Attempting My First Sugar Wine

[Myrmidon]

Good day all,

Today I'm attempting my first sugar wine doing it deliberately as simplistically as I can. I've been reading and watching videos for a long time as I've been worried about things such as hygiene, exploding containers, poisoning, yeasts not working, using wrong yeasts, wrong sugars, not enough of either, too much of either, whether airlocks are truly necessary, how long should the process take etc. So today I've done 2 experiments:-

Experiment 1:

1L cleaned bottle full to the shoulder with cooled boiled water.
Added 500g of granulated sugar and a couple of grams of dried active yeast.

Experiment 2:

1L cleaned bottle full to the shoulder with cooled boiled water.
Added 500g of granulated sugar and a couple of grams of dried active yeast.
Some squeezed satsuma juice (4 satsumas, ensured no 'bits').

Both have been stood upright in a washing up bowl for about 18 hours now and appear to have stopped bubbling and fizzing. Is this normal? Initially I thought perhaps the yeast or sugar had all been used up but 500g seemed to be an adequate volume of sugar from the different videos and articles I've read and watched. Also yeast is self-replicating so essentially it's not going to run out as long as their is sugar present correct...? I thought perhaps the yeast may have died but the boiled water was cooled first and was merely warm. They've been kept at room temperature.

I don't have a proper airlock on the bottles, the lids are merely placed on top as I have widely read that this is sufficient to allow the CO2 to escape and the pressure won't allow any O2 in. I have actually ordered 2 proper airlocks for the 2nd batch when ever that may be.

I had an issue with experiment-2 where everything bubbled and fizzled and completely overflowed out in kind of a thick sludge. This didn't happen with experiment-1 and the only difference between the 2 is the satsuma juice, the bottles and methods were the same, otherwise identical quantities of sugar and yeast and both boiled cooled water from the same container.

From what I've gathered really the type of yeast doesn't matter if you're really just starting out for a practice. I'm not concerned with the alcohol content or taste because it's just a test, I may not even drink this first batch whilst I'm learning the process.

Can anyone provide this aspiring noob with some pointers?

Kind regards

 

[Chippy_Tea]

Today I'm attempting my first sugar wine doing it deliberately as simplistically as I can. I've been reading and watching videos for a long time as I've been worried about things such as hygiene, exploding containers, poisoning, yeasts not working, using wrong yeasts, wrong sugars, not enough of either, too much of either, whether airlocks are truly necessary, how long should the process take etc. So today I've done 2 experiments:-

I am not really sure what you are wanting to do but there is a lot of **** information out there ie wrong yeast, wrong sugar etc if you want to make cheap wine in a couple of weeks that is drinkable as soon as its bottled have a look at post one here
https://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/...ne-recipes-and-wurzels-orange-wine-wow.49462/

.

 

[Bernardsmit]

Hi Myrmidon and welcome. I also think that you are learning to play tennis using a cricket bat. If you want to make a very simple wine go to your supermarket and buy a bottle of shelf stable fruit juice - mango, pineapple, cranberry, pomegranate - whatever fruit you like. The shelf stable kind will not have any preservatives in them. (juice stored in the refrigerator section may have and my money is on novice wine makers always buying bottles full of sorbates - Murphy's Law and all that.

You do not want preservatives: they are designed to cripple if not kill the yeast. You might even go to the frozen fruit section but here you will want at least 3 lbs (about 1.5 kg) of frozen berries and the like.

If you are using shelf stable juices remove a cup of the juice and pitch your yeast. The wine will be as strong as cider or a high alcohol beer (about 5 % ABV). If you use frozen juice I would blend that juice with water and my guess is that at about 1.5 Kg to a US gallon (about 4L) this will have the same amount of fermentable sugar. If you add a heavy 1/2 kg of table sugar to each batch you will increase the potential gravity by a scant 40 points and 40 points adds another 5 % ABV. The yeast you do not want to use is bread yeast. That has been cultivated to produce lots of CO2 , and no flavor. What you want is a yeast grown to produce lots of alcohol, good flavor and be easy to remove rather than float around the wine after it's done its job (with bread yeast, baking the dough at 200 C means that the yeast does not linger.

If you use frozen fruit just make sure that you wait until the must (the fruit solution prior to you pitching the yeast) is around room temperature before you add the yeast.

Simply fermenting table sugar is a bit like baking bread from a dough you have not added any salt. It's bread but that doesn't mean that it is edible.
Good luck.