I had off yesterday for President’s Day, which I used to take care of two important things, my house and my booze. First up was the house, following my win against the termites, I applied two coats of Drylock to my previously untreated walls, refreshing the general area. That being completed for the day, and I a beer or two in, I switched gears to the booze. After all, I did have to let the paint cure! One of the biggest pains for me is where to put fluids as I’m transferring them. There are beer buckets, and carboys of wine and potassium metabisulfite, it’s always a process to rack or move something. So I finally broke down and purchased a spigot for some of the empty juice buckets, drilled the hole, and verified that it doesn’t leak. This should make things much easier/faster. In addition, I treated myself to an auto-siphon, picked up two gallon jugs for some test batches of fruit wines, and who knows what. After the tortuous process of peeling the labels off of what seemed like a billion bottles (or just over a case), I started to sterilize everything.   Next I racked the Syrah into a bucket, cleaned the carboy, put the wine back in, then added some chitosan for clarity. Just to note, I previously added a bit of potassium sorbate as well as MBS to kill off some fermentation and avoid fizzyness. After that, I decided to bottle the batch of Bavarian Wheat I’ve had going. I’m a bit nervous about it, I left it in the primary bucket for 21 days, it was COLD down there, and I think it needed a bit more time. It smelled great, can’t wait to taste it.  I also, started up a 1 gallon batch of “White grape raspberry wine” and some “Ginger Beer”.
Feb222011