Transfer Complete
I made the transfer last night from primary to secondary. I pulled out the bag of pumpkin pulp and squeezed to get some more liquid out - porbably about a gallon more came out! The 21.5 pounds of pumpkin meat were now big enough to fit into a small tupperware container. I guesstimate there was about 4 cups of pumpkin meat after the maceration.
The must (I'm not sure when to start calling it wine!) ended up being around 5 gallons. I put this into the 6 gallon carboy, so it wasn't enough and I had to top up. I used a cheap Riesling, because that's what I had read that this wine comes out like. I used a big bottle of it, but still needed to fill the bottle up again with water to complete the topping up! I left some pieces of the ginger root and 2 cinnamon sticks in to keep adding a little more flavor.
I tasted the wine again, it was a little better last night. I definitely think I'm going to like it. Measured the SG, it was down to 1.010, so that's a good sign.
Some Notes:
I made sure to thoroughly clean my carboy and siphon. On the Carboy, I used dish detergent first to get it clean (with the bottle brush) and then I used a B-Brite solution (which I also used with the siphon.)
Still attached to my siphon was the bottle filler - a tube with a little lever at the bottom so that when you're bottling, you press down and the wine flows out, and when the bottle is full enough, you just lift the tube and it stops the flow so there's no spillage. The siphon tube is very narrow, so it doesn't allow air in, and nothing falls apart. Unfortunately, it means that nothing can ever get taken off of it. So to get the bottle filler off, I ended up having to cut the tube! Hopefully everything will still work, though.
I waited for about an hour and a half after transfer to top up. I was waiting to see if the fermentation would get going violently again, because I didn't want it to overflow. After an hour and a half, the airlock was bubbling, but there was no foaming, so I went ahead and topped up. After that, it looked like it was about to start foaming, but it didn't, so things worked out well.
I'm taking my camera with me this weekend to try to finish up the roll of film that I've been using, so hopefully next week I'll have photos to post here!
See y'all next week!
The must (I'm not sure when to start calling it wine!) ended up being around 5 gallons. I put this into the 6 gallon carboy, so it wasn't enough and I had to top up. I used a cheap Riesling, because that's what I had read that this wine comes out like. I used a big bottle of it, but still needed to fill the bottle up again with water to complete the topping up! I left some pieces of the ginger root and 2 cinnamon sticks in to keep adding a little more flavor.
I tasted the wine again, it was a little better last night. I definitely think I'm going to like it. Measured the SG, it was down to 1.010, so that's a good sign.
Some Notes:
I made sure to thoroughly clean my carboy and siphon. On the Carboy, I used dish detergent first to get it clean (with the bottle brush) and then I used a B-Brite solution (which I also used with the siphon.)
Still attached to my siphon was the bottle filler - a tube with a little lever at the bottom so that when you're bottling, you press down and the wine flows out, and when the bottle is full enough, you just lift the tube and it stops the flow so there's no spillage. The siphon tube is very narrow, so it doesn't allow air in, and nothing falls apart. Unfortunately, it means that nothing can ever get taken off of it. So to get the bottle filler off, I ended up having to cut the tube! Hopefully everything will still work, though.
I waited for about an hour and a half after transfer to top up. I was waiting to see if the fermentation would get going violently again, because I didn't want it to overflow. After an hour and a half, the airlock was bubbling, but there was no foaming, so I went ahead and topped up. After that, it looked like it was about to start foaming, but it didn't, so things worked out well.
I'm taking my camera with me this weekend to try to finish up the roll of film that I've been using, so hopefully next week I'll have photos to post here!
See y'all next week!
posted by Rob | 2:20 PM
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