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Beginning Wine

I am a beginning winemaker and decided to start with an apple cider.

I placed the tannins and acide and campden into a jug of natural apple juice with no preservatives and airlocked it. I am using the original jug the juice came in. Is this a bad idea?

I also got another identical jug and this one I have the same ingredients as the previous one except that I am using turbo yeast with this one. I expect the first one to go bubbling along for quite some time. Jack Keller says 60 days or more. But the turbo yeast one should do its job and stop in how long? It is still going after a week or more.

I did the turbo yeast as an experiment and I dont expect to get a good flavor from it. If it is too nasty to drink I figure I can always distill the alcohol out of it (when I go to New Zealand, that is).

I used ec-118 yeast in the first jug, btw.

Also, as a beginner, is it better to start with making a grape wine as opposed to a country wine, or vice versa?

Reply to
mdginzo
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As long as you left some room for the fermetation it's ok, 75% full is pushing it as a rule of thumb.

Most wines are mostly fermented withing 2 weeks unless you cold ferment.

No experience with turbo yeast, I think it's just more alcohol tolerant that most.

Good general purpose yeast

Make what you like, always. Grape wines tend to be more naturally balanced as to sugar and acid as a rule so may be easier to make. Country wines usually require some adjustment to sugar and acid so usually need measurements.

Joe

Reply to
Joe Sallustio

If you didn't add any sugar, you're not going to get a lot of alcohol. My calculations with my current batch of cider are at about 8%, and I added rasins, apple juice concentrate, and priming sugar. It was pretty low in alcohol when I sampled it before bottling.

Both yeasts are good choices for high alcohol, but you will have to feed it some sugar. A little googleing on wine making should let you know what amount of sugar you'll need. You're likely to get a shot glass worth of apple jack out of a gallon of distilled cider as you have it now -- once you get it to New Zealand.

Either works. If you're going to buy turbo yeast or lavin ec-1118, you should have gotten a hydrometer, and measured how much sugar was there. It would have come with a table to let you know what amount of alcohol to expect.

Reply to
ralconte

Ok, I must be missing something here - why would you want more than 8% alcohol for apple cider anyway? Most of the commercial ciders I've seen are around 6%.

EC1118 is often used with ciders, when cold fermented, and that sounds like what mdginzo is doing, otherwise there is no way the ferment with that yeast would take 60 days - Joe already covered this.

Pp

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Reply to
pp

I added about 2 1/2 cups of sugar to each gallon. Like I said, I was following a recipe from Jack keller. I have a hydrometer, but my eyes are bad at the moment, so i am waiting for cataract surgery before I get into using it. Thanks.

Reply to
mdginzo

Haven't seen that recipe, but 2.5 cups of sugar per gallon sounds like you're making an apple wine rather than cider because you'll end up with alcohol at around 12% or higher, depending how much natural sugar was in the juice. Nothing wrong with that as long as it's what you expect.

Pp

Reply to
pp

Sorry, I take that back, I was reading "lbs" instead of "cups". Cups are probably okay for a cider.

Pp

Reply to
pp

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