowing what this level was for the strain of yeast I was using I tasted the
must and decided it too sweet for me to bear and figured the yeast would
feel the same way.
>If it has already started to ferment, just add 6 ounces of sugar *per
>US gallon* to make this adjustment. HTH
Frederick, As stated above I plan to add the remaining sugar at racking to
the secondary. As for the fermentation being stuck. Well I must admit my
alarmism was a bit premature. When I came home from work tonight the mixture
was fizzing heavily and there was a distinct yeastie smell much stronger
then before. So I think everything is working fine.
My primary concern with things being "off" so to speak, was that I seen no
heavy layer on top of the fermenting must. Pondering this after a good
nite's sleep I relized that there would very likely not be one seeing as I
filtered the must so well.
I was used to thinking in terms of fermentation of heavy fruit pulp like in
the mulberry wine.
>My grandparents had 8 huge mulberry trees, 14-18 in. in diameter whose
limbs
>all grew together. Us kids would climb from tree to tree eating the mellow
>fruit. I wish I had access to them now. ;o(
Ray, you certainly bring back memories from my own childhood. Where I grew
up in New Jersey our house was built on an area that used to be an orchard
for various types of fruits. One of them being mulberries. We had many trees
on our little 1/4 acre lot and like you I can remember climbing those trees
being filled with birds and sharing the fruit with them. Many a Bobwhite and
Robin would often join me in a little mid-day snack.
When I ended up buying a home here in Osteen Florida there were alot of
fruit trees on the land. One of which was this little mulberry tree I
beleive its a Japaniese variety since it grows more like a bush then a tall
tree that you and I are used to seeing.
To get back to the point though. I believe everything is fermenting
correctly. It seems with every batch of wine, I start to learn a little
more. Right now I have a batch finishing up in the fridge that I started
last year made from Welches frozen concentrate. (Again a visit to Jack
Keller's site provided a gold mine for this one). Next to the current batch
of orange wine I have a 1 gallon batch of Mulberry Mead(Morat?) I started a
day before the orange wine. In another month or two I'm going to get another
batch of Mulberry wine going when they all get ripe and then hopefully a
shot at fig wine if the squirles don't get them all first
Thanks Again All, and I hope to read many other fine posts in here in the
future.
Mike T.