Tips

Wine Making Kits, Turbo, Beer - Tips

Beer

Turbo yeast

Essences

Wine making kits, beer-making - this is the universal tool - check fermentation, alcohol and use it when sweetening your wine.

The Hydrometer

Home made wines: How to check alcohol - the quick and simple method. Does NOT work on beer kits, homemade liqueurs or for home distilling.

Wine Alcohol Meter

Wine Fining Problems?

Here's what to do when your homemade brew doesn't clear. The tips on clearing also applies to your turbo yeast brew.

Read more here.

Fermentation Problems?

If your fermentation doesn't start or seems to go on forever. Applies to both homebrew wine kits and turbo yeast fermentations.

Read more here.

The Hydrometer

This is the universal instrument for home brewing. It is definitely a must-have for all beer- and wine makers

How to use your hydrometer

Calibrate your hydrometer

Understanding your hydrometer

Useful formulas - the short version

Use your hydrometer to:

Check if fermentation has started

Check if fermentation is over

Sweeten your wine

Calculate alcohol content

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Wine making kits only (not beer, turbo): The Wine Alcohol Meter

Fill wine into the funnel until it drips out through the pipe.

Wine alcohol meter

Turn meter upside down, take a reading when the movement has stopped.

This is a very simple way to check the alcohol content of your wine but remember - it is very approximate and you need to know how it works to avoid the common pitfalls.

	It works on (still) wine only, not beer or spirit.
	It will only work if there is no CO2 left.
	It will only work if wine is 8-13% or so.

The wine alcohol meter uses the capillary effect in the liquid to determine the alcohol. This will only work on "normal" strength wines. Unfortunately most meters are graduated between 0-25% but the error outside 8-13% is too large, it simply doesn't work there.

Trick: If you have a very strong wine, dilute it with equal amount of water, then take a reading. If reading ends up inside the interval 8-13% you know you can trust it and in reality it is twice as high.

The best way of using it is actually to dilute your wine and take readings until you get approximately 10%. Then determine the strength from your dilution factor.

It is very important that you have no CO2 left. The carbon dioxide changes the surface tension of the liquid and you will get a completely wrong value. A simple method if you have a still unstable wine is to take a small sample, shake out all CO2, pour it on a saucer and leave it in the fridge overnight. This will usually stabilise it and get rid of most CO2. Another method is to boil sample in the microwave for one minute, then add back water to make up for the loss during boiling. This is a bit difficult though so for household use the fridge method is best.

Remember: This meter will only work on normal wines. If you check a liqueur, a sweet dessert wine or similar it will give you anything but the right value.

Experiment: Take normal tap water. Add a drop of washing up liquid. Then check your alcohol content. As you probably realise, you have not invented a clever way to produce alcohol. What happens is that the washing up liquid lowers the surface tension of the water so it "hangs" at a lower level when you turn your meter upside down. You will encounter similar effects - up or down - with liqueurs (because of an excessive amount of sugar present) or spirits (because of an excessive amount of alcohol present).