Author Archives: Erroll

Washington Winemaker Does Photography!

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A 5-gallon carboy of wildflower mead flanked by two 1-gallon jugs. The light red jug on the left is raspberry mead, and the dark red one on the right is raspberry wine.


I’ve been trying show my wine and mead in a better light. The above photo shows two of my meads and one of my wines. Wildflower mead, from A Simple Mead Recipe, stands in the center with raspberry mead in the 1-gallon jug on the left. Those meads almost glow, while my raspberry wine is more subdued on the right.

I don’t have high end photographic equipment, heck I don’t have very much low end photographic equipment, but I set up this shot against a white background lit from the left side and above. I talk about the setup in a little more detail here. Photography is another hobby, and I’ve been doing a lot of research into digital cameras. Some people have asked me for advice, about buying one, so I’ve collected my thoughts into a digital camera buying guide.



Commercial Cranberry Wine

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I just found out that a commercial winery in Washington made a cranberry wine. They were faced with the same high acidity that I discussed a few days ago, and we both used a similar approach to deal with it. They blended with Chardonnay (20% cranberry and 80% Chardonnay), while I “blended” with water (25% cranberry and 75% water). I considered blending with another fruit, but I want my first wine to be just cranberry. The water, which contributes virtually no acidity, allows me to squeeze in a little more cranberry, and I feel a bit better calling the result “cranberry wine.” Once I get that down and find out what cranberry wine tastes like, I can try different blends by substituting other fruit for the water.



Cranberry Wine From Frozen Concentrate?

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I noticed some cranberry juice concentrate on sale the other day, and since I’m thinking about making cranberry wine I bought some. Can you make wine from cranberry juice concentrate? Yes, but “cranberry wine” might not be the best way to describe it. Most cranberry juice products are cocktails that contain cranberry juice. This frozen concentrate, for example, has more apple juice than cranberry juice.


Cranberry Juice Concentrate


What, you thought the “Cranberry” and “100% Juice” on the label meant that it was 100% cranberry juice? Silly you. The first ingredient is apple juice concentrate, followed by water, then cranberry juice concentrate. We’re not quite done. Next comes grape juice concentrate, black currant juice concentrate, and aronia berry juice concentrate. Aronia? It’s deciduous shrub, sometimes called black chokeberry that’s popular in Siberia. Really! Anyway, there’s still a few things in this “cranberry juice:” natural flavors, citric acid, and ascorbic acid.

I don’t want to knock this product. A blend of juices like that sounds promising, and might make a nice wine. In fact, I will make wine from it. Any ideas on what I should call the wine? “Apple Cranberry Grape Black-Currant Aroia wine” doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue …

Know Your Ingredients: Cranberries

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With Thanksgiving not far behind and Christmas fast approaching, I began thinking about cranberry wine. I’ve never made cranberry wine before, so I think the best way to start is by taking a closer look at what’s in cranberries.

What are cranberries like?

One cup (240 ml) of whole cranberries weigh about 3.5 oz (100 grams). Chop them up and they take up less space, so you can fit 3.9 oz (110 grams) into a cup. Fresh cranberries keep best when stored cold, just above 32F (0C). Phenolic content is high, up to 200 mg/100 g. Some of these phenolic compounds act as antioxidants, others, like benzoic acid, as antimicrobials. Total acid content is about 3 g/100 g, most of which is citric and malic, and they’re rich in pectin.

What’s in cranberries?

100 g of cranberries contain:

87.13 g water
12.2 g carbohydrates
0.39 g protein
0.13 g fat
0.15 g ash

Of the 12.2 g of carbohydrates, 4.04 g are sugar:

3.28 g glucose
0.63 g fructose
0.13 g sucrose

What does this mean for winemakers?

It means we’ve got some work to do in the sugar and acid department. Let’s assume that the juice yield will be equal to the water content of cranberries – call it 87 ml/100 g – and that all the sugar and acid will be in the juice. In that case, we’d get 87 ml of juice, containing 4 g of sugar and 3 g of acid. That puts the acidity of the juice at 34.5 g/L, as citric, and it means we’ve about 46 g/L of sugar. Converting it to more familiar units, we have a specific gravity (SG) of 1.015 (5 Brix) and a titratable acidity of 37 g/L, as tartaric.

I would approach this by diluting the juice, with sugar-water, until the acid is closer to normal – I might target 9 g/L in the must, which is still a little high but within the norm for a dry white wine. Combining one part cranberry juice with three parts sugar-water gets us to 9.25 g/L. How much sugar in the sugar-water? An SG of 1.090 implies about 240 g/L of sugar. We started with 4 g in 87 ml, which is 46 g/L, and diluted it to 25%. It turns out that three parts of 305 g/L sugar water to one part 46 g/L cranberry juice gets us 240.25 g/L.

That would be a good starting point. A larger than normal dose of pectic enzyme and a yeast that consumes malic acid, like Lavlin’s 71-B, would also be good ideas. I’ll think about this some more and pull it all together in a recipe soon.

Further Reading

Haraold McGee’s On Food and Cooking is a great book on the science of cooking. No recipes, but lots of information on ingredients, like cranberries and other fruits, and food chemistry. That makes it a great reference for the home winemaker as well as the home cook.

The USDA nutrient database is a great place to look up the composition of all sorts of common foods. They don’t have much to say about acidity, but still very valuable.

Time To Move Beyond Natural Cork

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More and more wine is bottled with synthetic cork or twist off caps. Many people associate these modern enclosures with cheap wine and that makes wineries reluctant to switch. It’s a shame, really, because we’ve learned so much since natural cork was state of the art. We’ve learned that 2,4,6-trichloroanisole (TCA), a substance that occurs in natural cork, causes a wine fault called “cork taint.” We’ve learned to make synthetic cork, which is free of such taint but can leave wine vulnerable to oxidation after several years. Finally, we’ve learned to make twist off caps that will allow a tiny, consistent amount of oxygen into the wine – enough for it to age properly, but not enough to oxidize it. After learning all that, twist off caps don’t look cheap to me; they look like really good modern closures that keep our wine in top condition.

Buying Commercial Wine

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Consumer Reports and Pacific Northwest Magazine both published lists of recommended wines recently. One Washington State wine made both lists, and that got me curious enough to try it. Columbia Crest Two Vines Riesling is described as a “sweet, dessert-style wine with fruit balanced by acid.” A description like that doesn’t exactly make me want to rush out and buy it, but it’s pretty accurate. Here’s what Pacific Northwest Magazine had to say:

Done in a off-dry style, it is bursting with sweet and crisp flavors of green apple, melon and peach , finished with a dollop of honey and orange liqueur.

I don’t know about all that, but it was on sale for $5.99, and I did enjoy the wine. I would say they overdid it with the sugar, but the Lady of the house, bless her little sweet tooth, loved it. Lists like this often come out near the end of the year, and make me want to try new wines – especially the ones on the “Really Good Wines Under $8” list!

Update 4/19/2010 – Blind tastings separate the wheat from the chaff

How do you tell a diamond in the ruff from an overpriced “bargain?” Compare it against a wine you know in a blind tasting. It’s the only way to set aside the mental baggage we all carry and see a wine as it really is. Here’s a quick and easy way to do your own blind tasting at home.

Mead From Cherries: So far, so good

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Making mead from cherries

I’ve often thought about making “second wine” using honey instead of sugar. Also called “false wine,” it’s made from the pomace of newly fermented wine by adding water, sugar and acid. I like honey, water, and acid (mead) all by itself, so using honey instead of sugar should be an improvement. That’s the idea behind my cherry mead, which I made in 2006 and 2007 from the pomace of that year’s cherry wine.

A little adjustment and a little more time

I got a chance to look in on the 2007 cherry mead when I racked it the other day, and I think it’s coming along nicely. If I had to sum up the flavor in one word, it would be “mild.” It’s a little fruity, and the aroma is pleasant, but I think it needs more time. Here are the numbers:

Date: 11/21/07, Specific Gravity: 0.996, pH: 3.39, TA: 5 g/L

The TA is a little low, so I added about 1.25 g/L of tartaric acid. With that little adjustment, I’ll leave it alone to age for a while.

Red Wine From Cherries: Revisiting the acid problem

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Making red wine from cherries

I made cherry wine, in June 2006 and 2007, like a red wine from grapes. I crushed the fruit, adjusted the sugar and acid, and pitched the yeast. The sugar and acid profile of cherries is very different from that of grapes, so “adjusting the sugar and acid” is a much bigger step in making cherry wine than it is in making red wine from grapes.

Acid: Fixing one problem will make another worse

I just racked the 2006 cherry wine, and that “bigger step” is proving to be a real headache. The pH is too high, which puts the wine at risk of spoiling, and the titratable acidity (TA) is too high, which leaves the wine tasting tart. I first noticed this problem a few months ago in my 2007 cherry wine, and decided to wait a while before acting. Ok it’s been a while, and I think I’ve just proven the old adage that ignoring a problem doesn’t make it go away! Here is an analysis of both wines:

Name Date SG pH TA (g/L)
2006 Cherry Wine 11/21/2007 1.010 3.83 9
2007 Cherry Wine 7/30/2007 1.007 3.76 11
2007 Cherry Wine 11/21/2007 1.006 3.90 7

Both wines finished off dry, and both suffer from high pH and high TA. I don’t have earlier data for the 2006, because I didn’t have a pH meter or an acid test kit when I made it, but the measured pH rose and the TA fell in the 2007 cherry wine. I’ll tackle the 2006 vintage first. The way I see it, I’ve got two options in dealing with these problems.

The simple option: Add acid and balance with sugar

Adding more acid will lower the pH. That will solve the first part of the problem and improve the wine’s stability. Neutralizing some of the existing acid will lower the TA, which will solve the second part of the problem and improve the wine’s flavor. Speaking of flavor, it isn’t very good. I don’t think I can describe it in any useful way, Marsha said it was “icky,” but it didn’t taste tart. I think that gives me some leeway to lower the pH by adding tartaric acid, even though the TA is already high.

The complicated option: Replace one kind of acid with another

The acid in my cherry wine is mostly malic. That’s different from grape wine, where the acid will be mostly tartaric. What if I could replace some of that malic acid with tartaric? That would make it more like a conventional grape wine, and might solve my twin acid problems. This would mean neutralizing some malic acid first, then adding tartaric acid. It turns out that neutralizing malic acid is tricky and it makes this option a lot more complicated than just adding tartaric acid and relying on residual sugar to balance it. My 2007 cherry wine has the same acid problem, so whichever option I choose, I’ve got a lot riding on the outcome.

Looking For A Carboy – Found A Homebrew Shop

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The local homebrew shop closest to my house was out of 3-gallon carboys. I was in a hurry, so I decided to look around for other stores in the area and I’m glad I did. Not only did Larry’s Brewing Supply have the carboys in stock, they sold them for 20% less. The two stores have different “personalities.” From the sophisticated checkout to the bar codes, my local shop is clean, bright, and modern. Larry’s is a small shop with a warehouse feeling to it. Hand written signs indicate prices, and Larry’s (yep, that’s really the owner’s name) collection of old (probably not “antique” yet, but getting close) bottle cappers adorn the checkout area. Helpful, friendly staffs make both stores good places to buy homebrew and winemaking supplies, but when you buy a lot of supplies and equipment, like I do, comparison shopping can really pay off.

The Unappreciated 3-Gallon Carboy

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I’ve got a little over eight gallons (30 liters) of pressed Merlot that needs to be racked soon. What do you rack eight gallons of wine into? A 5-gallon carboy and three 1-gallon jugs would work, but the best way is to use a 3-gallon (11 liter) carboy. You don’t hear as much about the 3-gallon carboy as you do about it’s big brother. There are many times it could have made my life easier though, and I think it’s finally time to add one to my roster of winemaking equipment.