Racked the Black Raspberry Merlot

Well the weekend was to beautiful to spend it inside, but I still had to rack the Black Raspberry Merlot into the carboy.

After sanitizing the equipment, a quick check of the Specific Gravity (SG) showed the wine has fermented quite a bit. The starting SG was 1.048, and the SG before racking was .990 which should yield a very nice wine with decent alcohol content.

Per the instructions on the kit, racking into the secondary fermentor leaving as much of the sediment behind, then let the wine rest for about 7-10 more days. Looking for a stable SG. It has been my experience that if you are brewing your wine at room temperature, and you live in Florida like I do (which means room temp is around 75-80 degrees) then the fermentation goes rather quickly. I have noticed that once in the secondary fermentor almost no fermentation is going on, and it bubbles very little, in fact I haven't seen any bubbles in a day or so.

I will continue with the clearing and fining stage next week. This stage also adds the Black Raspberry syrup to the wine to add the flavor to the wine. From here the wine will begin the clearing stages, and a few weeks later it should be very clear and close to bottling.

Till the next stage, stay tuned for blog about the Mead, which is still fermenting happily along...

Peace!