Tanglefoot brew-a-long

All seems to be going well here. its pretty vigorous, no frothy head tho, smells good.

i went rummaging about online again for info on sauternes yeast (as this is what i used). The homebrew shop that i recently did my bulk shop in recommended it for country wines, along with a selection of others that i bought (reds, whites, sherries, high alcohol etc). Anyway it turns out that a number of parsnip wine recipes stipulate this yeast! As you may have guessed i'm new to playing with yeast varieties, i used to always use a general purpose yeast until i couldn't find it. A little advice (asked for and recieved) and a little brewing knowledge and some other stuff you pick up in the course of life made for a 'lucky guess'. its kind of like that famous quote from a golfer 'the more i practice the luckier i get'. what follows is pure luck tho as i had no idea this was to come ....

More info i found was that suaternes adds esters to the brew. i dunno how they do it, whether its a by product of their metabolism or whatever. Esters are fruity smelling/tasting molecules. they are very strong and a little goes a long way. The smell of pear drops and some of those very whiffy glues comes from esters. So obviously they are not all nice flavours lol. The ones from the yeast will be tho. i was introduced to esterification at school, it was one of the things that turned me on to chemistry. Mix an organic acid with an alcohol and hey presto you get an ester (ok ok, thats very simplified, it took a catalyst, some heat and some time etc etc). different acids and alcohols give different esters. without the catalyst and the heat the reaction is soooooo very much slower, but in wines you have the acids and alcohol so it will happen very very slowly, and its one of the reasons for a long conditioning being an advantage.

there was bundle of other stuff about sauterns. one that may be of general interest is that it is often used to 'unstick' stuck fermentations. i don't know if you can get some and chuck it in now, or if thats a bad idea(if it ain't broke don't fix it), like i said i'm new to playing with yeast. perhaps someone who drops in will know.

just took the lid off for the daily stir and whooooooaaaaaaa i think i just discovered an alternative to smelling salts! made my eyes water it did! :shock:

Hehe, I know! I get the same every morning :lol: - I need to get those bloody pics up. I've got pics from the pinneapple brew too. Eeek!

grief, its going like the clappers!

the fermenting bin lid keeps bulging up in a couple of hours even when i unsnap a little bit (think i need to unsnap more!). still no foamy head on it at all. i so want a clear bin so i can watch it all happening ... soon be in a demijohn tho, probably sounding like a little engine through the airlock

I just racked my tanglefoot, its had the 10 days the recipe suggested.

It looks and tastes like real lemonade (albeit alcoholic - which makes me want to make an alcoholic real lemonade now!) i'm sure the end result will be very different tho.

this is the palest wine i have ever made, and i'm enjoying that novelty at the moment. and also the familiar blip blip blip of 3 airlocks bubbling away .... simple minds .....

empty fermenting bin again !!!! wooohooo

Here we go with the pictures!!

I gathered up all I needed, chopped up all the defrosted (and slightly bouncey :shock: parsnips) ready to boil.




I then boiled up all the chopped parsnips for around 20 minutes, I added 1.3kg of sugar and the gravity came to 1.092



With a little help from a friend, :P I strained the parsnips into the FV. I snapped the lid onto the muslin to keep it in place, and left it for 15 minutes or so. (you cant really make it out for all the steam)




I then added the concoction to the saucepan again, and simmered for 45 minutes, the SG was the same after boiling.



I strained that again into the FV, and needed to ad around 1l of water to top up to a gallon.



The gravity had dropped, so added 200g of sugar, and it came up to 1.100 .

It's racked into the demijohn now after 10 days, and its looking good. gravity is at 1.020 which means a healthy 11.9%. But its still bubbling away!

Might turn out quite sweet as I may have added too much sugar after topping up with water - but hey, we'll see in about a year! I hope the thing clears, its very pale and cloudy.

Finally got the pics up :rofl:

(I havent mentioned adding citric acid etc.. because ive just realised I didnt write down what I did! BUT, it should be what Berry states in the recipe :))

nice post crE, looks like you enjoyed yourself

i think its mainly waiting now and the occasional rack. i'm not expecting it to clear quickly, probably gonna put it somewhere out of sight shortly after it stops fermenting and i rack it next time.

Nice set of pics :thumb:

its a cool set of pics eh! thanks crE, makes the forum come alive. i was concerned about hygene with a pooch in the kitchen, but only as i'm not used to that. i hope you brew turns out equally enjoyable (if not more so) than mine, so that we can rule out canine interference from brewing results!

Hehe don't worry, I bath by dog in a pre-sanitzed bath beforehand :lol:

All has almost come to a stop now, a few mm of sediment, but otherwise still looks like real lemonade. will be racking soon, probably over the weekend or early in the week. How's yours coming along crE?

Pretty much identical to yours perci!

I may rack in a week or so, I dont think there is any rush to rack is there?

racking .... i don't think there'll a problem with delaying it for a week. I like to rack once i know the fermentation has pretty much stopped, one of those habits i got into (like boiling my water) so that if anything does go wrong it's easy to rule out some of the basic things that may have caused it. And also getting the first sip is exciting and encourages me to get on with it :grin:

Hehe good points!

I think I'll rack next week if the fermentation stops, will have to go and have a look in a little bit to see how its going.

Just doing my second turbo cider now :grin:

Just racked today and it tastes very much like a dry white wine, a surprise to me after what i had been told about by others who have brewed this and also read online ... but not disappointing. Its really not far off being clear either, i don't think it'll take a year to be a pleasant drink so i'll probably sample the first bottle in the summer sometime and see how its going.

Myn still seems like its slowly fermenting... Still pressure coming up through the airlock

Had a taste the other day, tasted too sweet and had a yeasty taste :sick: - doesnt sound as good as yours perci!

it may just be a slow burner you got there crE, don't worry about it there seems to be a general consensus that parsnip wine takes it time. i'm sure it'll be fine after the recommended time.

mine however is being a maverick brew .... its been slowly clearing for some time, and with the exception of a slight haze in the bottom couple of inches and an extremely thin layer of sediment, it is clear as a bell. nice pale yellow colour, not the more usual orange/brown that i'm used to with many of my brews.

how long before you two can actually drink the wine...this book i have says you should wait a year after bottling.....

parsnip wine seems to be about a year, start to drinking, by most accounts. but i may drink mine sooner as it seems to be doing good. only time will tell tho and i wouldn't be surprised if the difference between 6 months and a year was pretty huge. i'll sip when i rack next and see how its going, that'll prolly be in less than a couple of months and i'll post here with the result.

Racked again today - beautifully clear and pale yellow, looks like a chardonnay.

Taste is a bit citrus, a bit fruity, medium/dry .... pleasant but unremarkable except for the clarity, now for the hardest part ..... will wait to see what its like in a few months