How long should it take for homemade Red Grape wine to clarify naturally? What colour after fermenting?!
How long should it take for homemade Red Grape wine to clarify naturally? What colour after fermenting?
The secondary fermetation looks like it's just finishing and is ready to be racked for the second time. Been about 22-24 days since starting. I used a Red Wine concentrate but am trying to stay away from Clarifiers if at all possible. Right now the colour is a bluish purple and I tried to shine a flashlight through but can't seen a smidge of light. Do I need to be more patient and how long?
Answers:
Remember, in your fermenter (even if you're using something as small as a gallon jug) contains a lot more volume than a bottle or a glass. Your brew will always appear much darker in the fermenter than in a smaller container. If you want to get a representative view of the color as compared to a commercial wine, a handy trick is to set aside a small amount in a glass when you're racking. Let it siphon out into your sample glass for a few seconds before putting the tube into the large container. This way, you're looking at it as you would another wine so it's not deceptively dark.
Still, with wine, patience is not going to do you wrong. Even so, you still need to taste and test samples each time you rack. You need to check your specific gravity to make sure that the fermentation is progressing. You need to taste it to see if it's to your sweetness/dryness liking (and the sample you set aside to see the color will serve for that purpose, too).
You'll be amazed how clear it looks when it's in a glass as compared to in the fermenter. Compare it to looking at a piece of flat glass. Notice how it's crystal clear looking through the flat side, but when you look through the edge, it's green. The thicker something is that you're looking through, the darker it is due to whatever is in it that contributes color. However, when you have your wine in a glass, you can see the color as it would normally appear. Also, because more light gets through, you can tell better if there's any sediment that still needs to settle, or if it's clear enough to bottle.