Washington Winemaker

I’ve written about Olympic Cellars before. They’re the winery being threatened by the United State Olympic Committee for using the word “Olympic” in their name. They also make a cranberry wine. Well the Lady of the House and I have recently tried some of their wine, and the Dungeness Red (a 2004 Lemberger) really stands out. It has enough of a tannic bite, an astringency that tastes a little bitter makes your mouth feel a little dry, to make the wine interesting without being harsh. There’s a complexity to it that makes the first sip a pleasant surprise.


What do I mean by “complexity?” I mean the opposite of some of those simple bland wines that we’ve all had. You know the ones - you taste them, and there’s nothing at all wrong. They’re not to sweet. Not to harsh. They don’t taste bad. But there’s nothing right with them either. They’re one dimensional and boring. Well, when I say the Dungeness Red is complex, I mean the opposite of that.

I’m not trying to be vague and imprecise, I’m just trying to describe the wine without resorting to phrases like, “bright cherry notes and a bit of spice.” Maybe I should just say that it’s a red table wine that’s a cut above the others in it’s price range. If you’re grilling a steak or digging in to pasta, this wine will liven up your meal and is worth much more than the $12 we paid for it.

I’ve been discussing the effects of processing on honey with commenters Eric and Dick Adams. You can check it out for yourself here. Liquid honey that you buy has been processed by the beekeeper and possibly by a packer. Knowing what they do and why can help us understand how it affects our honey and our mead.

Filtering: Why and how

Filtering honey can solve some problems, and which problems you want to solve dictate how you might filter. Honey from the comb can have a lot of debris in it, like wax, propolis (something bees use like cement or caulk), or bits of dead bee. Even the most anti-processing die hards wont be happy to find a dead insect on their toast, so removing them and making honey aesthetically pleasing is a goal shared by almost everyone involved in selling honey. This sort of coarse filtering might be no more sophisticated than a large section of cheesecloth.

Another problem that beekeepers or packers might wish to solve is crystallization. Partially crystallized honey can invite spoilage. As honey crystallizes, it loses moisture to the surrounding honey. If the moisture content of this honey rises above 19% water then some of the wild yeast naturally present in honey will go to work, and you won’t like the result: off flavors and acetic acid. Crystals form when nuclei, like a bit of dust, pollen, or anything of the right size, are available. So, filtering these nuclei can delay or prevent crystallization.

A finer degree of filtering, called ultrafiltration, can produce an even cleaner purer product. Some commercial meaderies use ultrafiltered honey because the resulting mead is drinkable much sooner than mead from ordinary honey.

Heat: Another problem solver

Heating honey liquefies any crystals in it and destroys some potential nuclei for crystallization. Enough heat for enough time (180F for about a minute) can pasteurize honey, killing wild yeasts. A low level of heat can also help honey flow. In fact, a lot of modern bottling equipment requires some heat to operate.

Too much of a good thing?

Anything can be overdone. Some amount of filtration can remove contaminants and improve the honey, but taking this too far can strip out “contaminants” that make honey what it is. How much is too much? I have a hunch, but don’t know for sure, that ultrafiltration goes too far. I’d love to take a batch of honey, ultrafilter part of it, and compare the two. Since I can’t do that, I follow the “no more than necessary” rule. When I buy honey, I don’t want to pay for wax or bits of hive, just honey. That means I want just enough filtration to remove foreign matter, but no more.

The same goes for heat. Beehives get hot in the summer, and so does the honey stored in them. So there’s not much point in insisting that honey not be heated at all. I prefer “raw” honey, which is never heated above 120F. This allows for easy bottling, but doesn’t pasteurize. I can’t say that pasteurization harms the honey, in fact I’ve boiled the honey-water mixture in some of my meads without noticing any ill effects, but I don’t think there’s much benefit.

As I continue this series on honey, I plan to talk about the effects of age and how important “freshness” is. I’ll also take another stab at that always touchy subject of buying honey from beekeepers or packers/wholesalers. You may want to subscribe to this blog. It’s the free and easy way to make sure you don’t miss an article without having to keep checking back manually.

An open bottle of wine and no time to drink it

Julian Shultz at the Oxford Wine Room has endured a lot of friendly, and not so friendly, needling to tell us about freezing wine. Not only can an opened bottle, that would otherwise be ruined by oxidation, be preserved by freezing, it will be improved by freezing. And vigorous shaking. I’m not making this up, and I don’t think he is either. His story starts almost two decades ago, with a particularly good bottle of wine that he couldn’t finish before an overseas trip. In the freezer it went. A month later, he thawed it out and noticed that the wine had stratified. After some energetic shaking, the wine was whole again, and though the color had faded it tasted much better than it did before. He’s since repeated this experiment and now freezes wine regularly. He’s even won over some skeptical friends.

A practical joke? Only one way to find out

I first came across this story by reading it on Jack Keller’s blog. It’s hard for me to imagine anyone interested in making wine or mead at home who hasn’t heard of Mr. Keller, but if you haven’t you should bookmark his site right away. He’s got the largest collection of wine recipes on the internet, and I think of him as the Dean of home wine makers. He tried Mr. Shultz’s freezing method and got the same result. For all his expertise, he’s also got a wry sense of humor (they both do, as a matter of fact), so I’m torn between the trust that he has rightly earned and the very close resemblance of this wine freezing idea to the perfect practical joke. This is one I’m going to have to see to believe.

As I wrote earlier, the USDA’s 2007 honey report had some encouraging news about Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). It also indicated that honey prices were virtually unchanged in 2007. They use something called the “all honey price,” which is a weighted index of different kinds of honey, in different regions, sold through retail and wholesale outlets in the United States. It fell from $1.036/lb, at the end of 2006, to $1.032/lb by the end of 2007. Here’s a table of honey prices that I keep an eye on, and how they changed from the last time I reported on them (August 2007):

Though it’s up a bit from last time, that Miller’s Honey wildflower still looks like a bargain. Costco is a warehouse store in the US that sells honey at near-wholesale prices in near-retail sizes (6 lb or 2.7 kg at my local store). Right now, they sell clover honey at a lower unit price, and in much smaller sizes, than Miller’s Honey. If you live close to one of their stores, you can take advantage of this deal and avoid shipping charges. Dutch Gold is a packer on the east coast that commenter Dick Adams recommended, and I’ll be including their prices going forward.

Better reporting of honey prices

I’d like to make some improvements to my Honey Prices feature. Up to now, I’ve been publishing a report when I buy honey or after some news comes out about honey prices. I’ll make a point of including year-end prices, to make my data more comparable with the USDA’s. I’m also interested in tracking honey prices in other countries. Maybe you can help. Do you know any reliable suppliers of inexpensive bulk honey that post prices on the web in English? How about government reports, again in English, on honey production and prices? I’d love to hear about them so I can track honey prices globally. Please let me know by leaving a comment.

Update 10/6/08 - What a difference seven months make!

My latest price reportindicates surging honey prices of between 6.5% and 38.9%.

My “unprediction” lands close to the mark

Last May, I was trying to make sense of Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) and the effect it might have on honey prices. I started with the annual honey report for 2006 published by the USDA’s National Agricultural Statistical Service. I combined that with what I knew about CCD, like the 25% loss of honeybee colonies, and a little optimism. That led me to a number, there were too many variables to call it a “prediction,” that I thought would be closest to US honey production in 2007. My number was -2.6%, which doesn’t sound all that great, but compared to the talk of honeybee extinction, followed by mankind’s demise three years later, it was positively giddy. The 2007 honey report just came out, and the actual number was -4%. Not a bad “unprediction,” if I do say so myself! Here’s what the rest of the report said:

Honey production down slightly in 2007

Honey production fell in the United States by 4% to 148 million pounds (about 67 million kg), honey stocks held by producers fell 13% to 52.5 million pounds(24 million kg), and the number of producing colonies rose 2% to 2.44 million. A higher number of colonies and lower production imply a lower yield per colony: 60.8 pounds (27.6 kg) compared to 64.7 pounds (29.4 kg) in 2006.

Number of honeybee colonies stable for two years

I’ve been wondering, since last May, if we’d see a large decline in managed honeybee colonies. The NASS report’s answer is very encouraging: After falling 1% in 2006 to 2.39 million, they rose 2% in 2007 to 2.44 million colonies. It’s as though CCD didn’t happen at all! It did happen, of course, and may still be happening right now. But if, in the teeth of CCD, the number of producing colonies remains stable for two years, then I think there’s reason for optimism. Beekeepers might be frantic, and under financial stress, and growers might be panicky, but I think the beekeeping industry is proving to be very resilient. I’m becoming increasingly confident that growers will have uninterrupted access to pollination services and meadmakers, like you and I, will have access to honey at good prices. We may even find that CCD fades away, just like virtually-identical die offs of the past, without us ever discovering the cause.

The Lady of the House has a sweet tooth, so we don’t always see eye to eye when it comes to wine. This sweet rhubarb wine from Lynfred Winery was a big hit with her, but it was also one of the rare sweet wines that was well balanced enough for me - we both loved it!

This wine is different from the dry, aged rhubarb wine that I normally make. Not better or worse, but a very different style. We both liked it, so I’m thinking about making some of my own rhubarb wine in this style. It’s also made me want to make rhubarb wine with no added water.

So the folks at Lynfred made a wine we both like and showed me a new way to make rhubarb wine - great job guys (and gals)! Lynfred is an Illinois winery, so their wines are not widely available here in Washington State. But if it’s available where you live, I highly recommend it.

Tags: nad

I checked the titratable acidity (TA) of my cherry mead the other day, and something didn’t add up. Over six months, three measurements, and two acid additions (totaling 2.6 g/L) the TA fell from 6 to 5.5 g/L.

The most obvious explanation is that I goofed up the titrations. As I added more acid, the TA should have risen, so if the first measurement was accurate, then the second was low by 2.1 g/L (should have read 7.3 instead of 5.2), and the third was low by 3.1 g/L (should have read 8.6 instead of 5.5). I did three titrations that day using the same procedure, with the same chemicals and with the same equipment. I got “good” results from the other two titrations, and by that I mean consistent with my predictions and with past measurements. So maybe this measurement was accurate and the previous two were off.

That would mean the first was too high by 3.1 g/L (should have read 2.9 instead of 6) and the second by 1 g/L (should have read 4.2 instead of 5.2). A 1 g/L error on the second measurement is possible, because I’m measuring the sample and the sodium hydroxide with a syringe that I think is accurate to 0.5 ml, and that would mean only one large anomaly. Everyone makes mistakes, and maybe that just wasn’t my day.

Was the TA really that low? Well, I haven’t got a time machine handy so I can’t redo the test. My wildflower mead, from A Simple Mead Recipe fame, had an initial TA of 3.5 g/L, which isn’t much higher than 2.9, so that fits. Also, that was back when I had started doing titrations, so I might not have had the hang of it yet. I’m chalking this up to one bad measurement - the initial 6 g/L was really about 3.

Mystery solved!

Cherry Mead: The case of the disappearing acid

Suppose you measure 6 g/L titratable acidity (TA), then add about 1.3 g/L of tartaric acid. After you let it sit for a while you’d expect a TA over 7, right? Me too. You certainly wouldn’t expect just a little over 5 (call it 5.2), would you? I didn’t either, but that’s what happened and that wasn’t the end of it. I’m talking about my cherry mead and after that 5.2 measurement, I added another 1.3 g/L of tartaric acid. When I checked again the TA stood at just over 5.5 g/L, not the 6.5 I was expecting. Over the course of six months, my starting TA fell from 6 g/L to 5.5 g/L as I added 2.6 g/L.

What happened? I don’t know, but a look at pH tells me that the additional acid was affecting the mead, even if I wasn’t detecting it in my titrations. While TA went from 6 to 5.2 to 5.5, the pH went from 3.56 to 3.39 to 3.13. I’m going to have to chew on this for a while. Got any theories? I’d love to hear them.

Honey Apple: Promising, but not ready yet

Compared with my cherry mead, the honey apple is a model of consistency. Yesterday’s measurements:

SG: 0.996, pH: 3.56, TA: 7 g/L

were exactly the same as on 11/15/07. This is reassuring and gives me a (false?) sense of precision. It’s not ready to drink yet; tasting it all I could think of was “tart and young.” The Lady of the House would only say that, yes, it was an apple wine or mead but refused to offer anything more. It’s clear with compact sediment, and the numbers look good, so I think I’ll rack without making any adjustments.

Tomato Wine: Young, tart, and bone dry

It tastes just as harsh as you’d expect it to from these numbers:

SG: 0.990, pH: 2.97, TA: 9- g/L

In addition to being tart, there is an unusual flavor that I wouldn’t recognize if I didn’t know I was drinking tomato wine. I’m not sure whether I like this tomato flavor or not - its hard to get past the harshness of this wine. The Lady of the House knew it was the tomato wine, even though I didn’t tell her. She made a face and said it was young and that there was “an acid thing” going on. This one needs some more time, and I need to neutralize some of the acid.

So, I’ve got a mystery to solve, some acid to neutralize, and some mead to rack. Time to hit the “save” button.

How to use chocolate in wine

Should chocolate be the main ingredient in the wine? Put another way, should everything else in the wine be there just to make sure there is enough alcohol, sugar, and acid for the wine to be … well a wine? That’s how I made my oregano wine, and it looks promising. In that recipe I made an herb tea from my fresh oregano, added enough sugar for 12% alcohol, and fermented. Later I added acid to balance. If I took that approach with chocolate, I’d prepare a must with cocoa, extract or whatever form of chocolate I decided on, add sugar, ferment and add acid. I’m trying to imagine what that would be like, and I just can’t. That may be reason enough to try a “just chocolate” wine, but there is another way.

I could make another wine, that I think would take well to chocolate, and use chocolate as another ingredient or additive. It might be a bit like adding oak chips, and I’ll refer to this style as “chocolate flavored wine”. What sort of wines would work with this method? Since I’ve never done it before, I don’t know for sure, but raspberry, cherry, and blueberry come to mind. An ordinary, full bodied, red wine might be just the thing. I’ve heard of people using chocolate in mead, which would be a lot like using chocolate as the main ingredient in a wine, only less so.

There are a lot of possibilities, and I’ll probably try more than one. I can’t possibly try them all, though, so if you have any ideas, I’d love to hear them.

How much chocolate to use in wine

No matter how I make the wine, I’ll have to decide how much chocolate to use. There’s a lot of reference material on how much oak, tannin, acid, and so on to use in wine, but not so much on just the right amount of chocolate. To start with, I’ll use the phenolic content to put an upper limit on the amount. I don’t want to be trying to remove excess phenolics from my chocolate wine, so I’ll compare the amount in cocoa powder with the typical amount in red wine to get a maximum. Red wines will have up to 0.35% (3.5 g/L) phenolic content. As I mentioned in my post on chocolate, cocoa powder is about 8%, by weight, phenolic compounds. Putting these two figures together, and doing a little algebra, yields a figure of 43.75 g (a little over 1.5 oz and a little under 9 tablespoons) of cocoa powder in a liter. For a gallon of wine, then, we’d want no more than 165.6 g (5.8 oz).

There are some reasons that we might want less. The phenolics in chocolate won’t be the same as the phenolics in grapes, so it makes sense to back off from this maximum amount. The hot chocolate recipes I’ve seen are made with anywhere from 1 - 2 tablespoons of cocoa per cup (about 21-42 g/L). The lower value of 21 g/L, which works out to about 3 oz/gallon, should still yield plenty of flavor (it’s from the recipe in the Joy of Cooking) with less risk that the phenolics will be too harsh.

The subtle approach

This is a good starting point for a just chocolate wine, and maybe for a chocolate flavored wine. If we’re using chocolate like oak, then we should look at a more subtle approach too. After all, the flavor in hot chocolate might be good, but will it be good as a wine? Will it even be recognizable as wine? Maybe, but the rich flavor profile of chocolate might be useful in much smaller amounts to add complexity to wine. I’m imagining tasting such a wine and thinking, “I can’t put my finger on it, but I’ve never tasted Merlot like that before!” rather than, “Wow, chocolate!” When most people cook with chocolate or use it in flavored drinks, subtlety is not the goal. That makes it harder to know how much chocolate would add richness and complexity without overwhelming the wine. I think I’ll start with an arbitrary number, and cut the 21 g/L in half. Call it 10 g/L, which is about 1.3 oz or 7.5 tablespoons per gallon.

Now that I’m getting a better idea of how to make chocolate wine and how much chocolate to use, I’ll take a look at some existing recipes. There aren’t many, but I’m hoping to find enough for a reality check. To make sure you don’t miss it, subscribe to this blog. It’s free and easy, and you’ll get every article without having to keep checking back.

This blog is about making wine, so I don’t talk about my vegetable garden very much. My gardening and winemaking overlap in some ways like rhubarb wine, oregano wine, tomato wine, and the one-pint (500 ml) batch of wine from my own grapes. Well there’s going to be some more overlap this year, because I’m growing four new things (and fermenting one of them). This will be my first time growing peas, and as a fan of Good Neighbors, I have to make wine from the pea pods - Peapod Burgundy as they called it on the show. As of now, I’ve just ordered the seeds, but I’ll have more to say about it as the season progresses.

Here’s what the Lady of the House has to say about our gardening plans this year.

Tags: nad