Testing wine and topping up

Jeff, You don't clean with a sulfite solution, you sanitize. Usually you rinse with tap water after you sanitize. Yes, you return the wine to the carboy.

Welcome to home winemaking. Another good site for you is:

Guy

For topping up I would suggest sanitised marbles. They will add volume to the wine but without diluting your wine. Adding water will dilute and adding an other wine will affect taste (if it is not the same wine).

Clean> >> I'm a newbie and about to start my first batch of wine. I would greatly

why use a test jar instead of just putting the hydrometer in the secondary? it should displace enough wine to make it easy to retrieve.

I test with the hydrometer in the fermenter, but purists seem to prefer to test in a sample jar and often (by the sound of it) toss the test fluid rather than return it to the fermenter.

I might add that I believe I haven't suffered as a result of my maverick ways yet and the amounts of wine I make at a time (1-5UK gallons) I wouldn't want to waste a drop... I can understand those who can refusing to 'potentially' compromise their wine in this way though...

Jim

I made a few gallons apple wines. One from juice and one from cider - both were good, but here is what I learned. Don't let it go too dry. When you test it, taste it. Don't let it go down to .998 or less. Try

1.010-1.020 - then stablize and go into bottling. I let mine go all the way to .998 or less, and now it had to be sweetened before drinking. As far as loss of wine and topping up, if you want 3 gallons, then I make 3 gallons and a 750 ML bottle and a 375 ML bottle (using clear bottles for the last two) and then as I reduce from racking, I use up the extra wine until I have 3 gallons left. Sometimes if I think it's going to be a lot of rackings to clear it up, I make 3 gallons and 2-3 750ml bottles. I adjust the recipes for the additional juice. Everything is proportional in most recipes I've found.

that's my 2 cents, DAve

J Scott wrote:

There are two things that could make the sample you take out such that you should not return it. If you add chemicals to the test sample such as during a acid test, do not return it. The only other thing that would prevent your returning it is if you drink it. That should be part of the sampling. Taste it. Eventually, after a number of batchs, you will learn to recognise things about the wine by tasting it as you make it.

As far as topping up, you do not need to top up if the wine is still fermenting, i.e., in going from primary to secondary or if you rack while fermenting in secondary. The CO2 comming off will protect it.

During bulk aging, if you are talking about adding a cup to replace a little loss, water will not effect things much. Some people plan on this by using a little extra fruit and a little extra sugar converted to alcohol so a little extra dillution during racking is perfectlly OK and planned for. Jack does this in his recipes.

Then if you have a good cellar, you could top with old wine. Some old books say this will help the wine clear.

Finally, you could rack to smaller carboys so it still fits. I use a lot of

1 gallon and 1/2 gallon jugs. Any left beyone that does not fit that way goes in the frig and is drunk.

I recomend against marbles. First you have to be sure the marbles are not made with leaded glass. Second they are expensive and it takes a lot of them. If you need to make up 2 inchs in the carboy, you need to add about 3 inchs of marbles. That is a lot of marbles. Third, it is hard to rack wine out of them The sediment sits on the marbles and wine is between the marbles. You will loose a lot of wine or you will have to pour the last of the wine into another container, top it with something, and then let it clear again.

Ray