Winemaking Stage 2: Secondary Fermentation

I most recently wrote about making a new batch of wine for 2014, and as promised, I'm doing my best to blog throughout the entire process. So while this post is actually coming about two weeks after I performed the steps you'll read about below, it's better late than never.

For about 8 days, my Pinot Grigio sat in a bucket and did this:

The bubbles you see in airlock (the little plastic thing) were caused by the gases escaping the liquid during the fermentation process.

I'm learning that hydrometer readings are
very important to the quality of wine.

When I was done with that, it was time to bring out the hydrometer once again for a reading. I was looking or a number below 1.010. I actually had done this a day earlier and it wasn't quite ready. On the second day, the wine registered a 1.009, meaning it was ready to be transferred.

This was the first opportunity I had to check
the wine after I had started it over a week
earlier. The white "froth" on top is very similar
to the foam you'll get from a beer on tap.

Here I was once again using the guest bedroom as my "winery". My setup was pretty simple. All I needed was a tube and some gravity.

Instead of have one 6 gallon carboy, I have two smaller 3-gallon carboys. Transferring the wine from my bucket to these carboys will help with the ultimate purification (and the taste) of the wine. It leaves behind much of the yeast sediment that activated the wine to begin with.

Here is a look at the transfer in motion:

Once the transfer was complete, there wasn't much more to do. All I needed was a place to store it. Since these carboys were much smaller than the bucket, I was able to find room in my closet, where they will stay for 12 days.

The liquid inside these containers can no longer be considered glorified grape juice, but it still cannot be called "wine" either. It will continue to ferment (albeit, not quite as much) while in here. That is why the airlocks will continue to be used.

Stay tuned for Stage 3 of the process!