Alcoholic Elderflower Champagne

[Andy Hamilton]

Gloopy can also mean a bacterial infection. If its gloopy like jelly, if it is that then well its down the sink. When you add yeast you inoculate when you don't you don't so there is more of chance for infection. A friend of mine made this and it came out all gloopy, you could pour it out the bottles like shampoo - this was a bacterial infection. Is it like shampoo?

[MKG]

Here's a quotation from Jack Keller ...

"Oiliness or Ropiness: The wine develops an oily look with rope- like treads or strings appearing within it. It pours slowly and thickly with a consistency similar to egg whites, but neither its smell nor taste are effected. The culprit is a lactic acid bacterium and is only fatal to the wine if left untreated. Pour the wine into an open container with greater volume than required. Use an egg whip to beat the wine into a frothiness. Add two crushed Campden tablets per gallon of wine and stir these in with the egg whip. Cover with a sterile cloth and stir the wine every hour or so for about four hours. Return it to a sterile secondary and fit the airlock. After two days, run the wine through a wine filter and return it to another sterile secondary. Again, this problem, like most, can be prevented by pre- treating the must with Campden and sterilizing your equipment scrupulously."

A possibility? As he says, if left untreated, it's bye bye wine. If this is the culprit and yours has got to the stage where the bacterial threads are now occupying the whole of the wine (i.e. you can no longer differentiate them) then, as Andy points out, it's a sink job.

Mike

[clanpowell]

Gloopy can also mean a bacterial infection. If its gloopy like jelly, if it is that then well its down the sink. When you add yeast you inoculate when you don't you don't so there is more of chance for infection. A friend of mine made this and it came out all gloopy, you could pour it out the bottles like shampoo - this was a bacterial infection. Is it like shampoo?

Exactly like shampoo infact. Mmmm I steralised all my equipment as well. Mind you there is no boiling of the liquid in JS' recipe so I suppose if there is anything on the flowers it's game over.
We made the recipe from the selfsufficientish bible last year which worked. Came out a bit like one of those Italian desert wines.
Promptly made some as soon as the flowers came out again this year! Would you prime bottles with some sugar to give it a fizz as well?

[Andy Hamilton]

Priming bottles to give a fizz, yes you can do that. but Don't put more than about 10g of sugar or you asking for trouble and do use champagne bottles again anything smaller will shatter.

Looks like you might be another customer for Booze for free when it comes out Clanpowell, a whole host of things to try there!

And perhaps you could use it as shampoo, people use beer!

[lydneyian]

Andy - having learned a lot over the last month or so - I take it that the cloudyness is basically the yeast and when it stops fermenting it will clear - does this mean that you should bottle the wine before it clears otherwise the yeast will not be alive for the second fermentation?????

Ian

[Andy Hamilton]

Sounds like you need to get a hydrometer that is the best way of mesauring they are quite cheap from a homebrew shop and I think invaluable. Get the same reading for two-three days after moving your fermentables to a warm place and your brew has fermented.

It should clear in time, have patience!

[lydneyian]

Having just started a second batch - this time using dried flowers (and more of them I think) also giving the yeast more time in a little sugared water b4 adding to the must and the room being 3 degrees warmer - I may have just seen what the initial violent fermentation SHOULD of looked like :-)

PS Im gonna get a hydrometer

[lydneyian]

Oh dear - strained to demijohn and added the sugar solution last night - woke up this morning - no bubbles :-( whats happened?

[lydneyian]

Actually - panic over - bottled into plastc bottles - will leave for 5 or 6 days and then transfer into Champagne bottle with a half teaspoon of sugar - unless anyone thinks thats a bad idea

[Hedgerow hoarder]

I have a cloudy dj bubbling away at the moment but wanted to know the importance of turning the bottle upside down over the course of a month or two? This seems strange as my bottles will end upside down!

[MKG]

Hmmm - I did wonder about Andy including this bit. It's called disgorgement and it takes a LOT of experience. Basically, the gradual turning upside down (and occasional twists of the bottle) puts all of the sediment into the neck of the bottle. The tip of the neck (and ONLY the tip) is then frozen and the bottle is opened. The pressure of the unfrozen wine forces the ice plug, complete with sediment, out of the bottle. Traditionally, a little more sugar is added at that point, the bottle is resealed and allowed to build up yet more bubbles. The only way for a home winemaker to freeze the tips of the necks is to use a salt and crushed ice mixture, which seems a bit of a mess-about to me.

My feeling is that if you are not used to doing this, you're going to lose a lot of the wine as it spurts out after the ice plug has cleared. If you don't do it (i.e. leave the bottles upright until drinking time), the sediment in the bottom is going to be lifted when the pressure is released on opening, giving you a slightly cloudy wine. Funnily enough, the REALLY traditional champagne is slightly cloudy - I wonder why?

Mike

[Hedgerow hoarder]

Very interesting , so it a total professional approach! I think I will keep it traditional and have a cloudy bottle of bubbles thanks ever so much.

[malcolmfraser]

ARGH! just found some dead flies in my 2 gallon brew bucket...! that's that ruined and me left with only 2 gallons of elderflower wine....

lesson learned - lid AND muslin on the brew bucket from now on...


Oh well - I'll collect meadowsweet whilst that's flowering - it makes a great fizzy wine too.

[MKG]

Don't throw it out yet, Malcolm - they're not necessarily vinegar flies, and the alcohol will have sterilised any little wigglies. Strain them out and add a bit of metabisulphite (Campden tablets), then reserve the wine for immediate drinking. Keep smelling - if you get a whiff of vinegar, stop drinking, but bottle the stuff and allow it to turn into a very nice vinegar.

Mike

[malcolmfraser]

OK - thanks very much for the advice Mike - I'll take a look at it tonight - hopefully it's recoverable.

If not then everyone will get white wine vinegar for christmas this year :)