My first brew :-)

[Bob-mcr]

Hi all, I couldn't wait to get started with my first brew. It was going to be a cider but after reading here about moley and his tea bag wines I had to go and try one.

So far,
20 asda strawberry and forest fruit tea bags boiled in 2 pints of water
2 liters of purple grape juice (all I was able to get yesterday was the light half sugar stuff hence the next bit)
26oz sugar, which have me a starting SG of 1.100)
Citric acid
Yeast and yeast food
Also a mug of strong tea in there somewhere

I left quite a bit of head space in the DJ not knowing how wild the fermentation would be, but its bubbling away at about 1/sec with no froth at all.

My question to others with more experience than me (and that I can tell you is none) is,

What should I do about topping up at this stage without altering my sugar by vol too much?

 

[Robbo]

With a starting SG of 1.100 and it fully ferments out, the ABV of the wine will be 14.9%, so I don't think it would dramatically reduce the strength if you topped it up with a little water.

You could also top it up with a sugar syrup if the strength is to be kept.

 

[JonnyD]

If you don't mind loosing a bit of abv, top it up when you rack it to the do neck. Measure how much you add and you can use the calculator at the top left of the page to work out what abv you have now.
Hope it helps
John

 

[Bob-mcr]

Thanks guys,
I'm aming to stop the fermentation a little early for the sweetness so hopefully not the full strength at the end anyway. Was more worried about the head room left for later in the process as the Demi can't be far from 1L short from the shoulder (a little over 2 inches from base of neck I think) if I use more of the grape juice as is that should give me the volume and lower the overall sugar content a touch?? Guess I'll try and see what happens. I'm happy with how it's doing so far and think I'm moving along the right lines.

Half the fun is in finding out what I can and can't do :-)

Thanks for the advice, if my planning is miles off please let me know as much as I'm winging it I am raking notes

Bob

 

[oldbloke]

About a litre of headspace is good. After 4, maybe 5, days you can top right up to the base of the neck usually, the really vigorous bit is over.

 

[stanglish]

If you're using 'light' juices then they generally make up for the shortfall with artificial sweeteners buddy which don't ferment. Even if you let it ferment right out I will wager it will still be fairly sweet because of this.

I would be tempted to water down with a bit of strong strawberry tea, to keep flavour but lower that ABV as a bit of harshness always sets in for me past 14%

 

[Bob-mcr]

I hadn't considered the sweeteners in the juice thanks for pointing that out, as there is no froth from the reaction (it has a nice fizz with small bubbles rolling up the sides to the surface of the fluid) I've topped up today with more of the fruit juice and after racking will use water or the flavoured tea to make up any losses.

I guess that's it for a while now. I can't help stopping and watching the action every time I go through the kichen, there's something about the bubbles I say.

Thanks folks,
Bob

 

[Badger]

this sounds quite nice! I'm about to rack off some wine so next project?!