Day 9: Peach sponge and the big mess.

9 days after the initial peachy process, I got on with the winemaking (this time without Jonee. He's on holiday or something). What follows is a record of the day's events.

I extracted the peachy gloop from under the stairs, and opened her up. What I found was not pretty, but it was interesting. The mixture had settled, leaving a thick layer of mousse-like sediment on the top, with the liquid underneath. You can sort of see what I mean in this picture.

The benefit of the solid layer was that it was pretty easy to scoop out the suspicious-looking bits. Nothing was too suspect, but there were a couple of slightly discoloured patches I thought we'd be better off without, so they went in the bin. I'm sure it's fine. I gave it a good stirring, so you can't tell there was anything wrong.

I decanted the 10 litres of mixture into 4 pans - turns out I had just enough room - and proceeded to boil it all up to kill any cheeky yeasts and bacteria that had worked their way in. If you find yourself doing this, make sure there's enough room in the pans. I made quite a mess when the stuff started to boil over.



It worked out well though, as I had enough wine yeast for 9 litres of wine, and I reckon I lost about a litre to evaporation and over-enthusiastic stirring. I waited a few hours for the mixture to cool, popped the yeast in and put it back under the stairs. Job done.

Sam x