Tried my first batch of wine yesterday. It is a red beet wine. I decided to make it when I was preparing red beets from my garden for freezing and after par boiling the beets I was left with all this sweet tasting liquid. I found a recipe online that I used as more of a guideline because my boil times, quantity of liquid and weight of beets that I started with all meant things needed to be adjusted. Well...I got off to a great start calculating (more like guessing) the quantity of the other ingredients, filling up (almost) 3 one gallon jugs, checking and adjusting the starting sg (with my new understanding of a hydrometer)with a simple sugar syrup and then mixing and pitching some dry wine yeast when the temperature was just right. I was so proud when two hours later there was foam starting on the top of the ruby colored liquid. It assured me the yeast had started it's amazing work. I went to bed after cleaning up everything (the worse part of beer\winemaking), it was 1:00am. At 6:00am I got up to take my daughter to school and when I returned I started to read my winemakers manual to see what I needed to do next to assure myself a good finished wine. I became alarmed when reading about the necessity of the proper quantity of acid and ph. No problem!..I have an acid testing kit I bought a year ago but never knew how to use it. After reading the instructions... (who does that anyway?) and taking a sample of my now VERY vigorously fermenting must, I decided I needed to add some acid blend. Ignoring the fact I should have added this BEFORE the yeast, I boldly measured out the required amount of acid blend and dumped it into the must. ........INSTANT PINK VOLCANO !!!! and a BIG PINK MESS !!! It would be nice to hear if anyone else has had a similar experience?
- posted
18 years ago