Elderberry Wine (Part 2)

So... some 18 hours after I added my yeast, I still wasn't sure that my fermentation was up and running. Worried that I might have put my yeast in a touch too early, while the must (that's the word we (you & I) wine-makers use for the stuff that will one day be wine) was still too warm, I sprinkled in another couple of teaspoons of yeast and toddled off to work.

By the time I returned that evening, everything was fizzing away splendidly, and the plastic lid of the bucket was bulging up from the pressure of the carbon dioxide within. I stirred the must that evening & the next evening. The following evening (when the elderberries had been stewing in the water etc for 3 full days (4 might have been better, but I was getting impatient!) I decided to strain the berries etc out of the wine.

Easier said that done: the upshot of my rather greedy decision to go for a 2 gallon batch was that I found myself rather short of suitable containers. In the end I used 2 large stainless steel cooking pots (ideally metal utensils should not be used (as they can react with the acid in the must), but as yet the permissible space allotted to me for storing my wine-making gear won't allow for a surplus of food-grade plastic buckets) into which I strained (jug by jug through a (again metal) sieve) my fizzy blood-red cordial, gently pressing the sieved berries with a ladle each time to extract the excess juice.

I rinsed out the bucket and poured the strained wine back into it. At this point I added the juice of the two oranges as mentioned in my previous post, and the next evening I also added another pint of cooled boiled water into which another pound of sugar had been dissolved (about 2 pints in total). I had um'd and ah'd over this for a whole day: I don't want the finished wine to be too sweet, but I do want it to be strong. Only the end result will tell if I made the right decision. 

Watch this space...

(The reason, by the way, for the extra water is that I wanted enough must to fill 2 demijohns plus a little extra for a about a plastic litre bottle of 'spare', which I can use later to top up the demijohns as necessary).