Racking the Plum Wine

It had been 3 weeks since I got the plum wine going, and the bubbles had completely stopped going through the airlock for at least a few days, so last Sunday (18th May) I decided it was time to get it racked into another demijohn and get it clearing.

The instructions for this wine do not mentioning racking, but given a lot of the sediment has already dropped out of the wine, and the next step involves shaking up the contents, it seems to make sense. I therefore sanitised the syphon, and spare demijohn, airlock and gromit. I added the contents of the stabiliser sachet to the empty demijohn, before syphoning the wine into it, once again starting it off with a quick suck.

Once all the wine had transferred, I added the sachet of plum flavouring, and the wine finings. I placed a gromit in the demijohn and shook it vigorously with my thumb over the hole, and then removed my thumb to release the pressure. I repeated this for a number of minutes until little pressure was building up. I then placed the airlock in the gromit and returned the wine to 'The Brewery', with the intention of shaking up the contents regularly over the next 24 hours.