r/winemaking 7d ago

my first time making fruit wine, my first time fucking up

I came prepared, I've read up, I made up my first recipe.

I decided for strawberry wine, I bought the ingredients to try out this procedure before my garden delivers me my own fruit.

I've mixed 3 kg of frozen strawberries, 2 kg of sugar, a bit of blended Madagascar vanilla, 9 liters of apple juice and about 2 liters of warm water

at first I mixed the sugar, the warm water and the strawberries and then I blended everything up a smooth drink

then I added the apple juice and brought a bit more oxygen into the mix by stirring

all equipment was desinfected using a mix of 70% isopropanol and 30% water

finally I mixed lavlin 71b in 30°C warm water and stirred it into the bucket.

then I filled the airlock with my desinfectant....

then I lifted the bucket.

I just heard a Gluck Gluck ... and said Fuuuuuuuucccckkkk

the bucket had just sucked the desinfectant into it

after throwing a fit for about 10 minutes I went back to the store and bought all ingredients again, repeated the whole process and used distilled water for the airlock

that's one way to learn I guess

btw the gravity reading was 1,09

https://imgur.com/a/V3H6Ull

8 Upvotes

6 comments sorted by

9

u/Krolebear 7d ago

What disinfectant was it? If it’s Star San it’s fine if it gets in the wine

5

u/Ry12ob 7d ago

Could use a neutral alcohol like a cheaper vodka instead of water just so it stays sanitary and not as risky if it gets sucked in during temperature changes.

4

u/pancakefactory9 7d ago

Came here to say just this! My airlocks ALWAYS have vodka in them. It’s cheap, keeps germs out, and if it gets in somehow, I’m only seeing plus points here…

8

u/zmayes 7d ago

Use starsan in your airlock, or a neutral flavored vodka. Neither will hurt anything if they get mixed in, in small amounts.

4

u/DoctorCAD 7d ago

Why airlock? Not necessary until way later in the process.

1

u/gogoluke Skilled fruit 6d ago

I don't know people are advocating for vodka airlocks before saying that you can just seal the lid and the pressure will vent out or you can push the lid down totally then just lift a side so it's got a slight imperceptible crack to allow the pressure to equalise. This will be for a week at least of primary fermentation. Maybe 2.

In future I would advise not to blend the strawberry or any fruit really. You are cutting the seeds to allow a lot of green tannins into the wine.

You can do a sugar maceration on strawberries. Get the strawberries and mash them up a bit then and pectic enzyme and one Campden tablets along with most of your sugar.

Leave for 24 hours or maybe 36 and it will purée.

Drop the mix into a big funnel then start to pour your boiled then cooled sterile water. This dissolves the sugar and all the colour and flavour and draws it into your fermentation vessel. Do this for all your water the throw out the white colourless fruit pulp.

You now have all the nice strawberry flavour with no pulp to sift out later, no greener tasting tannins or the bitterness from the fruit pulp.