Homebrew Wednesday #7: Mango Update!

Hey, chums. Remember my Mango Adventure? Since my primary vessel was so sludgy and pulpy and just plain strange looking, I thought it was time to rack the mango-mystery into a secondary vessel and try to get it away from such heavy amounts of particulate matter and try to make it at least look drinkable.

And the pulpy stuff was weird looking, did I mention that?

Anyway, I stripped off the ass-load of tape I put around the stopper to hold it in place and sanitized one of my lengths of tube to use as a siphon. It was weird pushing through that heavy layer of pulp, and the more liquid I siphoned out the smaller the space between the head-pulp and the bottom-of-the-jar pulp got. I racked off nearly three liters of wine and filled the secondary vessel, which is a slighter smaller bottle. I thought that was a pretty good amount considering how much liquid I almost certainly lost to the pulp-raft.

Haha, PULP RAFT!

But, as you can see, there were still a lot of floaty-bits floating around in there and that just wasn't very inviting. Most people aren't so into chewing their drinks (bubble tea excluded), and I had to get more of that crap out of suspension.

So I devised a plan.

Eric had a funnel with a screen in it and I thought I'd use that to strain out all of the chunkiness and be left with three liters of mango-mystery wonder.

Nope.

The sludgy stuff leftover from the primary was so thick it clogged the funnel screen in less than five seconds and there were only the merest drips passing through.

Right. That didn't work. What else did I have that could filter out some or most of the gunk?

I went under the stove and got out a sieve I use as a colander and placed that on top of my regular funnel and then flat out poured the liquid into it and voila! It worked! Loads of goopy mango pulp got caught in the sieve and the liquid that went through was clear enough. Hooray! Success! Victory!

Then I realized I hadn't sanitized my noodle strainer.

Sigh.

But, it's been a few weeks since then and I'm getting ready to bottle the mango-goodness and there have been zero signs of spoilage such as the airlock bubbling again, funky smells, moldy growths, spontaneous combustion, or artificial insemination. I guess I got lucky. Never forget the homebrewer's mantra: Sanitize, sanitize, sanitize!

There does seem to be yet another pulp-raft lurking at the bottom of the vessel, so I'll have to get creative when I put this stuff into bottles to try and keep them as clear as possible. It will be interesting to see how much I can siphon out of there. 

Overall this mango wine has been a rather odd experience, but I'm still excited to see how it actually tastes once it's been bottled and left to sit for a few weeks. I tasted it by accident as I was siphoning the liquid from primary to secondary and I thought it was pretty tasty. But, that was a few weeks ago and I'm hoping that the extra time in secondary and then bottling will make it nice and tasty. We'll see. Fingers crossed!