Bottled Turbo Wine

Finally bottled it? Didn't you just ferment it?

I, like many other people, bulk age all my wines for around a year before bottling.

As far as adding flavoring, well that is up to your palate.

Dorothy, I started fermenting it some 6 weeks ago and the thing stopped fermenting. I did stabilize with sulfite.

I am a novice winemaler and this is my first attempt so bare with me. I tasted it and although it didn't taste "great", it had quite a kick to it so even if I didnt use the hydro.vino meters I know it's got alcohol in it. IT sure isn't sweet (I like dry wines). It certainly is not still fermenting and has no CO2 in it. So, I bottled it after it cleared and stowed it away. Will open next Christmas and see what's what.

Now, I have some Cnsord grape juice in the fridge waiting for the Campeden to take effect. I will check with a hydrometer for a starting SG and all that jazz and take good notes.

The thing is, I am using turbo yeast for the moment and it seems to ferment pretty qucik and so far the taste isn't bad.

I think what I need to do is stop using the turbo and use my winemaking hobby as a way to learn patience :)

I am also about to start a watermelon wine and due to all the trouble with that stuff spoiling before fermenting I will definitley use the turbo.

Sorry, I read Droopy as Dorothy! :)

Yeah, and I was sober by the time I wrote that post! :)

I'm not sure if the turbo yeast is getting you any stronger apple wine than regular yeast as the limiting factor for the alcohol % in apple wine will usually be sugar, not the yeast's tolerance to alcohol. I see from searching back that you added some sugar to the apple juice but I still think you probably ran out of sugar at a fairly low alcohol % (for wine anyway, maybe not hard cider). Any idea what the alcohol % was?

Miker, not sure what the abv was in this instance, but I did add quite a bit of sugar, upwards of 3 cups for the gallon. When I drank it it was pretty dry. I added some apple flavor and some wine conditioner on rop of that. Like I said, this was an unscientific experiment for a first serious try. I am going more scientific with my concord grape and the wetermelon next.

3 cups per gallon is not all that much..that is less than a pound and a half per gallon, so you raised the OG only from somewhere in the 1.040

-1.060 up about 0.069gravity points. You are looking at a wine that had an OG of about 1.110-1.130?

That is not EXCESSIVE although on the high side for wine. You could have fermented that dry with any number of regular wine yeasts (Champagne, montrachet) and even some of the brewing yeasts (nottingham).

One think you have noticed for sure is that when the alcohol gets high like what you should have (14%-15% ballpark) is that the flavor of the fruit is overwhelmed and you need to backsweeten the wine considerably to overcome the hotness of the wine. That is why most people only make wines with an OG of up to 1.095 or so. To preserve the fruit character.

If you want fruit+alcohol+sugar you can easily make schnapps using grain alcohol and fruit juice concentrate.

I have tried the 24 hrs turbo yeast twice, great fun, watching teh hydrometer, slowly going down in 24 hrs, from 1.110 to 0.98. Though takes about a week to 10 days to settle for first racking. Going to try one of the other turbo yeasts, maybe the strong one (8kilos sugar to 20 litres solution), though experimenting with just boiled rice this time, will add citric acid, after fermentation for kick.

Mike

Will turbo yeast process the starch in rice? You may need to amylase, koji, or malt treat it first.