1) Its working away with a thick coat floating on top. Read to break the top up twice a day, should I give it a full stir?

2) I didn't check SG initially, recipe I followed for pear wine says stop at an SG of (I think) 1.040, should I still use that, or just do it until I see visual signals, like the stuff sinking and near halting of activity?

3) Do I save off 10 or 15% of the liquid for topping off later as suggested?

Any other helpful hints or information is appreciated, thanks.

Gary

Sounds like you're off to a pretty good start. If it's going that well, it appears that you've got enough air in it so you don't need to stir it more. Just be very careful for the next few days to keep any utensils that you use to break up the top really clean so you don't introduce any bad bacteria. Also, you'd probably be fine with breaking it up once a day for the next couple of days and then be done with it.

Based on the ingredients, batch size and a little internet research on starfruit (somewhere it said about 4% sugar for the sweet ones), I'd guess your starting SG is around 1.080+/-. If we're in the ballpark, stopping at 1.040 won't work for a couple of reasons: 1) your yeast will take it much farther than that and 2) you'd end up with a very sweet wine. I'd recommend letting it go until the activity in the airlock slows down or almost stops completely and see where it is - I'd bet somewhere around 1.000 or lower. If it gets there, you'd be looking at a wine in the 10% alcohol range which isn't too shabby and you can taste it at that point and see if it's too dry for your tastes. If so, you can let it totally complete fermentation, let it clear and rack it a couple of times, add sorbate to prevent refermentation (or filter it with a "sterile" filter pad) and add sugar to taste. If you do this, always let the wine sit for a week or so in the warmth just to be sure that the fermentation doesn't re-start. Alternately, you can take an SG when it's slowed down and just keep feeding it more sugar until the yeast reaches it's alcohol tolerance when you'll see no more fermentation and the wine will start to taste sweeter.

From the starting volume, you're probably doing your current fermentation in a 5 or 6 gallon pail / carboy. After the first week or so, you're probably going to transfer the fermenting must off of the fruit and into another vessel for the rest of the time. Unless you still have a very active fermentation (like, wants to blow through the airlock) you should be able to top up this secondary fermenter to within a couple of inches of the top and let it complete. I've never been good enough to save any of the liquid for topping up ... I'm a bit too lazy to clean and keep track of both the normal fermentation and another smaller one for topping up. While it's going, I top up with a sugar / water mix and by the time it's stopped, I usually just rack from a 6 gallon start to a 5 gallon (or 3 gallon if there's a lot of yeast and fruit bits left) and then just let it fully clean and bottle. Let us know how it's going and I hope it comes out great!

Gary

Since you've still got some pulp in there, I'd probably rack again at that point to get as much of it out as possible and to make your final racking a bit easier. I either tie a small piece of cheesecloth on the end of the racking tube that goes into the new carboy or rack through a funnel with a medium mesh filter in the bottom to get the remaining big pieces out and the rest pretty much settles to the bottom.

Your goal is to get a wine that looks about as clear as looking through a bottle of olive or peanut oil at the supermarket. That way, you don't get a sediment in your bottles after they've been around for a while. So far, it's all going well and with a little patience you should have a good first batch.

Old wine and beer bottles which were rinsed out I'd imagine aren't yet clean enough, what all do you do to clean such items to use for the first time?

I'll be staring at lots of peaches, plums, surinam cherries, dragonfruit and other fruit in a few months, which will provide other new wine making opportunities. I think I'll look into getting various sized plastic carboys to accommodate different batch sizes for the upcoming batches. The surinam cherries have a certain tart twang to their taste. Do you think that would be beneficial in a wine, perhaps added as a second ingredient to like a peach wine?

Thanks again,

Gary

Just to be sure, you should always wash the stirrer off with something like a b-brite solution. That being said, a good wash will work most of the time - especially since while I do add a bit of b-brite to my racking tube when I rinse it I don't soak the tube thus it doesn't get a lot of contact time and it's fine.

Old wine and beer bottles (the cap type, not the screw-ons) are really pretty easy to get in shape. First, visually inspect the inside of the bottles to see if you've got any mold or stuff stuck to the bottle - if so, add a teaspoon or so of bleach to the bottle, fill it with water and let it sit overnite so that the stuff is easy to remove. If it looks clean or after a nite of soaking, drain it and add an inch or two of cleaning solution, put a bottle brush in it and brush for a couple of seconds, empty and rinse and you're good to go. I've also tried running beer bottles through a dishwasher with b-brite instead of detergent - didn't work too well for me but some people swear by it.

I'm definitely jealous of the fruit supply you're coming into! For many of what you're looking at, what I do is start off in a 5 gallon primary (versus my normal 6 gal) with lots of head room and rack off the fruit to a 3 gallon glass carboy for secondary and bulk conditioning. I've used the 1 and 2 gallon plastic jugs with the spigots but they just weren't rigid enough for my convenience ... it's been easier to shop once at a big box store and pick up a few 1 gallon glass juice containers and buy a stopper / airlock for it. One thing with the microbatches - they're labor intensive ... you go through the whole cleaning routine several times and,unless you're bottling 375ml splits, you only end up with 4 bottles of wine.

The other thing I'd do as a way to taste test a bunch of options would be to brew each one as the fruit comes into season in something around a 3 gallon carboy and then blend them to make your combinations. That way you get more control for the first few batches before you make a 5 gallon batch of an untested mix. BTW, I think that the tart of the cherries sounds very good, both as a component of another wine and possibly as a standalone sweet wine in the 1.030 final gravity range. Every couple of years I do a high gravity, high alcohol sweet cherry and then deliberately expose it to air after the fermentation is complete to create something between a sherry and a port and a bit of a tart might fit in just fine. It's always great to experiment.

Gary

If the taste's only so-so, you're doing very well ... after the first racking most of my stuff tastes like alcoholic medicinal yeast!

At this point, you have a couple of options regarding backsweetening. If you do it now, any yeast left in the wine will start fermenting again and eat up your sugar to produce alcohol, up to the tolerance of the yeast (which, if you're using the Red Star Premium Cuvee is around 18%) at which point the sweetness and SG will rise to wherever you want. The other option is to wait until the wine is clear and the fermentation totally over - no bubbles seen even at temps around 75-80 degrees - and add sorbate to inhibit re-fermentation then sweeten it to taste. You could also filter it through a sterile filter to get out all the yeast or pasteurize the batch to kill them all but I've not had success with the first method and have no means to get 5 gallons of wine to 160 degrees and hold it there without ruining the taste so I won't recommend it.

If you're sweetening it at the end of fermentation, you can pretty much sit there and do sequential tastings or add a bit in a glass and scale up to where you like it. Always add in small doses and stir well ... it's easy to put it in but not so to get it back out. The taste won't be too far off in terms of sweetness as is ages - it'll get a bit more mellow and balanced but the sweetness doesn't change that much.

Gary

Thanks,

Gary

As long as you're cleaning the carboy with some kind of cleaner (b-brite, dilute bleach, etc.) and rinsing with water, you're fine during racking. Normally, you'd only use a campden tablet or metabisulfite on the must before fermentation and just prior to bottling since the goal is to kill off any rogue yeasts so you're fine there and I wouldn't do anything at this point.

As an aside, I've got a bunch of friends who are sensitive to sulfites in wine so especially for my meads I don't sulfite at all with the exception of dipping the cork in a sulfite solution before it goes in the bottle. The normal acidity and alcohol of a wine protects very well and everybody enjoys a headache free evening.