Category Archives: winemaking

Racking, Topping Up, And No More Headspace

Leave a reply

Maybe getting caught short, when I racked my mead the other day, was a blessing in disguise. Having half a gallon of mead in a 1-gallon jug, with all that head space threatening to oxidize it, motivated me to rack four other 1-gallon batches. Some of these had been sitting on lees longer than I would like, and it felt really good to look at them, bright and clear with no sediment, in their new containers.

Looks great, smells great, but tastes bland

My Produce Department Chablis is coming along nicely. The aroma is terrific, and it’s bright and clear with the color of a great rose. That’s why the taste is so disappointing. It’s not that there’s an off taste or flaw, but that there’s not much flavor at all. It’s way too early to give up on it, so I’ll put it back in the wine closet and give it some time.

Specific Gravity: 0.990, pH: 3.60, Titratable Acidity: 6 g/L

Oregano Wine: A good first impression

It’s clear, almost colorless, without much aroma, but it’s got a nice flavor. So what does oregano wine taste like? It’s early yet, but it doesn’t taste of oregano. In fact, it reminds me a little of rhubarb wine. Anyway, this is my first oregano wine, and so far, so good!

SG: 0.990, pH: 3.80, TA: 5.5 g/L

The recipe I’m using calls for 3 tsp acid. So far, I’ve added 1 tsp and neutralized some of that to restart a stuck fermentation. So I added another tsp (about 4.9 grams) of tartaric acid. That ought to raise the TA to 6.8 g/L.

Speaking of rhubarb …

I make rhubarb wine every year, from my backyard rhubarb patch, and this is last year’s vintage. I like to let rhubarb wine age for two years, and it can improve for five or more years, but this one is pretty good now.

SG: 0.991, pH: 3.41, TA: 7 g/L

Apple Mead: Last but not least

When I made apple wine this year, I used a juicer on the apples and fermented the juice. Last year, I chopped up the apples and used dry sugar extraction to get the juice out. That means I cut up the apples and put them in a bucket. I covered them with sugar, which “pulled” the moisture out of the apples, and I fermented that. I used the spent apples to make a mead by pouring a honey water mixture over them and pitching yeast. It had a lot of sediment, and I really should have racked earlier. But it’s no worse for the wear, and I’m looking forward to bottling it.

SG: 0.996, pH: 3.33, TA: 6 g/L

Do things happen for a reason? Yes, but sometimes the reason is bad planning

Maybe it’s a good thing I didn’t rack these when I should have. After all, I had a way to use up some of the mead that was half-filling that 1-gallon jug. Or, maybe it was a good thing I didn’t have a half-gallon jug when I racked the mead because that nudged me to rack these wines. Sometimes good intentions are all you need to get you where you want to go. Sometimes they need a little help.



Simple Homemade Sanitizer

1 Reply

One constant in the din of conflicting advice about winemaking is the importance of sanitizing your equipment. It’s so thoroughly agreed upon and so often mentioned, “sanitize all your equipment then …” that its rarely discussed. If you’re just starting out, how do you know what to use? Homebrewers transitioning to winemaking might be tempted to use bleach.

Don’t use bleach

This isn’t a good idea, because bleach can sometimes give way to “cork taint.” You’ll know it as an off odor and people will talk about it in different ways. If someone is says a wine is “corked,” or talks about TCA or 2,4,6-trichloroanisole they’re talking about a fault in wine that can be traced back to bad natural cork (or bleach!).

DIY Sanitizer for Winemaking

You can’t go wrong by buying a commercial sanitizer like star san or idophor, but I make my own out of citric acid and potassium metabisulfite (K2S2O5). It’s simple, cheap, and effective. Just dissolve three tablespoons (about 45 ml) of citric acid and three tablespoons K2S2O5 in one gallon of water. It gives off a very strong odor so only do it in a well ventilated area (and if you’re allergic to sulfite, go with a commercial product).

This recipe is from Daniel Pambianchi’s Techniques in Home Winemaking, a great book on making wine from grapes. He advises keeping it for only a few weeks because it becomes less effective over time. I believe the use of citric acid, which is optional and enhances the K2S2O5, and a long contact time of 15 minutes can extend it’s useful life to as much as six months.

To use, immerse tubing, stoppers, airlocks, or whatever you want to sanitize for 15 minutes. Pour the unused sanitizer back into the glass jug and keep it tightly stoppered. Discard after six months.

Adding sulfite to your wine

This solution is great when you want to sanitize your winemaking equipment with sulfite, but not for adding sulfite to wine. You need a different concentration for that. See this post on measuring sulfite for winemaking additions.



Racking, Topping Up, And That Extra Little Bit

Leave a reply

When I rack a wine or mead, I try to have empty containers of various sizes ready. The idea is to end up with the smallest number of full containers and the least amount of waste. I use 1-gallon jugs, half-gallon jugs, wine bottles (half, standard, and magnum), beer bottles, and even 8 oz (240 ml) coke bottles. That usually works out pretty well, but I was caught short when I racked my mead the other day.


A 1-gallon jug half-filled with mead.


All that headspace is dangerous, and I really could’ve used a half-gallon jug. What can you do when you just don’t have the right sized containers handy? First I reached for the sulfite. I normally go by the rule of thumb of adding a 1-campden-tablet equivalent every other time I rack. If I added sulfite at the first racking, for example, I would skip it the second time. This was one of the times I skipped the sulfite, so the 5-gallon carboy with the oak did not get any. But I sulfited this 1-gallon jug, and at double the normal rate. That doesn’t make it ok, but it might buy me a little time. Part 2 of my plan is to rack other wines and meads in the next day or two and combine this mead with them. I might use it to top some of them up, or combine extras from many different batches, including this one, into one container.

So work with what you have, but then put a “plan B” into action right away.

Apple Wine Recipe

60 Replies

I got my start in winemaking by fermenting apple juice. I bought 1-gallon glass jugs, filled with juice, for less than homebrew shops were selling them empty. This got me a collection of small secondary fermenters and some nice dry white wine. I still make apple wine, almost every year, from my own apple trees and store bought juice. The apple juice will be low in acid and fermentable sugar, so I’ll have to add both. I’m using honey as my sugar source this year, but ordinary table sugar works too.

Apples on a kitchen scale reading just over 4 lb and Trader Joe's Gravenstein apple juice. The main ingredients of my apple wine.

Ingredients

4 lb 1.5 oz Liberty & Akane apples
1 Gallon Trader Joe’s Graventein Apple Juice
0.5 tsp tanninTannin is optional, but no more than 0.25 tsp/gallon
honey to SG 1.090
acid to 6-7 g/L in the finished wine
sulfite to 50 ppm (equivalent to 1 campden tablet)
1 tsp pectic enzyme
Premier Cuvee yeast from starter

Procedure

Since the Gravenstein juice is pasteurized, there’s no threat from microorganisms. So I’ll chop & juice the apples and add all the sulfite to this juice, where it’s needed most. I’ll add the pectic enzyme to the Gravenstein juice, combine them, and measure the SG, pH, & TA. I’ll raise the SG to 1.090 by adding honey.

Juice from 4 lb of apples fills a plastic measuring cup to the 4-cup line.

Here’s where the juicer that I used making my Produce Department Chablis came in handy. It made short work of the 4 lb of apples I threw at it. It does clog often, but it’s so much better than the other methods I’ve tried (sugar extraction, blender, mill & press without an actual mill or press, chop & toss in the fermenter).

Measure sugar & acid and add the honey

The apples yielded 1 quart (just under 1 liter) of juice. Adding it to the one gallon of Trader Joes juice gave me 1.25 gallons. This combined juice had an SG of 1.050, a pH of 3.52, and a TA of 5.5 g/L. Added a cup of this juice to the 2 cups of starter (Niagra juice with Premier Cuvee yeast that I used to start the Merlot and Chardonnay).

Honey, with 18% water, has an SG of 1.417. Converting my 1.25 gallons to metric measures, I have 4.7312L of 1.050 must. Adding 0.5785L honey will yield 5.31L of SG 1.090 must. I’ll round and call it 0.6L honey.

I’ll wait to add the acid

My 4.7L of juice had 5.5 g/L of titratable acidity, or about 26 grams of acid in total. Adding 0.6L of honey brought the total volume to 5.3L. A typical white wine must would have about 8 g/L, so my 5.3L ought to have about 42 grams of acid. Assuming no contribution from the honey, I would need to add about 16 grams of acid to reach my goal. I think I’ll wait for it to ferment out, take another reading and adjust the acid then. Acidity often drops during fermentation, and I’ll aim for 6-7 g/L, as tartaric, in the finished wine.

Other apple wine recipes

Growing your own apples gives you more control (you pick the varietal, decide when to harvest, and so on). Here’s an apple wine recipe using 100% home grown apples!

On the other hand, making wine from store-bought juice is quicker and easier. Much quicker and easier. So if you’re just starting out or you just want great apple wine with less work and cleanup, try my apple wine recipe from store-bought juice.

Have It Your Way

Leave a reply

One of the things I enjoy about being a wine maker is out of the box wine making. For example, most Riesling is sweet, and even “dry” Riesling often has residual sugar. It’s an acidic grape, and winemakers will tell you that they add just enough sugar to balance that acidity. The idea is to soften the acidity while leaving the wine “tasting dry.” This can improve some acidic wines, and I intend to do something like that with my cherry wine.

Could there be a Riesling that isn’t sweet? What would that be like? I boldly decided to find out. While processing the Riesling, I was determined to not cover it’s taste with a lot of sugar. I even had a tasting party when the wine was young. The idea was that my guests would sample four bottles of the Riesling with varying amount of sugar and comment on the sugar-acid balance. We had a blast and I appreciated the input but even then I went my own way.

I bottled the Riesling dry, with no residual sugar, and last weekend I put my hard work to the test. We had some friends, Ralph and Ruth, over for dinner. I served up my Sauvignon Blanc and the Riesling. I’m always interested to hear what people think of my wines but I was especially interested to hear what they thought of the Riesling. They liked it. In fact Ruth admitted she ordinarily doesn’t drink Riesling, “because I don’t like sweet wines.”

This is so common that it can be hard to find a truly dry Riesling. One nice thing about making my own wine is that I can make it just the way I like it. I made it dry and I’m glad I did.

Update 4/19/2010 – Taste blind to judge your creations objectively

The hope and excitement that go into these experiments create a lot of mental baggage, which can make it difficult to see past your own preconceptions and taste the wine objectively. But objective feedback is critical to knowing if you’re on the right track or you need to make adjustments in your wine making. Tasting blind is a great solution, and here’s a quick and easy way to do your own blind tasting at home.

Pressing Merlot

2 Replies

When to press red wine

When making red wine from grapes, you crush the grapes then ferment them. You leave the skins and pulp in the fermenting wine, for a time, then you press it and leave the solids behind. The amount of time will vary according to the style of wine you’re making. Three or four days, will yield a light bodied wine. A few weeks will yield a tannic, full bodied wine. A good full bodied wine requires top notch fruit, and since I don’t have detailed information on how my grapes were grown I decided to make a medium bodied wine, and pressed after a week.


Pressing Merlot in a bladder press on 10/20/07


Here you can see the bladder press I used to press my Merlot.

Using a bladder press

I loaded the fermenting wine, pulp skins and all, into a perforated cylinder. At first, “free run wine” flowed out of the perforations, leaving seeds, pulp and other debris behind. Later, I applied water pressure to inflate a rubber bladder that squeezed the grapes against the sides of the cylinder and “press wine” flowed out. Altogether, I got over eight gallons (30+ liters), which is more than I expected from my 100 lb (45+ kg) of grapes. I was going by the rule of thumb that 100 lb would yield 5 gallons (about 19 liters).


Pressed Merlot in 5-gallon carboys, press wine in the carboy with the orange handle and free run in the carboy on the right. 10/20/07


I kept the free run and press wine separate. The carboy on the left, with the orange handle, contains press wine, while the carboy on the right contains free run. It’s still fermenting, and I expect it to finish in another week. Once it starts to clear, I’ll rack into fresh containers for aging. At that point, I’ll have to decide if I want to keep the press and free run separate or combine them.

Fermenting Chardonnay

Leave a reply

The Chardonnay is fermenting in two carboys, pictured below. The one on the left contains the press juice and the one on the right contains free run.


Two carboys of fermenting Chardonnay, press juice at left and free run on the right, on 10/17/07


The free run juice contained a lot more sediment than the press juice, and the yeast had a quicker start in the free run. I’ll leave the wine in carboys until it has fermented out, then I’ll measure, taste, and rack. Based on the measurements and taste, I’ll decide to keep them separate or combine them. It may not be necessary, but I like to agitate them once a day to keep them well mixed while they are fermenting.

Merlot: Punching Down The Cap

Leave a reply

When making red wine from grapes, you will be fermenting crushed fruit. So the skins, seeds, pulp, probably some stems and other debris are all mixed into your fermenting wine. When the yeast are active, all the carbon dioxide (CO2) they produce is rising to the surface pushing those solids up with it. They collect on the surface, forming a cap. The whole point of putting grape skins in your must is to extract beneficial compounds from them, and this can’t happen while they’re out of contact with the fermenting wine. Also, yeast have no access to these solids and can’t crowd out other microorganisms, leaving the cap open to infection.


Using a long handled spoon to punch down the cap of this fermenting Merlot wine on 10/17/07


You can see the solution in the above photo, where I’m physically submerging these solids with a long handled spoon. I keep doing this until all the solids have been pushed down into the fermenting wine. “Punch down the cap” like this twice a day, while the yeast are active, and you should have no problems with extraction or infection.

Pumpkin Wine Recipe For Halloween

32 Replies

How much pumpkin and acid?

This isn’t a common wine to make, even for a country wine, but I did find some recipes. Every single one of them agreed on using 5 lb/Gallon (600 g/L) of pumpkin, but they were very different in the amount of acid and sugar. I think it makes sense to use the 5 lb/Gallon of pumpkin, but aim for the acid and alcohol profile of a white wine. That means aiming for a specific gravity of 1.090 and a titratable acidity of 7-9 g/L. Adjusting the acidity will be pretty easy. After preparing the must, titrate a sample to get the TA, then add enough acid to bring it into the desired range. I can’t do the same thing with the sugar, though, because I’ll have to add so much of it. The 2-3 lb/Gallon (250 – 350 g/L) I expect to add, and the 2-3 cups/Gallon (125 – 200 ml/L) of water to dissolve it in, will increase the volume of must by 40 – 55%.

How much sugar?

That means I need to work backward from the total amount of sugar I want in the must. An SG of 1.090 implies 2 lb 6 oz of sugar per Gallon (284 g/L) of must. So if I knew how much sugar was in 5 lb of pumpkin flesh, I would subtract it from the total. How much sugar is in pumpkin flesh? On average about 4 – 6% by weight, so our 5 lb would contain about 3.2 – 4.8 oz (90 – 135 g) of sugar – lets call it 4 oz (110 g). Mashing the pumpkin will probably double that to 8 oz. That’s low enough that we could ignore the pumpkin’s contribution and still get pretty close, but now that we know let’s take that into account. For every gallon (3.785 L) of must, we’ll need 1 lb 14 oz (850 g) of sugar.

Putting it all together

In order to get a gallon of finished wine, I like to make my “1-gallon batches” anywhere between 1.25 and 1.5 gallons. You’ve heard of a “bakers dozen?” Think of this a the “winemaker’s gallon.” For 1.25 gallons (4.7 liters) of must, we’ll need 6.25 lb (2.8 kg) pumpkin flesh and 2 lb 6 oz (1075 grams) of sugar.

Ingredients

6.25 lb (2.8 kg) pumpkin flesh
2 lb 6 oz (1.075 kg) sugar
tartaric acid to 8 g/L
2 tsp (10 grams) DAP
0.25 tsp (0.6 grams) tannin
1.25 tsp amylase enzyme
1.25 tsp pectic enzyme
sulfite to 50 ppm (equivalent to 1 campden tablet)
Premier Cuvee yeast

Procedure

Remove the seeds from a pumpkin and peel it to get the flesh. Grate the flesh and bake at 350F (177C) for 30 minutes. Transfer to a pot and add amylase enzyme and enough water to cover. Heat to 150F (66C) and hold for 30 minutes.

While the pumpkin is baking/mashing, dissolve sugar in about a quart or a liter of water. Boil, then cool.

Strain the mash into your primary fermenter, add the sugar-water, then add cool enough water to bring it up to 1.25 gallons (4.7 liters). Add sulfite equivalent to one campden tablet.

When the must has cooled to about 70F (21C) or cooler, draw off a sample for testing. Measure the specific gravity (SG), the pH, and the titratable acidity (TA). Make a note of the SG.

Since we’re targeting a TA of 8 g/L, subtract the TA you measure from 8. Then multiply that number by the volume of must, in liters – 4.7 in this case. That will give you the amount of tartaric acid, in grams, to add to the must. There are about 5 grams of tartaric acid in a teaspoon, so you can divide the grams of tartaric acid by 5 to get the number of teaspoons. For example, if the TA is 2 g/L, then you would subtract 2 from 8 and get 6 g/L. Multiply this by 4.7L to get 28.2 g. Divide that by 5 g/tsp to get 5.64 teaspoons. I don’t know about you, but I don’t have a “0.64 tsp” measuring spoon, so we can round that to 5.5 tsp.

Thoroughly dissolve the tartaric acid, pectic enzyme, tannin, and DAP in a little water and add it to the must. Measure and record the pH. The TA should be 8 g/L. Cover and wait three hours for the pectic enzyme to work, then pitch the yeast.

It’s a bit more involved than other wines, but now that you know how, don’t you want to pour some pumpkin wine on Halloween?

Making Wine From Purchased Grapes

2 Replies

Grapes in the crusher and burgers on the grill

The grapes I ordered arrived on Sunday (10/14/07). I brought home a 24-gallon fermenter with 100 lb (45.4 kg) of crushed Merlot grapes and two 5-gallon (19 liter) carboys, each with about three gallons (11+ liters) of Chardonnay juice. The boxed grapes arrived in a truck, and I participated in crushing and pressing them.


Processing Chardonnay grapes in a manual crusher on 10/14/07


I rolled up my sleeves (note to self, next time wear a short sleeved shirt) and got my hands sticky. I switched out catch buckets, scooped crushed grapes out of the crusher, loaded the press, hand cranked the crusher, and poured juice into the carboys – it was exhilarating! I didn’t have to do all that. They were well staffed and would have crushed, scooped, pressed, and poured for me. I like making wine. If I wanted to pay someone else to do it, I could just go to the store and buy some very nice wine. I wasn’t really all that tired after all that, but I was hungry. So I really appreciated the hamburgers and hot dogs they were grilling up on site. It was a nice lunch that turned the whole thing into an event.

Measuring sugar and acid

After I got the crushed Merlot grapes and the Chardonnay juice home, it was time for measurements. For that, I needed a clear sample. I lowered a clean ladle into the Merlot grapes, so that juice slowly flowed into it over the edges. After a few times, I had about a cup (240 ml), which I let settle for an hour. The Chardonnay was in two carboys, free run juice in one and pressed juice in the other. I drew samples, about a cup, from both with a wine thief and let them settle along with the merlot. This is when I added the pectic enzyme.

Settling for an hour isn’t going to produce perfectly clear juice, but a lot of sediment did fall to the bottom and the juice I poured off was a lot clearer than the what I started with. I think the Merlot and the pressed Chardonnay juice were clear enough to get good measurements from. The free-run Chardonnay was too cloudy, even after settling, so I didn’t use that sample.

There Merlot, as I measured it, was at 25 Brix, pH = 3.63, TA = 7 g/L
The grower reported 24 Brix, pH = 3.56, TA = 5.1 g/L

For the Chardonnay, I got 26 Brix, pH = 3.15, TA = 11 g/L
That compares with the grower’s 24.7 Brix, pH = 3.27, TA = 7.7 g/L

In both cases, I saw slightly more sugar than the grower. I think this is because my samples still had a lot of suspended solids in them and that the actual amount of sugar is probably a little less than what the grower reported. I measured higher pH and higher TA in the Merlot. That may mean a higher proportion of malic acid and therefore slightly under ripe grapes. I recorded a higher TA for the Chardonnay too, but my pH reading was lower. So my juice was more acidic, but there was no divergence as there was with the Merlot.

Pitching the yeast

There was nothing in those measurements that bothered me, so after giving the pectic enzyme three hours to do it’s work I pitched the yeast. I used Red Star’s Premier Cuvee, a neutral reliable yeast. I prepared a starter on Friday (10/12/07) by reconsituting a can of frozen grape concentrate. I could have just used sugar and water, as I described in August. By Sunday afternoon, I had 1.5 quarts (1.4 liters) of fermenting grape juice. I gave it a good shake and added about two cups to the Merlot and one cup to each carboy of Chardonnay.

Those yeast were fermenting up a storm the next day. After they do their work, it’ll be time to rack the Chardonnay and press the Merlot. That will mean a trip back to the homebrew shop, to use their press, in about a week.