Racking off the Quince

500D_1850

It was supposed to be tomorrow, but I will be busy all day, so I brought the racking off forward.  I am still not sure I understand about the correct temperature and Wine Making Guides just says “warm”.  I am confused to put the question in the excellent and responsive Home Brew Forum (1st and 2nd fermentation temperatures).

I did learn something today though – that I should “splash” the first racking in to the demijohn:

Splashing the wine into the new jar will encourage some aeration, and some more yeast will grow and this new yeast will feed on any haziness that may still be present… …Only the first racking should be splashed into the new demijohn and additional rackings should be done quietly without splashing.

from Wine Making Guides

500D_1851This made sense to me, but I found it AFTER I had designed and built my “smooth flow” racking funnel that you can see in this picture.  It worked well but I then had to remove the rubber tube so I could splash it in to the next demijohn.

The resulting mixture is the delightful golden colour that cider appears to like.  It already tastes acceptable, so I hope it will improve from there.

The OG was 1,110, and it has come down to 1,070.  Using an Alcohol By Volume (ABV) calculator (there are loads if you google) this gives me an alcohol content of 5.3% so far which is more like cider than wine.  Maybe it needs to be somewhere warmer.

Quince Wine 2013.11

DateSpecific GravityAlcohol Content
4th November 20131,1100%
13th November 20131,0705.3%
27th December 20131,0389.5%
15th February 20141,0359.9%