It's been 5 days... now what?

So it's been five days now, and its time to check the progress of the fermentation. The wine kit suggests that the specific gravity (sg) should be below 1.010. So I clean and sanitize my test jar, wine thief (a fancy name for a tube to get wine out of the bucket), and hydrometer (measures specific gravity).

I withdraw enough samples into the test jar so that the hydrometer has room to float, plop it in there and take a reading... 0.998! That’s far lower than the suggested 1.010. After a bit of thought, it makes sense that fermentation is moving faster than expected. The suggested temperature for fermentation is between 65°F and 75°F. My apartment has been in the 80s for the last several days. This additional heat can become a problem and kill the yeast, depending on the strain used. But it seems that mine are still alive and kickin'!

So its time to move to the next step: racking. This wine making jargon for "transferring from one vessel to another." Since wine can oxidize (the reason why a bottle of red goes bad after 2 or 3 days), racking generally involves siphoning carefully, not pouring.

I lift the fermentation bucket to the counter: move the carboy (think arrowhead bottle, but better) to the floor below, start a siphon and just sit back. After a couple minutes, I have to stick my one of my accounting textbooks under one side, to minimize the amount of sediment that comes with. I knew I kept those books for a reason!




I attach the cork and airlock, and wait 10 more days...