Soon after making the blog entry about acid and sugar, I went about actually doing what I said I was going to do. I poured a gallon of juice into a bucket in preparation for neutralizing the acid. I decided to check the sulphite levels first, though. Mostly I just wanted to try out my tester kit and break open one of the ampules. Glad I did the test, though. As you can see in this picture (clear liquid as opposed to dark purple means the gauge can be read), there is less than 13 parts per million (ppm) in the juice. I am aiming for 40 ppm. So I added 1/8 teaspoon. I didn't check the levels afterwards since each test costs me about $2. The sulphites should help protect from bacterial infections, especially during this period with low levels of alcohol and repeated exposure to the air.
I also tasted a sip of the juice. Not terrible. Tasted like grape juice. A bit less sweet than grocery store varieties. I didn't find the sourness from the acidity to be unpleasant.
Here I am measuring out Calcium Carbonate. Muffin really just wants to be wherever the action is.
I added the calcium carbonate slowly to the gallon of juice over a period of 1 hour, stirring frequently. I left it like that in the bucket for about 24 hours. When I opened it up, there was about a 1/4 thick layer of crystals at the bottom of the bucket. Hopefully it was calcium malates and calcium tartrates. From what I read, Malic acid and Tartaric acid are the two main types of acid in wine. Another chemical you can use to reduce acid is potasium bicarbonate. When that combines with tartaric acid, it precipitates potasium tartrate crystals, which I understand to be cream of tartar.
I took a sip of the neutralized juice. It really was way less sour. Kind of boring tasting, though. Sweet, with a hint of grape flavor.
I siphoned the gallon out of the little bucket and back into the big bucket, leaving the crystals behind. Then I measured out 3.7 lbs of corn sugar. Wow, thats a lot of sugar! I checked the specific gravity after that, and it read 21 brix. Right where I was aiming for!
I took another sip at this point. Certainly sweeter. Not bad. I noticed in all my sips that there wasn't a whole lot of distinctive grape flavor. Hopefully its just being overwhelmed by the sugar and other things in there and it will be much more noticeable after fermentation.
Lastly, I started up the yeast. I'm using Lalvin 71B-1122. There are quite a few different wine yeasts available. The 101Winemaking website had descriptions for the kinds they sell. For this one, it says it will ferment up to about 14% alcohol (most others go higher), and is good for fruitier wines where some residual sugar is desired. Thats what I'm going for, so it sounds like a good match.
I put some warm water ~100F in some tupperware with a teaspoon of sugar and sprinkled the yeast on top. After 20-30 min, I noticed it foaming up a bit, which I took to be a good sign. I dumped the yeasty water into the big bucket of juice, closed the lid, and put in the airlock so it could start fermentation.
After 24 hours there were still no bubbles coming out of the airlock at all. I was getting pretty worried at this point that I had done something wrong. I would have expected bubbles within a few hours considering how well the yeast had been foaming in the tupperware. I remembered that the online directions for the yeast suggested putting some of the juice into the water with the yeast after it started foaming so that the yeast wouldn't be "shocked" by the temperature change. I had forgotten to do that, and was thinking that I may have more than just shocked the yeast. I gave it until 48 hours before I broke out the backup packet of yeast that I had purchased for use with a future wine batch. Happily at 36 hours I saw a few bubbles. About one a minute or so. It accelerated steadily after that, and by 60 hours it was bubbling faster than once a second. Its still going strong after 5 full days. Go little yeasty beasties!
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