Difficulty starting ginger wine recipe

[Maricel]

Hi everyone,

I'm quite new to this brewing fun and wonderered if anyone can help me with a puzzle.

I put:

250g root ginger (well scrubbed and washed).
3 shinny, big lemons (also scrubbed and washed. Hopefully this removed any wax)

Into a blender and zapped them to a pulp.

I also put 200g of sun maid raisins into the blender and lightly broke them up.

Placed them in a 6 litre car buoy along with 1 kilo of white granulated sugar and added bottled water to within 50mm of the lid.

Put the lid on and gave it a good 2 minute shake.

I then added 1/2 tsp of Youngs wine yeast and 1/2 tsp of Youngs yeast nutrient.

I gave it a final shake and fitted the air lock.

After 48 hours no sign of fermentation.

I then made a yeast starter yeast, sugar and water. It foamed and bubbled after a few hours so I added it to the must.

Another 24 hours and still nothing!

Out of desperation I added a 12g sachet of bread yeast and within a few hours it erupted into life and 24 hours later its still fermenting like crazy!

Why did my wine yeasts not work and a bakers yeast cause it to go ballistic?

Thanks for listening...

 

[Chippy_Tea]

The instructions on the yeast i use (Youngs super wine yeast compound) and nutrient say to use 1 heaped teaspoon per gallon (4.5 litres) you had 6 litres with half a teaspoon of each.

.

 

[cheapbrew]

Its been cold and fermentation will be slower unless you had it somewhere warm and how old is your yeast? you may find that the bakers yeast will die off as they don't like the alcohol as it increases.