1st fruit juice brew

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paulmccre

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After reading the forums for a week or 2 I've caught the bug.
On Wednesday I scoured Gumtree and picked up
6 demijohn
3x 5l buckets
Airlocks & bungs
Hydrometer, and other odds and ends all for a grand total of £35.

My first 2 demijohn consist of

1l asda rgj
1l iceland apple juice
800g sugar
Tsp yeast
Tsp nutrient
Tsp pectalose

Glad to be aboard. :)

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Welcome to the Forum. :thumb: :thumb:

I don't see any Sanitiser in there and hope it's just a bit of forgetfulness on your part to not include it rather than forgetting to sanitise the DJ, bung and air-lock before you started.

Also, if you take and log the Original Gravity (OG) the Calculators towards the top of this page will give you the Alcohol By Volume (ABV) when it has finished fermenting. (If you forgot to do this then don't bother now as there is a risk of infection every time you open up a brew!)
 
Yes I did sanitise everything using some sterilisation tablets from boots.
I didn't measure the OG but added the sugar content from the juices to 800g of sugar to take it up to 1.1kg in total, I've read this should give me an expected 13%.

2 demijohn are bubbling nicely 24 hours in. :)

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Welcome and well played on your rose type WOW, it'll be a good 'un 😀

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Welcome and well played on your rose type WOW, it'll be a good 'un 😀

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This was yesterday, excited to see the yeast starting.

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I got the yeast from wilkos, a wee tub of their own branded stuff.

I'm already thinking about scaling up my brew. Thinking of getting a 5 gallon fermenting bin and using the demijohns for storage.

It's addictive lol

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If you get a larger fermenter look for something that holds at least 30 litres, 33l is better still, you can use it then to make bulk amounts of WoW's or 30 bottle kits that you like, you can use the DJ's for experimenting with smaller batches of different flavoured WoW's.
 
I'm already thinking about scaling up my brew. Thinking of getting a 5 gallon fermenting bin and using the demijohns for storage.

It's addictive lol

A word of advice on going big, i did this and had a bit of a nightmare as i didn't have a second FV to rack into for clearing so ended up mixing all the dead yeast etc back into the wine when degassing and adding finings, i couldnt tell you if it did the wine any harm as it was in the early days when i would have quite happily drunk anything i had made good or bad but generally speaking members like to rack off the dead stuff to clear and finish their wine.

Any views on this from other members gladly welcome.
 
If you get a larger fermenter look for something that holds at least 30 litres, 33l is better still, you can use it then to make bulk amounts of WoW's or 30 bottle kits that you like, you can use the DJ's for experimenting with smaller batches of different flavoured WoW's.

Spotted a 33l fermenting bucket with some odds and ends on my local Gumtree, hopefully it's still available.
 
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Topped up with some cooled boiled water. Still bubbling away nicely. :)

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After a week the bubbles through the airlock are slowing down (once every 10 seconds) I took a hydrometer reading, 0.088.
I tasted what was in the measuring tube and it's pretty dry. Should I stop it now or let it carry on a few days more ?

My concern is that it will be too dry for me.

Can I add some sweetness back by adding some more juice after I stop it ?

Sorry for all the questions it's my first batch in a long long time.



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You can stop it now and yes you can add juice to sweeten as long as you have stabilised it using wine stabiliser/fermentation stopper.
Youngs%20Fermentation%20Stopper%2025g-500x500.jpg
 
Ok I will stop it tonight, I've got some wine stopper from wilkos. My kwik clear is in the post, will the stopped wine be ok for a day or 2 while I wait on it arriving ?

I'm really surprised that it's fermented out in 7 days.

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Ok I will stop it tonight, I've got some wine stopper from wilkos. My kwik clear is in the post, will the stopped wine be ok for a day or 2 while I wait on it arriving ?

I'm really surprised that it's fermented out in 7 days.

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If you rack it and do all the steps to the point of adding the KwiK Clear it will be fine.
 
I've also caught the bug. Bought a strawberry wine kit initially and looked good so moved onto rhubarb and ginger. Reading was 1.10 and bubbling nicely. Started on banana (what a job to strain), plum / bramble and saki. Getting a bit carried away!
 
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