Bubbling away

The Homebrew Forum

Help Support The Homebrew Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

markjohnl

Active Member
Joined
Feb 9, 2021
Messages
43
Reaction score
24
Hi,

I've been a beer brewer to date, but decided to try the Winexpert Chilean Malbec kit as it seemed a good first timer kit.

It's bubbling away nicely now (every 10-15 seconds) at day 7 of 14. With beer I would be waiting for the bubbling to stop completely or at least less than once per minute, I don't see similar instructions for wine.

Is it the case that with wine, we try to halt fermentation at a specific gravity rather than let it go until all the sugars are converted to alcohol? And if so,, by letting it complete fermentation will I end up with a fortified wine?

Thanks,

Mark
 
Instructions usually tell you to move on to stabilising and clearing at .995 or lower it will get down to .990 if you let it but if you don't like really dry wine stop it at .995.
 
Cheers, I certainly will. It's still bubbling nicely in the brew fridge. Bought a carboy for secondary, but forgot to check it also fits in the fridge ... Oops ... Fingers crossed on that one.

Another question I have is once I siphon off to the carboy and do the degassing etc. It later says I need to siphon off to a carboy for clearing. I don't have another carboy, so was thinking of siphoning to one of my buckets, cleaning and sanitising the carboy, then siphoning back. Is that ok or am I risking introducing too much oxygen doing it twice?

I assume clearing in the carboy rather than the 5l bucket is better as there is less headroom for oxygen?

Thanks,

Mark
 
If you are planning on bottling as soon as its clear i would syphon to the bucket then degas and clear in the bucket, headspace wont be an issue as it wont be in the bucket long enough for it to spoil.
 
Thanks Chippy Tea. The instructions show it clearing for 5 days or possibly more, so maybe that's longer than you were thinking? This is supposed to be a 4 week kit.

Thanks,

Mark
 
Ignore any wine kit that says it'll be ready in X days or weeks it's all bs it'll be ready when the hydrometer says it is ;)

The wine kits i make WineBubby, solomon Grundy are fairly quick and they usually clear in 2 days, I wouldn't worry about headspace if it takes a bit longer.
 
Back
Top