"Mike" > wrote:

> I'm currently fermenting:
>
> 1/2 gallon of 100% not-from-concentrate apples juice, store bought
> 1/2 gallon of apples pressed into juice, bought in the produce section
> of the grocery store
> 1 gal water, unfiltered straight tab water (city chlorinated)
> 1.25 lb white sugar
> 1 lb brown sugar
> 1/2 cup of unpasteurized honey
> 1 campden tablet
> 1 pkg of wine yeast
>
> in a some large 5 1/2 gallon pail with a lid and bubbler air lock. I
> cleaned everything with hot water and a very light bleech solution and
> rinsed it very well. The yeast was not started in advance, and in the
> 1st 24 hours it didn't bubble at all.
> The pail is sitting in a bathtub at around 65 F and I put in 5 inches
> of luke warm water in the tub twice. I opened the lid once to give it
> a good stir. It's now over 24 hours and the bubbler air lock does a
> quick 5 gargles every 15 seconds or so, very cute.
> This is my first batch 8-).
>
> Questions:
>
> 1) did I do ok so far? Was I too skimpy with the sugar, and if so,
> should I add something sugary?

Juice can vary in sugar content, so its difficult to calculate whether you
have the right amount of sugar or not. It's always best to test sugar
content with a hydrometer, but now that it's fermenting, it's too late for
that. If I understand correctly what you've done, you have 1 US gallon of
juice (which probably contained about 17% sugar) plus 1 US gallon of water
(containing no sugar), for a total of 2 US gallons of must (containing ~8.5%
sugar). To this you've added about 2.5 pounds of sugar. This seems about
right, and should yield about 12.5% a.b.v.

If your bathtub is in the bathroom, I would get the wine out of there
immediately. There are germs in the air, and odors which I doubt you want
absorbed into your wine. If your goal is to increase the temperature of the
must, buy a heating pad at the local pharmacy for about $15, and use it on
the lowest setting. Use a few layers of towel to keep the temperature from
getting too high.

> 2) is it possible to not carboy, and put it straight in whatever
> bottles I have around, like plastic 2 liter pop bottles, used wine
> bottles with screw caps. I'd use siphoning to bottle. Then wait for
> dead yeast to sink in the bottles, and then just carefully pour into a
> glass for consumption? Perhaps float some gelatin on top in the
> bottle to help with the filtering?

When the wine stops fermenting, it will be very cloudy. It takes months (and
often the use of fining agents) for all the sediment to precipitate. It's
necessary to siphon the wine off the sediment several times during these
months. If you bottle it now, you will have a much more difficult job in
re-racking. If you leave it "on the sediment" in those bottles, it will
develop very unpleasant "off" flavours. Get a couple of 1-gallon glass jugs
for carboys. You can use them again later.

I don't recommend using gelatin. Apple wine should (and almost always does)
clear by itself with time. If it does not, bentonite will do the job.
Gelatine, when required, is used for different purpose. Filtering is used to
polish a clear wine. Attempts to clear a wine by filtering will only clog
the filters, and expose the wine to excess air.

> 3) bypass the carboy, and float some gelatin on top in the pail, which
> then 'curtains' down and filters things a bit, then bottle?

No.

> 4) or if I carboying it after it stops bubbling in a week, could I put
> some gelatin on top to speed up the process?

No.

> 5) this batch is just over 8 gallons, and I haven't bought a carboy
> yet.

I only count 2 gallons, plus perhaps .25 gallon of liquid sugar. And you
said it was in a 5.5 gallon pail. Do you mean 8 litres?

> Carboys seem to be 20 gallon or so, obviously leaving a lot of
> air on top.

Standard 1/2 and 1-gallon jugs will function as carboys. "Proper" glass
carboys are available in 2.8, 3.0, 5.0, and 6.0 gallon sizes. I've never
seen or heard of a 20-gallon one (It would weigh over 200 pounds). You
should use the closest size to your volume, and/or a combination of smaller
carboys.

>Is this ok, if I lock the carboy with an bubbler air
> lock, and rely on the heavier CO2 to prevent air contact?

No. You need to use the proper size carboy(s) and top up with distilled
water or similar wine.

> Or should
> the carboy be always filled to the top, in which case I need to find a
> different small better fitting container as a carboy somehow?

Yes.

> 6) if I carboy it, could I perhaps not bottle it, and leave it in the
> carboy for storage? What I envision of doing is float something on
> top of the wine inside the carboy, to prevent air from reaching the
> wine. Or else (this is somewhat strange), insert a hose into the
> carboy, and then a bag on top inside the carboy. When you suck wine
> out throught the hose, the bag inflates, covering the wine. I could
> blow some air into the bag to make a tight fit inside the bottle,
> leaving no air this way. The attempt in all this is to bypass the
> bottling and go straight from carboy to consumption.

You are trying to rush a process which can (and should) take over a year.
Yes, when the wine is ready for consumption, you can use such a contraption
(or purchase the type that are used in bars). But why bother? Wine ages
better in bulk, so use the largest carboy you have, rather than a bunch of
smaller ones, or bottles. When it's time to drink, get a siphon and drink
everything at once --- or bottle some, and rack the remainder into smaller
carboys, so it continues to improve with bulk aging, or bottle the lot.

>> 7) carboy it through siphoning. Wait about a month, then bottle it
> through siphoning it. Find a carboy that leaves no air on top.

By all means. Purchase a stainless-steel fermenter with a floating lid. You
should be able to find one for under $1000. Then wait at least a year before
bottling.

> 8) when bottling, although I'm a complete rookie at this point, add a
> small amount of sugar to create bubbles and bottle in plastic pop
> bottles, which could perhaps be stronger and safer than glass bottles.

You will be making a "safe" hand grenade. The "small amounts of sugar" will
NOT create bubbles unless they start fermenting, and if they do, they will
create enough CO2 to explode. Of course, flying pieces of HDPE are a bit
safer than shards of glass, but please don't bring either around me.

> My main source of information has been a book called "The Alaskan
> Bootlegger's Bibble", by Leon W. Kania, which I find a very amusing
> and encouraging book.

If these ideas came from the book, it seems very amusing, and a bit
frightening.

> The cutting corners and the bag thing was my idea.

My apologies to Mr. Kania.