Yoopers Wine Recipe - Fruit Fly Question

[calmingapple]

Hi everyone,

I am only a few days along with my first ever batch of apple wine. I've noticed a family of fruit flies hanging out ON and near the carboy that are starting to make me nervous!

I understand the general guidance is to allow the initial fermentation to receive some oxygen without the airlock for the first 7-10 days but those damn fruit flies are getting more and more determined (dancing atop my coffee filter/napkin cover with rubber bands). I've got it tightly fitted but if a fruit fly were determined enough.... I would just hate to see it turn to crap.

Can I just throw on the airlock sooner rather than later (I'm roughly 2 days into the initial fermentation) and will I ruin anything by airlocking it early? Or will it not matter very much?

Thanks for the advice! Have a good weekend!

 

[WVMJ]

If its settled down enough to put on an airlock go ahead, you just dont want it to gush up thru lock and suck back in. WVMJ

 

[bernardsmith]

Can you set up a small fan near the top of your fermenter? The flow of air over the bucket over the next few days will er... discourage... the fruit flies from settling on or near your wine.

 

[calmingapple]

Thanks so much for the advice. I don't have a fan but I will be sure to purchase one for next time. I decided to just throw an airlock on the carboy... aaaaand this leads me to my new problem...

So I was preparing my airlock today with sanitizing solution and found an older bung/drilled stopper that I was hoping to use instead of the brand new ones (that had very little give and I had trouble fitting it into my carboy at all). Unfortunately the older bung I decided to use went all the way past the lip of the neck of the carboy and is now stuck deep inside the neck of the carboy. I have three day old fermenting liquid in there and now I can't remove the bung or attach an airlock to the bung.

I am thinking of attaching a photo of it as well as starting a new thread asking for help on how to remove that damn thing.

BIG NEWBIE MISTAKE :-(

 

[calmingapple]

Update: Got the bung back out. But I am no longer certain my wine is okay. Lesson learned. Practice with bungs/drilled stoppers before plugging an active carboy :-\

 

[WVMJ]

That is one of your silliest posts Bernard, next thing you would want to do is get a big piece of ice to cool the breeze down to chill the flies so they can fly, maybe a big piece of dry ice? WVMJ

Can you set up a small fan near the top of your fermenter? The flow of air over the bucket over the next few days will er... discourage... the fruit flies from settling on or near your wine.

 

[WVMJ]

CA, we have all been there done that. Was the bung acutally in the wine? You added camden or sulfites early right? So why do you think your ruined it? What wrong with your new bungs, are they the white univeral ones? Make sure to dry the inside neck of the carboy and dry the bung before you push it down, it does not have to go all the say down to its lip, just make sure its in there snug. After a few batches it gets much easier. Yoop will chime in if she thinks you are about to screw up her recipe WVMJ

 

[bernardsmith]

That is one of your silliest posts Bernard, next thing you would want to do is get a big piece of ice to cool the breeze down to chill the flies so they can fly, maybe a big piece of dry ice? WVMJ

Silly, it may be. In the 14th century, "silly" meant innocent. So all saints were silly. But , stupid it ain't. And it works.
PS why would you want to cool the air down? And why would you think about playing with dry ice? The speed of the air flowing over and around the carboy prevents the flies from landing and wafts the smell of the fermentation to areas where there is no food source for these critters.

 

[WVMJ]

So it cools them down in flight and they hit the floor. There is always an eddie where they can approach from downwind and if you have more than 1 carboy the turbulent flow would give them plenty of approaches. CA make sure you put some camden in your airlock in case one crawls in there and you burp it back when you take it out to clean it, if its got camden in it you really dont have to take it out to clean until you rack but they freak some people out so if you do feel the need to clean out the fly and some burps back into the wine you are protected. WVMJ

 

[calmingapple]

Hi WVMJ,

Thank you for the advice about drying the stopper first. Man what a silly newbie mistake. I dunked the stopper in sanitizing solution and it went in wet. *shakes fist at self* I get what I deserve! The bung wasn't the best either. I tossed it. It was flimsy and possibly deteriorating. I barely had to push and it went right in (too far).

Thankfully the bung never touched the wine but I had the boyfriend pull out the bung/stopper using pliers (we tried to sanitize those as best we could and patted it dry). Once the bung was out - I carefully cleaned the neck of the carboy inside & out with strong sulfite solution. But... we will see how screwed I am.

As a side rant: I purchased some second hand winemaking items that seemed good (at first). But when we used the pliers on that bung it acted like salt water taffy and appeared ready to crumble. I was also sold a fermenting bucket with deep scratches in it. Regretting that now. Obviously that bung had seen better days. Glad I tossed it.

I immediately put back on the thick napkin/coffee filter cover and it went on fizzing away. But I would like to fit a proper bung & airlock on tomorrow. The thing is now... I don't know if those pliers used to pull out the bung were enough to contaminate things (pliers never touched carboy itself). We tried our best. Guess we will see.

Do I have to do anything with the new bungs/stoppers that have no give? I've read suggestions on greasing them - but with what?



Thanks for the help!

CA, we have all been there done that. Was the bung acutally in the wine? You added camden or sulfites early right? So why do you think your ruined it? What wrong with your new bungs, are they the white univeral ones? Make sure to dry the inside neck of the carboy and dry the bung before you push it down, it does not have to go all the say down to its lip, just make sure its in there snug. After a few batches it gets much easier. Yoop will chime in if she thinks you are about to screw up her recipe WVMJ

 

[calmingapple]

Crap! Well, no sulphites or campden were added to the wine originally. I reasoned that because this is pasteurized store bought juice I could omit it for now. And my dad has sulphite sensitivities. He wants first sip of this wine hehe.

But now I am worried about potential contamination of the wine from those pliers (those pliers only touched the stopper but still...) should I be adding sulpites now then? Or am I too late. I am 3 days in.

 

[bernardsmith]

The fan, Jack , is not to cool the bloody bugs, it's to prevent them from landing or flying around. You need to think outside the box -You might use a fan for "cooling", but what fans primarily do is move air and moving air with more energy than those flies can fly against or stand up to is the sole reason I had for suggesting the use of a fan. The movement of the air will act like a strong rip tide to drive the flies from their desired source of food. And that IMO is what is "cool" about using a fan in this context. (Now I understand your reference to dry ice... fan = cooling , rather than fan = moving air). But if my idea is "silly" I will happily and proudly wear that badge.

 

[harleybug88]

Fruit flies cannot land in a cross wind. I also use a fan to detour the "Little Bastards".

 

[calmingapple]

Hi Bernard,

I knew what you meant Those fruit flies are annoying, determined, and I am certain that given enough time... they'd burrow in through my coffee filter napkin make shift covers! *shakes fist at the fruit flies*

A fan would benefit my wine as well because right now it is in one warm closet. I don't need the numbers climbing more than they have.

The fan, Jack , is not to cool the bloody bugs, it's to prevent them from landing or flying around. You need to think outside the box -You might use a fan for "cooling", but what fans primarily do is move air and moving air with more energy than those flies can fly against or stand up to is the sole reason I had for suggesting the use of a fan. The movement of the air will act like a strong rip tide to drive the flies from their desired source of food. And that IMO is what is "cool" about using a fan in this context. (Now I understand your reference to dry ice... fan = cooling , rather than fan = moving air). But if my idea is "silly" I will happily and proudly wear that badge.

 

[jensmith]

Your wine should be fine. No need to panic over the bung, pliers or flies. I have certainly done worse with my wines, and have yet to dump one
The coffe filters should be fine. You can airlock if you really want to. Personally I would wait a few more days. If you want to trap the flies put a peice of sticky tape on top of the coffe filter. When the flies land on it they get stuck. Poor mans fly tape


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[calmingapple]

Thanks jensmith for the vote of confidence! I feel way better hearing that. It took lots of prep work and hunting down of supplies that I was starting to worry I had contaminated the whole thing right then and there...

I will take your advice of waiting a few more days before airlocking. The flies have since vanished and I was able to crack the closet door (where the wine is now) enough that it gets a steady flow of air and no bugs are hanging out in with the carboy.

Sticky tape! Smart solution! Now... can you help me makeshift a mini auto siphon? ;-)

Your wine should be fine. No need to panic over the bung, pliers or flies. I have certainly done worse with my wines, and have yet to dump one
The coffe filters should be fine. You can airlock if you really want to. Personally I would wait a few more days. If you want to trap the flies put a peice of sticky tape on top of the coffe filter. When the flies land on it they get stuck. Poor mans fly tape


Sent from my iPod touch using Home Brew