Batch #2 - Apricot Country Wine Part 1

With batch #1 - Black Cherry Pinot Noir, successfully bottled, KT and I moved on to our next kit - Apricot Wine. KT did the primary fermentation by herself while home with the baby, and from the look of it, we're having a lot more success. We have applied many of the lessons learned from the first batch and we're having great results.

She put all of the ingredients into the primary fermenter (plastic bucket) and we placed a napkin under the spigot to soak the minor leakage. We left the plastic cover off and covered it with cheesecloth. The initial SG reading was in the ballpark of 1.09. In 5 days it dropped to the target 1.04. At that point I squeezed the pulp to as dry as possible. A method we decided to try this time was to filter-pour.

I put our straining funnel into the secondary and tipped the primary over. The downside to this is obviously the amount of oxygen exposure and the fact that the bottom of the primary will get caught in the funnel, clogging it. Fortunately, the blockage was not significant and I feel we got nearly all the liquid into the secondary.

Once in the secondary, I added water and corked with the airlock. The yeast is still extremely active - to the point where we are wondering if it can over-ferment. The SG is still dropping rapidly, at 1.03 within 24 hours. The next step is to re-rack at 1.0 and add some K-Meta to slow the fermentation. We then rack again in 3 months and, depending on the taste/SG/etc., can bottle if we choose. If we are going to wait 3 months - there may be no sugar left at all! The color is a lovely yellow, similar to pineapple.