Hello
I've just got into this - I've been wanting to homebrew for ages since inheriting some kit from my late Dad and lockdown's finally meant it could happen. I got a copy of CJJ's Berry's First Steps book and "Brew It Yourself" by Moyle and Hood. A beer from the latter is currently getting very close to ready... very fun already!
I was also following the Elderflower recipe from the Berry book, though it turns out it's actually with Rowan flowers after some crossed wires! Not knowing that the Berry book has rather high sugar content, I started this one with a SG of 1130! It's using a sparking wine yeast and seems to still be going so we'll see - SG was down to 1015 when I checked a couple of days ago and the wee sample tasted reasonably good.
Anyway, I let this one ferment in a bucket for a week; I then strained it and it's now been in a demijohn for a little over a week and has about a cm of yeast sediment in the bottom. The Berry book suggests waiting until it's "started to clear" before testing it in a separate jar to see if it's ready for bottling as a sparkling wine, but I'm not clear on what that means! It's started to clear already, but there are clearly fermentation bubbles rising up the jar still so probably well too early yet. Has anyone got any clues as to when I should try it? Is it just a case of waiting until a few days of stable hydrometer readings? And should I rack it into another demijohn any time soon now there's a leathy amount of sediment?
Thanks for any help!
Sandy
Thanks....
I've just got into this - I've been wanting to homebrew for ages since inheriting some kit from my late Dad and lockdown's finally meant it could happen. I got a copy of CJJ's Berry's First Steps book and "Brew It Yourself" by Moyle and Hood. A beer from the latter is currently getting very close to ready... very fun already!
I was also following the Elderflower recipe from the Berry book, though it turns out it's actually with Rowan flowers after some crossed wires! Not knowing that the Berry book has rather high sugar content, I started this one with a SG of 1130! It's using a sparking wine yeast and seems to still be going so we'll see - SG was down to 1015 when I checked a couple of days ago and the wee sample tasted reasonably good.
Anyway, I let this one ferment in a bucket for a week; I then strained it and it's now been in a demijohn for a little over a week and has about a cm of yeast sediment in the bottom. The Berry book suggests waiting until it's "started to clear" before testing it in a separate jar to see if it's ready for bottling as a sparkling wine, but I'm not clear on what that means! It's started to clear already, but there are clearly fermentation bubbles rising up the jar still so probably well too early yet. Has anyone got any clues as to when I should try it? Is it just a case of waiting until a few days of stable hydrometer readings? And should I rack it into another demijohn any time soon now there's a leathy amount of sediment?
Thanks for any help!
Sandy
Thanks....
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