Time for fermentation!

And the day where I will actually start making WINE is here! Until now I just had some very dark  unsterilized fruit juce where some minor fermentation had started to happen. Now... the fun begins!

How do I know some minor fermentation had occured? Well...

It's a bit foamy. No telling what kid of yeast is in there, though, so I won't be making wine the way Grandpa did it. Just letting it sit until it stopped being foamy. I'm going to add my own yeast where I know what the alcohol tolerance is, and keep it more under control.

For this, I decided to use Red Star Montrachet. It's a pretty common strain used to make dry reds and whites, and works really well on non-grape fruits.

Now, Jack Keller would prefer that you innoculate your yeast with a 72 hour process that gets it ready to go, as well as used to the environment that you're putting it in. I..................... did not do that. I will try that next time. Oops.

I did follow the directions on the back, however:

Apparently the water coming from my hot water tap gets to abover 112F. No wonder doing dishes is painful. I put 1 cup of hot water into a soup bowl and let it cool a bit.

Perfect.

Unsurprisingly the yeast didn't look much different than the activated yeast you use for baking. Beige. Powdery. Smells like bread.

Mmmmm yeast culture.


The one deviation I did do was to add about 1/2 cup of the must into the yeast and stir it around some. Firstly to introduce it to the must environment, as well as to lower the temp a bit more so it's not going from 101.2F to 75F in one go.

Looks kinda like tomato soup.

I poured this slowly into my primary and gave it a good stir. Lots of bubbles formed as the other yeast that were already in there had produced carbon dioxide, and the stirring released the gasses. I also added 3 tsp of yeast nutrient to my primary, as it's good to have about 1tsp per gallon.

Doesn't look like much, but it has a lot of nutrients that yeast needs that most non-grape fruits don't have. This should keep my yeast happy and alive and munching on that sugar and producing carbon dioxide and ethanol.

While downstairs getting the above picture (because I totally forgot to take one during the process), I took a peek in the primary. There's definitely some fermentation going on! It's only been about an hour since I added it!

Whether that's the natual yeast or the stuff I added, I don't know. But there is fermentation happening!

The next step is to keep it covered and only uncover to stir it once a day or so to keep all the yeast in suspension. They can ferment still when they're on the bottom, but they don't do as well, and I want them to do as much as possible as fast as possible. On Saturday or Sunday I'll rack this into a secondary, and then the real test of patience begins!

Oh, and it totally already smells like wine, by the way.