Elderberry First Racking

4/10/2011

 Yesterday, I took the must and tried to scoop out as many of the elderberries as I could. I really thought that I had gotten most of them out of the must. I added a little sugar. Let things set until today to do a first rack. Last night I did the calculations to change sugar from weight to cups. I was a little light on the sugar. It is about 2 cups to the pound.

So, today I racked the two gallons that I was shooting for. I had a little trouble with the second gallon and there are a few berries that made it past siphon. We'll just deal with those later. I did have to move some of the content in the first gallon to the second. I went to add some extra sugar into the first gallon and things started foaming. I really didn't lose enough to worry about and it evened things out between the two gallons. I added about a cup of sugar into both one gallon secondary fermenters. They are on the brew shelf and we have bubbles.

Now we will wait for about a week to ten days and then do a second racking to get the crap that will build up in the bottom. After that we will rack this once every 21-28 days. This will help clear the wine. Even though there is really no need for this wine to totally clear since it is so dark you can't really see through it. My wife commented on how it looked like I was doing a blood transfusion between the bucket and jug. I noticed the first time I did this, I got the must into the secondary fermenter it looked like I was brewing blood wine for a few weeks before it started clearing. My wife and I took a good taste of the new batch and it has the characteristics that we are looking for. A very strong elderberry taste with that nice soft bitter flavor you expect in wine. I think that I may have gotten this right a second time.

The elderberry wine I have been working on for a while now is getting closer and closer to ending fermentation. It tastes good and I am looking forward to bottling this in a few weeks to a month. Least that is the guess. Being he little yeasties are living things I am pretty much at their mercy. I know if I was them I would not be looking forward to my habitat becoming something that I could not live in anymore.

Keep it bubbling!!!

Chuck