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 yeastin 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?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?
3) bypass the carboy, and float some gelatin on top in the pail, which then 'curtains' down and filters things a bit, then bottle?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?
5) this batch is just over 8 gallons, and I haven't bought a carboy yet. Carboys seem to be 20 gallon or so, obviously leaving a lot of air on top. Is this ok, if I lock the carboy with an bubbler air lock, and rely on the heavier CO2 to prevent air contact? 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?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.
7) carboy it through siphoning. Wait about a month, then bottle it through siphoning it. Find a carboy that leaves no air on top.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.
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. The cutting corners and the bag thing was my idea.
I have to continue to the fund the KGBO in the meantime (LCBO Canadian liquor control board, run like an expensive 3/4 billion dollar profit (not revenue) government operation, KGBO is an appropriate nickname - not that they don't do a good job, but they're otherwise a pure and utter ripoff, with a completely nonsense and inconsistent pricing structure. You can't get much half decent belgian beer around here.