Allotment Gardening Advice Help Chat
Eating and Drinking => Homebrew => Topic started by: beestie-crawlies on November 21, 2008, 14:08
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Right,
Three demijohn's off freecycle. 8)
Two recipes off this lovely site. 8) 8)
All the ingedients now under the same roof. :D
Wife's away all weekend. :shock: :D :D
Let's homebrew!
Shall get the kids to help under the guise of a chemistry experiment. :lol: :lol:
For those interested, I'm trying the ribena one
http://www.chat.allotment-garden.org/viewtopic.php?t=5559&highlight=ribena
Cheers GrannieAnnie. :)
And the other one is a equally simple white.
http://www.chat.allotment-garden.org/viewtopic.php?t=24262&highlight=simple+white
Cheers Sideways :)
Will let everyone know how I get on!
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Finally, managed to get them started, after a bit of a run around trying to find a hydrometer.
Couldn't find mine, so I put a plee out on freecycle, which was answered straight away. Will probably find mine now I've got another one? :roll:
Got both bubbling away, to start with. Was worried at bed time when one of them had stopped. But this morning both were going mad.
Does anyone know how long they should take? They are both sat in the airing cupboard, on top of the boiler. I suppose temperature is a constant 23-25 deg C.
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Ooh very exciting. Are the kids excited? I would have been as a kid but I was a science nerd!
Looking forward to having a go at this at some point :lol:
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They were, and were more than happy to stir the sugar in the hot water to dissolve it.
I wouldn't let them do anything else. (Control Freak).
Also if it gets spilt I can only grumble at myself.
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It's all dead technical....... let it bubble away until it stops... Syphon off / have tasters whenever the sediment is looking sizable. The longer you leave it the better it tastes. If it's really rough add a hermesetas and cross fingers......
Personally have never bothered with a hydrometer (may get banned for saying this) & go by the old maxim - feeling frisky after 2 glasses and hitting the floor at four means you've achieved 15% !! :)
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It's all dead technical....... let it bubble away until it stops... Syphon off / have tasters whenever the sediment is looking sizable. The longer you leave it the better it tastes. If it's really rough add a hermesetas and cross fingers......
Personally have never bothered with a hydrometer (may get banned for saying this) & go by the old maxim - feeling frisky after 2 glasses and hitting the floor at four means you've achieved 15% !! :)
I like your methodology, (is that a word??).
But, I would at least like to have a vague idea of the sort of headache I can expect the following day. :drunken: :drunken: :drunken:
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I,ve made the Ribena recipe a few years ago, it turned out quite nice. :)
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Well everything had gone quiet so decided to rack and finish the fermenting.
Everything OK there. Ribena finished at SG1000 & Easy white SG1002. Which gives alcohol about 9% & 12%. :D
I added 1 crushed camden tablet and 1tsp of stabiliser to each of the brews.
Trouble is, it all started bubbling up again? :shock: Is this normal? Is it just de-gassing?
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Not sure b-c. I made wine from an organic blackcurrant cordial with no preservatives etc, this year. I was a bit disappointed - its way too sweet and yet really rough! They're all bottled now - maybe they'll improve with age. Haven't bottled the peach cordial one yet - its still in the demijohn. I thought they would work ok but I was being lazy, not wanting to do the whole lot from scratch!
But good luck to you!
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Thought I'd better give an update.
Well the ribena wine didn't make it to the bottle. :shock:
Got drunk on two consecutive nights, quite dry, but tasty :D
The easy white made it into two 2l pop bottles. First one drunk last weekend, a little sweet but very nice, especially as it was about 12% :shock:
Then second one I was going to drink last night but to my dismay it had 'stuff' growing in it :? .
Everything was cleaned and serilised before bottling. Had been sat on wine rack in kitchen about a week. Unfortunatly through it out, didn't want to take the chance on it.
Anyone have any ideas what it could have been?
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I don't know what it is, but some infections can be fixed with racking and sulphiting. Did you add sulphite or a campden tablet at the end of the fermentation process?
*edit* sorry my eyes somehow skipped the bit where you say you added a campden tablet.
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I did at the end of the ferment, but didn't when I transfered to bottles :oops:
I also added a stabiliser to finish the ferment when I racked it to settle & clear, added finings after a few days, as it was very cloudy.
Had a smell of the vino before chucking it, it smelt very yeasty?
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What type of yeast did you use? I am not an expert on different yeasts but they all have different quirks so may be worth researching if people had similar problems with the same type?
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I used 'Young's Super Wine Yeast' from Wilkinson, along with a 1 tsp of yeast nutient.