Better Wine Through Hard Choices
Posted in troubleshooting on Feb 22nd, 2010
You can drink better wine and have more fun making it by cutting your losses on wine that will never make the cut. Here’s how.
Category Archive for 'troubleshooting'
Mulled Wine
Posted in Recipes, tasting, troubleshooting on Dec 3rd, 2009
Mulled wine: just the thing on a cold night, a Christmas tradition, and just possibly a way to rescue my wine from store-bought grapes. Here’s how I plan to make it.
Difficult Acidity Problems
Posted in troubleshooting on Feb 23rd, 2009
Because titratable acidity (TA) and pH both measure acidity, they tend to move together. Higher TA usually means lower pH and vice versa. Sometimes that relationship breaks down, and that can drive winemakers and meadmakers crazy.
How are pH and titratable acidity different?
TA [...]
Hot Pressing In A Cool Climate
Posted in enology, troubleshooting, winemaking on Oct 9th, 2007
Great news for fungi, bad news for grapes
The cool climate, here in the Puget Sound Region, keeps growers on the edge. We want to grow noble varieties like Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, which will ripen here but just barely. We also want reliable grapes that ripen even in bad years like this one. Grapes like [...]
Why I Make Dry Wine
Posted in enology, troubleshooting, winemaking on Sep 26th, 2007
I make wine out of many different fruits and vegetables – from raspberries to rhubarb and all sorts of things in between. That makes for a lot of trial and error as I learn how to consistently make a good wine using very different bases. Many traditional country wine recipes call for a small amount [...]
Rescuing A Bad Wine On Short Notice
Posted in tasting, troubleshooting on Sep 24th, 2007
When bad wine happens to good dinners
You’ve doted over the yeast, you’ve clarified and stabilized your wine, you’ve set it aside to age, and now you pop the cork. It looks great – nice and clear with great legs (we’re still talking about the wine) as you swirl it around in your glass. Maybe you [...]
Oregano Wine Recipe: restarting a stuck fermentation
Posted in enology, herb wine, troubleshooting on Jul 25th, 2007
I tested a sample of my oregano wine yesterday. The specific gravity is 1.053 and the pH is 2.62. These results are virtually unchanged from 7/13/07 when I first noticed the pH crash that stopped the yeast in their tracks. I’ll try to get them going again by neutralizing some of the acid, raising the [...]