Pink Volcano

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?

Reply to
Pat Kennedy
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I have never had this happen to me but it is mentioned in the group every now and then. When you add a powder or crystal to a super saturated system it is going to go off. You would have been fine if you were doing your primary in a bucket with 1/3 head space. Always add something to your wine slowly while stirring. That way you should be able to catch it before it gets too bad.

Ray

Reply to
Ray Calvert

greetings to all: I'd never heard mention of the necessity of acidizing before yeastifying ( I just follow direx or do as I'm told) so this was an interesting fact to know!

Reply to
<drobneck

I saw the exact same thing happen at a commercial winery a couple of years ago - but that was in a 5000 gallon tank! A cellar worker (who should have known better) dumped a bag of tartaric into an active fermentation, instantly nucleating the dissolved CO2 that was in supersaturation. Sounded like a jet airplane taking off, and suddenly there was a geyser of foam shooting out the manway! Fortunately, it wasn't my wine and at least it was a white wine, so not so messy to clean up.

Tom S

Reply to
Tom S

"Tom S" wrote in news:FU3Ye.1166$ snipped-for-privacy@newssvr21.news.prodigy.com:

I would have locked the doors, sold the house and moved to an island where i could drink fermented coconut juice!

Reply to
Pat Kennedy

I'll bet that cellar worker doesn't go for a command performance. Another good reason to do ALL adjustments with additives BEFORE inoculating with yeast.

I would have captured some of the foam, added frozen banana and made a health-food smoothie LOL. (But how many times does one have a blender and frozen bananas at a winery? hehe)

Reply to
gene

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