Monday, November 16, 2009

Rack That!

Funny term: to rack wine is simply to siphon or slowly pour off the winebrew from the solid sediments on the bottom. I racked my mead the other day.

Ok, like I said it's simply removing the solids from the liquids - easy peasy right. Something I did a bajillion times with great success in laboratories. Ugh, racking the mead was a learning experience.

Firstly, the brew shop STILL had not 1 gallon glass jugs. So what was I going to rack into for the secondary fermentation?...I pickle bucket would be too big, but other containers didnt' have a proper top to put the air-lock onto.

Well it just so happened, my husband, for whatever strange reason, bought a big plastic economy container of cheap cheesy puffs. I threw them all away and cleaned and sanitized the container. I Cut a hole in the plastic top to fit my air-lock and wallah!

Next problem was my siphon. I bought some fancy -shmancy siphon rod from the brew shop. The concept is simple enough, but my little one gallon jug just didn't have the head pressure to make the thing work. So, I just used the nice teflon attachment hose and bravely primed it by sucking up the mead (it's tasting pretty good). I wasn't able to get about the last 1 1/2 inches of liquid off the sediments with the siphon, so I slowly poured it off. The glass jug worked really well for this as the shape makes a natural sediment trap. I think I may just use the pouring technique for now on if I'm just making a jugful of something. All my careful sanitizing and planning went down the tube, literally, when I actually had to do this step. But it's done and it looks happy. I'm a bit bummed at how much I lost to the racking process. I guess this is why people do bigger batches. I'll maybe have two bottles when all is said and done.

I also picked up all my stuff for cranberry wine (except the cranberries). I think it will be next weekend's project.

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