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@nickyspaghetti
So I have eventually got my elderberry wine working!
I picked 4 kilos of berries last weekend and was determined to make wine until I realised that in Poland they have a different idea on what is necessary to make wine. Nowhere can I find sterilising powder - Not with the homebrew equipment, not in the cleaning sections not even in the baby section. I also cannot find any additives except for yeast and nutrient. Strange considering that they have a fantiastic array of demijohns, testing equipment, labels, shrink caps, even some still parts.
So, returning from the shop with a wholly unacceptable quantity of equipment I started.
So how do you sterilise a 25L bottle with no powder. Boiling water is not such a good idea and it won't fit into the oven so (CRINGE) I poured a bit of bleach (yup, pine scented. Apparently you can't buy plain old bleach any more) into the bottle and filled it with water. After about 3 hours of rinsing I filled it up with my beautiful berry sugar mixture. About 18L.
Monday morning I pitched the yeast and waited.......nothing.
I put it down to dead yeast(Summer is scorching here, sometimes 40 degrees) and so I went and chose a different yeast, dried instead of the solution in the hope that it would help. I also checked the specific gravity to check that the sugar wasn't inhibiting the yeast. It was borderline but I left it.
So I mix up a new batch of yeast and check it is thoroughly fermenting before pitching it.
Nothing.
So after a lot of checking recipes I figured that the one thing missing from the recipe I was using that was in most of the others was citric acid and that the problem could only be that or the sugar level. The homebrew section of the shops here has no citric acid.
So a beg my wife to visit the supermarket on her way home and buy me 5 lemons.
In went the juice last night.
I woke up this morning to that wonderful sound - bloop, bloop. There it was bubbling away.
I knew that citric acid helped the yeast but I didn't realise that the must could be so alkaline that it prevents ALL activity. So that is one more thing I have learnt about brewing.
Has anybody tried to fortify elderberry wine by throwing in some brandy or spirit before fermentation has finished? Did it work? I am tempted to try it with a small amount.