More Strawberry

I worked on my new strawberry wine some more last night. I strained and strained and strained to get a good sample for testing the SG. I saw that I needed to add more sugar, so I made a syrup using 3.75 pounds more sugar (and half as much water brought to a boil, then stir in the sugar until dissolved.) I Stirred this syrup into the must and checked the SG again. The hydrometer read 1.068, which is almost exactly 9% alcohol by volume. That's just slightly too low. But then I remembered that the temperature of the must can alter the SG reading. After trying to adjust for temperature based on guesstimation of the tempm of the must, I believe that the Starting SG is around 1.075 to 1.080 - somewhere around 10 - 10.5% abv. That is a good abv. So I decided to stick with it.

I went ahead and added the rest of the additives to the must - 5/8 tsp tannin, 5 tsp Yeast Nutrient, and 1/8 tsp Pectic Enzyme. I stirred this all in well. Then I created a "mini-starter" with the yeast. I just used the directions on the back of the yeast packet, which said to dissolve the yeast in 50ml water and let stand for 15 minutes, then add to the must. I closed the primary with the lid and airlock on, and set it in the closet.

Hopefully everything will work out right with this. The must was still thick, but not quite a smoothie consistency any longer.

So now I have 5 gallons of Strawberry wine in the primary, 5 gallons of Pumpkin wine clearing, and just under 6 gallons of Vinter's Reserve Merlot bulk aging.

One kit is still on deck.