Author Archives: Erroll

Have It Your Way

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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.



How To Clean A Big Fermenter Without Scrubbing

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What I hate about winemaking

Once I pressed the Merlot, it was time to watch airlocks bubble as the wine fermented out and then slowly cleared. It was also time to clean the fermenter. This is on the list, along with washing bottles, of my least favorite things about making wine. The best way to do this is to get someone else to do it, maybe a friend or loved one. This isn’t as easy as you might think, so sometimes we must take drastic action. Yes, there are times when we have to do it ourselves.

If you gotta do it, do it the easy way

So how do you clean a 24 gallon fermenter? It’s big enough that bending over, or tipping it on it’s side and crawling in, to scrub the inside and bottom will be hard on your back and knees. Besides, why scrub when you don’t have to? I like to rinse it with a garden hose right after I’m done with it, that way nothing has a chance to dry and harden on the surface. Next, I fill it with water and a detergent, I like to use Oxiclean. You’re not going to want to move it while it’s full, so make sure it’s in a good spot before you fill it. You’ll want it someplace where you can leave it for a long time, someplace where you can tip it on its side, to drain, without getting it dirty, and someplace near a garden hose. The garage, just inside the door to the driveway, works for me. I like to let it soak for several hours, often overnight. After soaking, I’ll drain it and rinse with the garden hose. After I’ve rinsed thoroughly and I think I’ve gotten every bit of detergent, I’ll fill it with clean water and let it sit for a while (again, several hours or even overnight). I want to make sure there isn’t a thin film of detergent on the bottom or on the sides. I drain it after that and turn it upside down to drip dry over my utility sink.

Not as bad as it seemed

As you can see, this process can take several days, but for most of that time, the fermenter is just soaking. It takes very little time and effort on your part, leaving you free to make more wine!



Pressing Merlot

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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.

Bonsai Vineyard: Harvest Complete

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I harvested 14 oz (400 g) of the Pinot Noir on 10/13/07. That completes the harvest for 2006; here are the details:

Pinot Noir: 21 oz (600 g)
Leon Millot: 37 oz (1050 g)
Price 17 oz (480 g)
Siegerrebe: 11.5 oz (325 g)

All: 86.5 oz (2455 g)

5 lb 6 oz isn’t a lot, but it’s more than last year’s 4 lb. I had more favorable weather last year, this year we had a cold and rainy fall and a cooler summer, and this year I lost part of the crop to critters. So, all in all, not a bad year.

Pumpkin Wine: Trick or Treat?

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Being a kid on Halloween meant dressing up in a costume, staying out after dark, and asking strangers for candy. Saying it like that makes it sound kinda strange – maybe even dangerous – why on earth would I do something like that? I was a young boy, so I did most things because they were strange and dangerous. Ah the good ole days! So, can a sensible but bored adult still live on the edge a little on Halloween? I don’t know, but it made me think about pumpkin wine.

Starch makes pumpkin different from other wine bases

Pumpkins contain starch, which is a lot (hundreds or thousands) of sugar molecules stuck together. These molecules fit together in a tight compact mass, making raw pumpkin flesh hard and unpalatable. In order to make wine from it, we need to extract the flavor and aroma compounds with water. To do that, we need to loosen up that tight compact mass and allow the water to penetrate. That means cooking. There are several ways to do this. One way is to cut the pumpkin in half, remove the seeds and pulp, then bake the two halves, flesh sides down, in a cookie sheet at 350F for 30 minutes.

Mashing the pumpkin

Winemakers and homebrewers treat starch very differently. For winemakers, starch is a problem that causes haze. Homebrewers convert starch to fermentable sugar by “mashing” it, and when they’re using pumpkin in their brews, they’ll often bake it and toss it in the mash. We can borrow that technique from our homebrewing friends and mash the pumpkin flesh. We’ll need to add enzymes that will break down the starch, and we’ll need to control the temperature so that it’s warm enough for the enzymes to do their work, but not so hot that they are destroyed. It turns out that there are two important enzymes that work together on this, but each works best at a slightly different temperature. A compromise that works well is to hold the mash at 150F (about 66C) for 30 minutes.

You can make pumpkin wine without mashing, but there are two benefits that make it worthwhile. By converting the starch, you increase the amount of fermentable sugar and ensure that no starch ends up in your wine. The extra sugar probably isn’t all that significant, but starch in your wine can cause a haze and support spoilage organisms. Those are headaches worth avoiding.

Towards a pumpkin wine recipe

A recipe or procedure for making pumpkin wine is still a work in progress for me. The starch in pumpkin makes it so different from other sorts of wines that I wanted to address it separately. This pumpkin wine looks a lot like a beer so far, and you can make good pumpkin beers, but next time I’ll address sugar, acidity, and the typical issues in making a wine.

Hot Pressing In A Cool Climate

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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 Madeleine Angevine and Seigerrebe shrugged off the cold wet season and delivered good, if somewhat smaller, crops. A lot of Pinot Noir and Chardonnay is still braving the wet weather, and the fungal diseases that thrive in it, to ripen. Some wont be harvested at all, and many will be harvested with the beginnings of botrytis.

Heat the grapes to repair some of the damage

How do you salvage barley ripe grapes beset by bunch rot? Thermovinification, or “hot pressing,” is the process of heating red wine grapes to kill spoilage organisms, improve color, and reduce unripe flavors. Heating to 150F (65C) for 20 minutes, 180F (90C) for 2 minutes, will do the trick. At this point you can cool the must and ferment normally or press the grapes and ferment like a white wine. It’s best not to leave under ripe grape skins in contact with the fermenting wine for very long.

Adjust the acidity

If you had to harvest before your grapes are ripe, you will have to deal with their acid profile. It isn’t just a matter of reducing high acid levels with something like potassium bicarbonate (KHCO3), the mix of acids may be unfavorable. As grapes ripen, the amount of malic acid falls, while tartaric acid rises. So in under ripe grapes, there will be a disproportionately more malic. That’s when a yeast like Lavlin’s 71B, which consumes malic acid, can come in handy. If, after fermentation, there is still too much acid, then it’s time for the KHCO3.

These steps can make the difference between a lost cause and a drinkable wine, but they won’t conjure up a fine wine from mediocre grapes. Do your best, look forward to next year, and sip some heat treated wine 🙂

Further reading

In his 10/3/2003 Letter to NY winemakers, Thomas Henick-Kling writes about making wine after a difficult harvest. My thanks to Gerard Bentryn of Bainbridge Island Vineyards for recommending that paper.

Jancis Robinson has a great entry on thermovinification in her The Oxford Companion to Wine.