The nettle wine has been quiet for a few days now. It’s spent three weeks in the fermenter and for most of that time it’s been bubbling away like a little geyser, but since the weekend it’s been suspiciously quiet.

So, time to test it. I dug out the hydrometer, poured some of the wine mixture into a measuring tube and dropped it in. As I suspected, the specific gravity reading was below 1.000, so it was ready for the next stage.

You can only know this for sure with a hydrometer, which is an essential piece of brewing kit, whether you’re making wine or beer. The idea is very simple: you float it in a tall, narrow tube of brew and read off the scale where the liquid reaches when it comes to rest.

Using the hydrometer to test the nettle wine

At this stage we could start bottling it, but after some of our plum wine got contaminated with sediment I’ve decided to rack it off twice before bottling, leaving it to settle for a couple of weeks between each one. That meant getting out the syphon and a second fermenter into which it could drain and setting them up on the outhouse steps to get a good differential between them. I don’t know why I didn’t think of doing that before – it’s much less hassle than balancing them on boxes or chairs like I always have in the past.

Anyhow, after running it through the syphon we ended up with three and a half gallons in the second fermenter and a lot of smelly sludge in the first. It was clearly a good thing to have done.

Now it just needs to sit for a few more weeks while it settles, although as we don’t want it to keep on fermenting I’ve dropped in three and a half crushed campden tablets – one per gallon – and stirred them in.

Campden tablets

Nettle wine is a bit of an experiment for us, but so far it seems to be going well. Fingers crossed it continues.

Related posts:

1. We bottle the nettle wine
2. Making our first batch of nettle wine
3. Bottling the plum wine