Update: last night (5th day) the Red Wine sg .990.. The (guide) directions say wait 7- 10 days and sg levels should be .996.. I'll check them again tonight and if the sg are the same then I'm going to follow step 3..

White wine: last night the sg read 1.010 after 4 days. The (guide) directions say wait 5-7 days.. I went ahead and racked it into the 2ndary..

My wife asked me a question and I couldn't quit answer her with a clear answer but what's the point in racking into the 2ndary..?

Yeast ferments. Two products, alcohol and CO2. We get rid of the CO2 with either an airlock or an open primary. You also have waste material that falls to the bottom of the fermenter. We call it gross lees. It rots and produces SO2. Sulphur rotten egg odor. Sometimes you can smell the SO2 as the wine starts out in the primary if there isn't enough nutrient in the must. Different yeasts produce more or less SO2. The best proceedure is to rack off of the gross lees at specific points in the process. Even in the secondary with an airlock the gross lees are falling as the alcohol builds. Once the alcohol gets to a point where all the sugar is eaten up there is very little going and the stuff that is dropping out of suspension is called fine lees. As I mentioned a couple of posts back even the fine lees can be a problem over time. We keep racking and the wine will finally be clear. As we leave the gross and fine lees behind when we rack we lose volumn. Then the problem becomes what do we top off with to keep a full carboy with minimal head space. Water, off the shelf juice of the same type, or wine saved from a racking when you had too much from the 1st or second racking. All of the different methods will have effects on your wine.

I normally try to plan ahead. If I have enough to go to a 6 gallon carboy, then when I rack again I will be able to go to a 5 gallon carboy. If all goes as planned I will have some extra which I can cork and place in the fridge and add later. Or you can just add an off the shelf juice of the same type to top off. That can either sweeten your wine or ferment out. After you make wine a few times you will see what happens as you rack.

Carboys: I have 1 gallon, 3 gallon, 5 gallon and 6 gallon. When we are topping off or down sizing to smaller carboys you can see the advantage of different size carboys. I get my 1 gallon glass carboys by buying them filled with wine at the liquor store.

I'm not sure where you got your wine making info but here is an interesting site you might check out. Jack Keller is pretty much the authority in wine making.

http://winemaking.jackkeller.net/request.asp

Schroll down the page. All of the recipes are for 1 gallon batches of wine. Although they are recipes if you ever try one always use your hydrometer when adding sugar etc. Plus I would always measure acid before adding it to a recipe. At the bottom there is lots of info, but click on advanced wine making. Schroll down that page and at the bottom are 18 items I think you will find very interesting. Yeast strains, problems in wine etc. there is a more info on this site than you can ever get in a book and it is all FREE. I have printed a lot of this info out because I use it all the time in the wine room. He has charts and conversions and just about anything else you will need.

!!!Thank You!!! You have been a lot of help.. You opened me and my wife to a hole new level of wine making.. Thanks for the detailed breakdown on the Gross/Fine Lees, Co2's, & So2's.. I get info from diff forums and of course my supplier that also referred me to this forum.. I'll check that link out asap... Thx again!!!

Update: Something doesn't seem right.. I added the fining agents to my wine and degassed and topped off about 2 inches from bung.. Shortly after I replaced the airlock I've noticed white clumps of stuff floating at the top, not at the neck but floating on the big part of the secondary carboy just below the neck..

Is that normal..? What is that stuff...?

Wonder if that is just the fining agent that didn't mix in very well. Did the fining agent come in a powdered form? Some of these powders, like bentonite, need to be mixed with a small amount of wine first otherwise they just remain in a big glob. Sometimes even crushed metabisulphate powder can float to the top. Are these large clumps like marble size or just small like very small and gravely? I suspect around the edges of the carboy like a white ring on top.

Bentonite is the very first step.. I mixed in very little at a time to ensure it dissolved, that's what the directions say to do.. What ever time they say to stur, say like two mins then I stured twice as long with a paddle drill attachment.. The powders was mixed in 1/2 cup of luke warm water and a liquid clearing agent.. No white rings around carboy anywhere.. There was no white clumps in the primary and everything else was liquid form when entered into the 2ndary.. It did look like gravel though.. When I get home from work, I'll take a look at it and see if there's any changes..

What do you think now..?

If I am adding bentonite I put the dry bentonite in a cup. I then take an eye dropper and add a few drops at a time until it gets all mixed into a thick liquid. Then add more and more until I have a couple of cups before I add it to the wine. Actually I don't think it is a big deal. Very good experience. The worse thing that could happen is it won't clear as quickly.

wyo wino wrote:If I am adding bentonite I put the dry bentonite in a cup. I then take an eye dropper and add a few drops at a time until it gets all mixed into a thick liquid. Then add more and more until I have a couple of cups before I add it to the wine. Actually I don't think it is a big deal. Very good experience. The worse thing that could happen is it won't clear as quickly.

Thx.. The next time I mix that benonite up, I'm going to try it your way.. I'm hoping it's just the clearing agent working and hoping it'll all fall to the bottom..

I took a look at it when I came home and it look the same, maybe a little less.. This week on the 29th. I'll have the Chadonnay ready for the last step.. The directions are the same as the Red wine so I'll have to wait and so if it does the same thing..

Thx agian...

I never add any other wine clearing chemicals except pectic enzyme, bentonite and patience i.e. TIME in the carboy. In 8 months the wine will be very clear. I do filter. I made wine for years and never filtered except through tight weave muslin. Within the last year I have gone overboard and now use a Buon Mini-jet electric filter pump. OH MAN!!! At 8 months I filter and bottle.

The other thing I think I forgot to mention but I think it is in a previous post. There are two ways to degas. Either stir the crap out of your wine. Some people actually add a stirrer to their electric drill. Or my method. After my last addition of metabisulphate I install the airlock and wait for it to degass itself. Takes about 6 weeks.

Bottling: My wife boils about 1 quart of water. When it cools to 100 degrees (approx) I add 1 crushed campden tablet and cover the pan. I then add the corks. In the meantime I am cleaning bottling the wine. I pull the corks out of the hot water and cork the bottles. The corks are in the hot water with campden about 15 minutes. Works for me.

I learned how to make wine from a commercial wine maker in San Pedro, CA. Tony Marabella. He is in his 80s now and he let his vineyards go. Wall to wall houses in there now. In fact his web site is advertised under CA at the right side of the page. Last Nov. we took a trip back there and bought a motorized grape crusher/destemmer from him.

Xdriver wrote:Update: Something doesn't seem right.. I added the fining agents to my wine and degassed and topped off about 2 inches from bung.. Shortly after I replaced the airlock I've noticed white clumps of stuff floating at the top, not at the neck but floating on the big part of the secondary carboy just below the neck..

Is that normal..? What is that stuff...?

Update: I called Wine Experts and they said from mixing there was settlements that was caught by Co2 that brought it to the top (below the neck) of the carboy.. They say to take the end of a spoon and lightly stir only at the top and it will break up..

I made sure the spoon was sterile and about 3 or 4 slow turns it started to break up.. I took a whiff, replace the airlock and licked the spoon handle and OMG.. It smelled awesome and tasted awesome..

Hey.. Wyo Wino I went back and read through this post and man this post is loaded with kick but info... Many Thanks for your help so far..

I'm glad you called the guy about that stuff. It will ease your mind a lot. Those kits are pretty well designed to be no error wine makers. When you start into other off the shelf juices becare about adding acid blend. Even if you see it in a recipe hold off until you get an acid measurement a month or so into the process. That is one thing that will make a wine taste like an amateur made it. It will be very tart and bitey.

We're located up here in the wild west in NW Wyoming about 100 miles south of Billing. I spent 40 years in So CA, wife is from there, retired, traveled in our RV for about 3 years, got very bored, now raising hay and horses. Where are you guys located?

wyo wino wrote:I'm glad you called the guy about that stuff. It will ease your mind a lot. Those kits are pretty well designed to be no error wine makers. When you start into other off the shelf juices becare about adding acid blend. Even if you see it in a recipe hold off until you get an acid measurement a month or so into the process. That is one thing that will make a wine taste like an amateur made it. It will be very tart and bitey.

We're located up here in the wild west in NW Wyoming about 100 miles south of Billing. I spent 40 years in So CA, wife is from there, retired, traveled in our RV for about 3 years, got very bored, now raising hay and horses. Where are you guys located?

I'll pick up a acid tester and the couple of chemicals I forgot on my next trip to my supplier.. Before I start next batch, I will test the acids before adding..

My wife, 4 kids, and I live in the NW part of Indiana.. My B-Day was yesterday.. That puts me at 34 yrs old.. My Uncle Butch from the mid West foothills of Tennessee turned me on to the wine.. He's been brewing for about 30 yrs now.. My last recent visit there just turned my wife and I to make wine..

Read the stuff in the chemical section. May be just as reasonable buying just the parts and making up the acid kit. I turned 71 this year. Bucking bales of hay is starting to be work. I am originally from western Michigan and the town of Muskegon.

Update: Saturday night we bottled this Island Mist (Pomegranate) and we're going to let sit upright for 5 days then lay them down..

This kit was fun and by next week we will be bottling are Island Mist (Peach Chardonnay) Kit..Sweet..