wine Need wine making help.

JohnsMyName

JohnsMyName

Hi all. My fathers peach tree exploded this year and he had a ton of fruit he couldn't use fast enough. We decided to make peach wine. Long story short, he never did a primary ferment and went straight to secondary. Basically he mixed all ingredients in bucket (except yeast) and let sit for a day and a half, then strained, added to carboy, added yeast and capped with airlock.

Will he be ok? Should he follow normal steps and leave it there a month, then siphon off to another carboy (and repeat) until clear enough and be done with it?

Thanks
 
JohnsMyName said:
Hi all. My fathers peach tree exploded this year and he had a ton of fruit he couldn't use fast enough. We decided to make peach wine. Long story short, he never did a primary ferment and went straight to secondary. Basically he mixed all ingredients in bucket (except yeast) and let sit for a day and a half, then strained, added to carboy, added yeast and capped with airlock.

Will he be ok? Should he follow normal steps and leave it there a month, then siphon off to another carboy (and repeat) until clear enough and be done with it?

Thanks
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Not squarely in my wheelhouse, but ... you would normally want those yeast in there ASAP to establish the dominant culture of the batch, as opposed to nasties ...
 
Do you know what the pH was, by chance? ... was it closed? ...
 
Not sure the pH. All the recipes we looked at had the 24 hr step prior to adding yeast (usually to add Camden tablet, but we didn't). That was not really my concern. The fact that we went straight to carboy was. After adding yeast all the recipes had a primary ferment in the bucket for a week before moving. I'm assuming this is because the initial vigorous activity could blow the top on a carboy, but wasn't sure if any other reasons for primary/secondary shift.
 
JohnsMyName said:
Not sure the pH. All the recipes we looked at had the 24 hr step prior to adding yeast (usually to add Camden tablet, but we didn't). That was not really my concern. The fact that we went straight to carboy was. After adding yeast all the recipes had a primary ferment in the bucket for a week before moving. I'm assuming this is because the initial vigorous activity could blow the top on a carboy, but wasn't sure if any other reasons for primary/secondary shift.
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I assume it'll blow the lid about today ... there's going to be a period where the yeasts are budding and using up the O2 in the container, and then they are going to switch gears ...
 
Hopefully they'll outcompete the shit that was floating in the air, or that you've got a favorable house culture =) ...
 
Anyways, the purpose of secondary is to get off the flocc'd yeast on the fermenter floor to avoid the off flavors from spent yeast, autoloysis ...
 
I don't really have all that practical experience, and none w/ primarily fruit-based brewing, but the yeast are simple enough they do relatively the same thing no matter the source of the sugars ...
 
You've basically got an unpasteurized mash of fruit, so whatever was in the air in the container and/or was on the fruit is setting up shop right now, I figure ...
 
Looks like the 24 hour sit us to allow the Campden tablets kill off any nasties that are in there from the raw fruit. No Campden, you just take your chances but you'll want to make sure every surface that touches your must, the fruit and water mix, are sanitized well. At this point your just going to have to wait and see.
 
Definitely setup for managing the off-gassing because fruit flies are a well-known vector for ‎acetobacteraceae, in particular, and there's no coming back from that one ...
 
Unless you could use gallons of vinegar, I guess ;)
 
#peachvinaigrate #fingerscrossed #hipster
 
Yikes. Well I guess we'll let this one run it's course and see what happens. He's been keeping an eye on it and no issues so far. I figure we'll wait until the airlock bubbling slows to say once every 30 sec to a minute, then siphon of into another carboy leaving behind junk on the bottom. Does that sound about right?
 
Also pics or it didn't happen right :), I'll try to get him to snap one and send it to me tonight.
 
JohnsMyName said:
Yikes. Well I guess we'll let this one run it's course and see what happens. He's been keeping an eye on it and no issues so far. I figure we'll wait until the airlock bubbling slows to say once every 30 sec to a minute, then siphon of into another carboy leaving behind junk on the bottom. Does that sound about right?
 
Also pics or it didn't happen right :), I'll try to get him to snap one and send it to me tonight.
Click to expand...
 
I think you are going to want to be closer to 1 bubble/2 minutes, maybe, or that might be for bottling ... I might be conflating the two ...
 
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