Saturday, March 08, 2008

update - 8/3/08

I've just been checking/meddling with things i.e. I've added finings to the batch of mead I made for a "winesathome" tutorial, and the batch of "canned strawberry". Both of these had been sitting for a while, but as there'd been no noticeable activity I decided "fuck it" I'll bang some finings in to clear them a bit quicker. Then once they've cleared I'll just sorbate them to prevent any further possible fermentation and then just chuck them under the stairs to bulk age.

The batch (well double batch) I made to compare the Wyeast mead yeasts (ones "sweet" and the other, believe it or not, is "dry") haven't shown any activity in a week or two so I decided to rack them. Actually I racked, sulphited and check the OG readings at the same time.

The "dry" one, seems to be at about 1025 and the "sweet" one at 1030. I'll be looking around to see if I can find out what that converts too in % ABV terms to try and judge whether they might be still fermenting or not. I need to work that out, because the data I can find on the yeasts suggests I should get about 11% ABV from the sweet yeast and 18% from the dry yeast.

I'm not sure whether it's just a case of taking the OG from the SG or what. I'll have to see.

My problem is more that I know that I should take gravity readings on about 3 consecutive days to work out whether it's stopped fermenting or now, but I'm paranoid as fuck about continually meddling with ferments, because I could just as easily introduce bacteria or other contaminants and fuck it up.

I mean, how do the so called "experts" do that? Is it just a case of using a sulphite solution to spray the testing gear or do they piss about being anal and do full sterilisation of all that kind of kit ?? I just don't know!

Fuck it, I'll go and ask some more idiot level questions

No comments: