Category Archives: Country Wine

Wine from apples, rhubarb, herbs, cherries, or anything else except grapes

Cherry Wine Recipe: Sugar and acid

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Too much acid, but I don’t dare neutralize it

I pressed the cherry wine four weeks ago, and looked in on it yesterday. It’s had time to settle, and the clear wine has a lovely dark color. It tastes tart, though, and when I measured the total acidity (TA) I could see why. It was 11 grams/Liter, as tartaric, and in a dry red wine it ought to be more like 6 or 7 g/L. Usually TA and pH move in opposite directions; if your TA is high, all that acid pushes the pH low. This time, however, the pH was 3.76, which is higher than the 3.2 to 3.6 optimal range for red wine. The problem with a high pH is that it makes a wine vulnerable to microbes, and it may not age as well. You can remedy a high pH by adding acid. If the TA is too high, you can neutralize some of the acid, as I did recently with my oregano wine. But how do you deal with too much acidity and a high pH?

So I’ll bring the wine into balance by sweetening it

The high TA affects the taste, so the way out of this dilemma is to improve the taste without affecting the acidity. That way, I can fix the acidity problem without making the pH problem worse. We know that acids can make a wine taste tart, but there are other influences on a wine’s taste. Tannins provide bitterness, while sugar and alcohol provide sweetness. A wine tastes best when none of these influences overpower the others. Such a wine is said to be in balance. You can actually think of it as an old fashioned balance scale, with tannin (bitterness) and acid (sourness) on one side. Sugar and alcohol, both providing sweetness, would be on the other. My cherry wine is out of balance, with too much acidity. Since I don’t want to make a fortified wine, my best bet for bringing the wine back into balance is to add sugar. To do this, I need to wait until the yeast is dormant. Then I can stabilize the wine with sorbate, which prevents the yeast from fermenting the added sugar, and sweeten.

But I have to wait until the yeast goes dormant

To determine if the yeast is dormant, I looked at the specific gravity. It was 1.007, which indicates some residual sugar. Either the fermentation had stuck or the yeast is still (slowly) fermenting. I can’t say for certain, so I’ll rack the wine now, which will get it off the sediment, and recheck in a few months. If the SG hasn’t changed, then I’ll know the yeast is inactive. If, on the other hand, the yeast was still going, it will likely finish at a lower SG in those months. Either way, I anticipate stabilizing and sweetening then. Waiting a few months will also let me repeat the TA and pH measurements. A high pH and a high TA is out of the ordinary, so I’d like to double check. Right now, I’ve got some racking to do.

Update 2/23/2009: More options for high pH – high TA wines

I’ve run into the same problem again, and I’ve given it some more thought. Sweetening to bring the wine into balance solves half of the problem, without making the other half worse, and that’s an improvement. I may have found a way to solve both halves of the problem by using phosphoric acid. I talk about that in a new post about solving acidity problems.

Update 5/25/2009: A happy ending


It’s in the bottle and worth the effort – an enjoyable red wine and I would recommend it to anyone interested in this approach.

Oregano Wine Recipe: pH restored

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I’ve been stirring my oregano wine every day since I used potassium bicarbonate to raise the pH. Yesterday I took some measurements, and I found some good news and some bad news. The good news is that I succeeded in raising the pH to 3.67, and that’s high enough to permit fermentation. The bad news is that it hasn’t actually started fermenting again. It’s a waiting game for now, but if I don’t see activity in the next few days I’ll add more yeast.

Tomato Wine: Early thoughts on red wine varietals

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I’m waiting to see how my white tomato wine turns out before trying a red, so I haven’t been thinking about which varietals to try. Until yesterday. That’s when I noticed a photo of some beautiful bite-sized tomatoes that, if they were darker, would be just the thing for a red tomato wine. The photo is from this article by Molly Day about her garden. After some advice from Molly and some internet searching, I came up with a short list of promising tomatoes for red wine:

Black Russian
Black Cherry
Brown Berry

At this point, all I know is that they’re small and darker than most tomatoes. So now I’ve got some research to do, and I’ll revisit this topic when I know more.

Oregano Wine Recipe: restarting a stuck fermentation

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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 pH, with potassium bicarbonate (KHCO3). I had planned on adding two teaspoons because I wanted to add about 10 grams, and I believed that one teaspoon was 4.8 grams. The vendor, Crosby & Baker, says that 1 teaspoon is about 6 grams and warns against using more than 10-13 grams per gallon. That would put two teaspoons, at about 12 grams, very close to the upper limit, and since measuring spoons are not precise I decided to only add one teaspoon this time. I’ll see if fermentation restarts and I’ll retest the pH.

I’ve also decided to add one teaspoon of cream of tartar. The reaction of KHCO3 with tartaric acid will create cream of tartar. By adding some more, I’m seeding the wine and that will encourage the newly created stuff to precipitate out more easily. I’m also hoping it will improve the buffering capacity of the wine.

Oregano Wine Recipe: fixing the pH crash

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I’ve been thinking about the pH drop that brought fermentation to a near halt, and I’ve decided to deacidify with potassium bicarbonate (KHCO3). Most of the information I could find on neutralizing acid has to do with reducing the total acidity (TA); I couldn’t find anything about deliberately raising the pH. That means I have no clear guide in deciding how much KHCO3 to add. When I last measured the TA, it was 6 g/L. I’ve arbitrarily decided to neutralize half of it. To reduce the acidity by 1 g/L, you need to add 0.9 g/L of KHCO3. Since I’ve got a gallon (3.785 L) of wine and I want to neutralize 3 g/L of acidity, I need to add 10.2 g KHCO3 (0.9 * 3.785 * 3). I haven’t got a scale accurate enough to measure out 10.2 grams of anything, but a teaspoon of KHCO3 is about 4.8 g so adding two teaspoons (about 9.6 g) gets me pretty darn close to 10.2 g.

So what happens when I add the KHCO3? It combines with the tartaric acid to form potassium bitartrate (cream of tartar), carbon dioxide, and water. The cream of tartar precipitates out and the CO2 bubbles off leaving a tiny bit of water. That should leave the wine with a high enough pH to kick start the fermentation. I’ve ordered the KHCO3, it will arrive in a few days, and then we’ll see if there’s method to my madness.

Most of the info on neutralizing acid came from Philip Jackisch’s Modern Winemaking. It’s a good book that provides technical detail on winemaking processes with examples. It’s for the winemaker looking to go beyond the basics, and I highly recommend it. There’s even has a chapter on non-grape wines!

Oregano Wine Recipe: pH crash

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pH meter, in champaign glass about one quarter full of oregano wine, shows a pH of 2.69.My oregano wine has been fermenting very slowly, and I suspected a pH problem. I was following a recipe that called for 3 tsp of acid blend. I decided to add only 1 tsp at the beginning, because I was afraid the pH could drop so low that it would inhibit the yeast. The must was mainly sugar and water, so there wasn’t much to buffer it – a little acid could push the pH a long way. Yeast has a difficult time when the pH drops below 3. I decided to take a sample and do some measurements. The pH meter, reading 2.69, confirmed my suspicion. The specific gravity was 1.052, which is less than the 1.060 on 6/30/07. That means it’s still fermenting, but it’s been over a month and it’s still got a long way to go. I measured the TA as 6 g/L (tartaric). I’m not sure what to do about this yet. I might be able to rack it and let it ferment out slowly under an airlock. I could try and neutralize some of the acid, pushing up the pH, to get fermentation going again.


Update 7/25/2007 – Fixing the pH crash by neutralizing acid

To fix the pH crash, I neutralized some of the acid with potassium bicarbonate (KHCO3). This will raise the pH and should get things going again

Pruning Gold Nugget Tomatoes

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I put a lot of thought into pruning my grapes, but I normally just let my tomatoes grow any which way they choose. I might try to tuck them into their cages every now and again, but I never thought about pruning. Now that I’m growing tomatoes for wine, I’m starting to wonder if some of the principles behind grape pruning would apply to tomatoes. If one leaf shades another on a grape vine, then I would want to pull one of those leaves because a leaf in the shade isn’t doing much in the way of photosynthesis. Wouldn’t that be just as true for tomatoes? Also, tomatoes have a way of sending branches off in every direction. Maybe trimming off the ones growing into the dirt would keep the fruit cleaner? Maybe it would reduce insect problems?


Pointing at a low branch that is sloping downward. This is the sort of pruning cut I'll be making.


In this photo, I’m about to prune a low branch that is sloping toward the ground. This is the sort of pruning cut I’ll be making this year. The tomatoes have grown taller and bushier since 6/21/07, when I took the above photo, but I’m going to start slowly with my pruning. If this goes well, I may try pruning tomatoes more like grape vines. I don’t know if I’ll really go that far, but if I do, I’ll get there by taking baby steps.

Cherry Wine Recipe: Pressed

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I pressed the cherry wine last night. I got just under three gallons of free run, and another half gallon or so after pressing.


Free run cherry wine in a carboy. The wine is dark red with a layer of pink foam that comes just up to the '3' mark. These marks indicate gallons, and the one above it looks like a '1' but is actually '4' with some of the ink worn off.


The photo is from last night and shows the free run wine in a carboy. It’s foamy because I just poured it in through a funnel, and it’s still fermenting. You can see the foam comes up to the 3-gallon mark (the next mark is a “4” but looks like a “1” because some of the ink has worn off). Now that I’ve pressed, and the cherry wine is fermenting under an airlock, I’ll start on the cherry mead!

Cherry Wine Recipe

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I made the case for white wine from cherries a while back, but when I made cherry wine yesterday it was a red. I bought 43 or so pounds of Bing Cherries, and after setting aside 4.5 lb for cherry liqueur, I had about 38 lb left for wine. They’re dark skinned cherries with red flesh, so they wouldn’t do for a white. Here’s how I started my red:

Ingredients:

38 lb (about 17 kg) Bing Cherries
3.5 lb (1.6 kg) sugar
3 quarts (2.8 liters) water
3 tsp pectic enzyme (approximately 7 g)
sulfite to 50 ppm (equivalent to 3 campden tablets)
0.5 tsp tannin (about a gram)
Premier Cuvee yeast

Cherry crush

I destemmed, sorted, and nibbled, by hand. It took a while, but Marsha and I did it together and that made it fun. The result: seven gallons of destemmed cherries ready to crush. An ordinary grape crusher would probably work, though you would need to adjust the rollers to accommodate the cherry pits. I used an older method …

Crushing cherries in a chest cooler with bare feet

Crushing the cherries with my bare feet worked well. I could feel the pits but they didn’t hurt, and I got through all the cherries quickly. Last year, I tried a potato masher. It was too flimsy, so I ended up crushing each cherry between my thumb and forefinger. I don’t recommend it. Anyway, at this point I added sulfite and pectic enzyme. Now I had to add water, sugar, and possibly acid to prepare the crushed cherries for fermentation.

Dilute with water?

Most traditional cherry wine recipes dilute with water. For every gallon of finished wine, you might use four to six pounds of fruit (500 to 750 g/L). That can be tempting on economic grounds alone. Even though I got a good deal on these cherries, an undiluted wine would cost between $5 and $6 per bottle, just in cherries. That’s a great price for commercial wine at retail, but high for homemade wine. In the end I decided that I really wanted to stay as close to conventional red wine as I could, so I did add water, but only a tad more than needed to dissolve the sugar.

Adjusting the sugar

And I did need to add sugar. To know how much, I first had to determine how much was in the cherries. I needed a clear sample of the juice, and that was harder to get than you might think. First I scooped a bunch of crushed cherries+juice through a strainer, and I measured the SG as 1.070. That’s high for cherry juice. What’s happening is that dissolved solids in the juice make it thicker, and that will push the SG higher, so I ran this juice through a coffee filter.

Filtering cherry juice with a funnel and a coffee filterThe filter quickly clogged and when I tried to get it going again, I tore it. I did better the second time. I was patient (didn’t know I had it in me!) and I changed the filter every time it clogged. It still took a long time, over an hour, but I got 0.5 cup (about 120 ml) of filtered juice with an SG of 1.065. I suspect that there’s less sugar than that, but I decided to use that number and target an SG of 1.090. If the sugar was indeed low, my actual SG would be a little less, but anything down to 1.075 would be ok with me. I created a spreadsheet to help me with sugar and acid additions, and after plugging in what I know (SG = 1.065), what I think (estimated liquid volume of the cherry juice of about 2 gallons), and what I’m aiming for (target SG = 1.090), I got back a suggestion to dissolve 3.5 lb of sugar in 3 quarts of water (roughly 1.6 kg sugar and 2.8 liters water).

Pitching the yeast now and adjusting the acid later

The dominant acid in cherries is malic, and Ben Rotter reports that Bing cherry juice often analyzes to 4.7 g/L, as malic. I have a simple acid test kit, but no pH meter. That makes measuring the TA of red juice difficult, so I’ve decided to wait until the wine has fermented out to adjust the acid.

The last step is to pitch the yeast. I had rehydrated it by pouring the yeast packet into 0.25 cups of warm water. After five minutes I added 0.25 cups of cherry juice. I added the tannin and another 0.25 cups cherry juice after it started foaming (about an hour), and I pitched it into the fermenter two hours later. Bottling is still a year or two a way, but I’m excited already!


Update 7/31/07: Sugar and acid

I have since bought a pH meter, and measured the acidity of my cherry wine. It was too high, but so was the pH and that made me reluctant deal with the problem by neutralizing some of the acid. So I’ve decided to balance the acidity by sweetening the wine. I think the high acidity is part of buying cherries at the grocery store; the cherries were just a little under ripe. I’m growing my own cherries, and once my bonsai orchard is producing I’ll have nice ripe fruit that’s not so acidic. In the meantime, I’ll try a different yeast: 71B by Lalvin. It metabolizes malic acid, and that should make it especially suitable for cherry wine.

Update 5/25/2009: Bottled!

Some have told me that it can’t be done, and it is difficult. But you can make a conventional red wine from cherries! It’s an enjoyable red wine and I would recommend it to anyone interested in this approach.

A good deal on cherries and a honey varietal dilemma

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An opportunity needs to be siezed

Safeway is having a sale, cherries for $1.49/lb, and that got me thinking about honey varietals. Let me back up a little. About this time last year, I bought 40 lb of cherries, some from Safeway, and made cherry wine. After I pressed the wine, I made cherry mead in the same way you might make a “second wine.” You make a second wine by adding water, sugar, and acid to the pomace of a wine (so far as I know, nobody calls it the “first wine”). I liked the idea of getting as much use as possible out of the cherries, and decided to use honey instead of sugar. I planned to do the same thing this year, so I’ve been watching for sales on cherries. Now that the sale is on, I realized I was down to my last gallon, give or take, of wildflower honey.

A dilemma needs to be resolved

I didn’t want to use the last of it for the cherry mead (often called “cherry melomel”). Oh, it would make a fine cherry mead, but I thought it would be better for my beer-like mead. Why? It’s dark and even seems a little malty to me, so I think it would be a really good match. The problem is that I’ve got to move fast on the cherries; I’ll probably only get such a good price this week, and a quick check of my schedule says that this Friday would be the best day to buy the cherries and make the wine. Because I’m making a cherry mead from the pomace, I want to press the cherry wine early – three days into fermentation. After all, there’s got to be something left in them for the mead. That means I need another gallon or so of honey on Monday. If I use the wildflower honey that I’ve got, then I’ll either need to use a different honey for the beer-like mead or order another five gallons of the wildflower. There’s nothing wrong with that – I like the honey, but I was hoping to try a different kind. Orange Blossom maybe.