Terry Fletcher
Member
Hi,
This is my first post. I've been making beer for a few years and have recently been making wines. I have a batch of candy cane wine fermenting now. I got the recipe from a winemaking magazine. Fermentation has been real slow but it continues to ferment. Does anyone have any ideas on what I should do (if anything)? I'm pretty sure I put too much sugar in to start. The recipe called for 60 normal-sized candy canes and 7.5 lbs sugar. I have no idea what a "normal-sized" candy cane is so I substituted 10 huge candy canes and still added the 7.5 lbs of sugar. Anyway, here's the time line:
12-30-08 - Made the batch - pitched the yeast SG was a whopping 1.300
12-31-08 - fermentation was so slow that I added some yeast nutrient
1-1-09 - observed "faster" fermentation at about one bubble every 2-3 seconds. after a few days it slowed to one bubble every 5-7 seconds.
1-10-09 - After 12 days in the primary I decided to rack. I racked the 3 gallons from the primary bucket to three 1-gallon jugs. SG was still very high at 1.100
Now they are all bubbling but only about once a minute at best.
Should I just let it go or add some more nutrient? (or throw it out?).
By the way, I neglected to check the ingredients of the candy canes so perhaps there was something in them that interfered.
Thanks
Terry in Houston
This is my first post. I've been making beer for a few years and have recently been making wines. I have a batch of candy cane wine fermenting now. I got the recipe from a winemaking magazine. Fermentation has been real slow but it continues to ferment. Does anyone have any ideas on what I should do (if anything)? I'm pretty sure I put too much sugar in to start. The recipe called for 60 normal-sized candy canes and 7.5 lbs sugar. I have no idea what a "normal-sized" candy cane is so I substituted 10 huge candy canes and still added the 7.5 lbs of sugar. Anyway, here's the time line:
12-30-08 - Made the batch - pitched the yeast SG was a whopping 1.300
12-31-08 - fermentation was so slow that I added some yeast nutrient
1-1-09 - observed "faster" fermentation at about one bubble every 2-3 seconds. after a few days it slowed to one bubble every 5-7 seconds.
1-10-09 - After 12 days in the primary I decided to rack. I racked the 3 gallons from the primary bucket to three 1-gallon jugs. SG was still very high at 1.100
Now they are all bubbling but only about once a minute at best.
Should I just let it go or add some more nutrient? (or throw it out?).
By the way, I neglected to check the ingredients of the candy canes so perhaps there was something in them that interfered.
Thanks
Terry in Houston