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Peapod Burgundy?

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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.



Acidity In Mead: Being rigorous with incomplete data

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I talked about five of my meads yesterday, and how I might decide if they were ready to bottle. I looked at clarity and specific gravity (SG) because I didn’t want the mead throwing off sediment or fermenting in the bottle. I tasted, probably the most important test of any wine or mead, and I checked the acidity.

Mead’s peculiar chemistry makes it difficult to measure the titratable acidity (TA). I explain this in more detail here, but the short version is that the common tests, like titration, overstate the TA. That made me think that such tests had no value, but I’ve since changed my mind. Measured TA’s don’t give you a precise value, but they do give you some information. That’s why I reported TA values for all five meads yesterday.

Using titratable acidity values in making mead

What do those values tell us? I began to get an idea about that when I was thinking about my cherry mead. As I said back then, you can use the TA values as upper limits. If you want to make a mead with the acid profile of a white wine, for example, you look up the range of acid values common in white wine then aim for the high end of the range. A good book on winemaking basics will give you that information. I like Daniel Pambianchi’s Techniques in Home Winemaking, he covers the basics really well and has special sections on ice wine, port, and sparkling wine. He says that the TA in white wines will normally range from 5 – 7.5 g/L. Adjusting a mead to 7.5 g/L puts the actual TA somewhere below that. Tasting the adjusted mead, after about a month or so to allow any acid additions to integrate with the mead, will reveal if the acidity is too low. If it is, then a series of add (no more than 0.5 g/L) – wait – taste cycles will nudge it right into the sweet spot.

Trying to improve a good approach

This is a good approach, but I’d like to get better information on the lower limit of a mead’s TA. Since the measurement error stems from the gluconolactone that exists in equilibrium with gluconic acid and that equilibrium depends on temperature and pH, maybe careful measurement of TA, pH, and temperature would yield some information on how much gluconolactone got caught up in the measurement. We might be able to use that to get a lower limit on, or even pin down, the actual TA. I don’t know how to do that yet, but I’ll see if I can find out. Another way to tackle this problem is to find out how much gluconolactone typically exists in honey. Putting limits on gluconolactone concentration will allow us to put limits on the actual TA. Those are my ideas anyway, if anyone can shed some light on them, or has another idea, please leave a comment and let us all know.



Five Meads: Are we there yet?

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I looked in on five meads yesterday to see if they were ready to bottle. I was looking for clarity, I tasted them to see if they were pleasant to drink, and I measured the specific gravity (SG), pH, and titratable acidity (TA).

Name SG pH TA (g/L)
2004 Plain Mead 1.001 3.05 5
2005 Apple Mead 0.995 3.39 5.2
2006 Experiment (boiled) 1.000 3.27 6
2006 Experiment (no heat) 1.000 3.29 5.3
2006 Grape Mead 1.000 3.51 5+

Ready or not, this four year old mead is going in a bottle

I tasted sweetness on the 2004 plain mead, despite the low SG. It had that distinctive, pleasant aroma that I’ve come to associate with mead, and the lady of the house thought it was, “a little young, but it’s going to be good.” I’m not sure I’m as patient as she is, so I’m going to bottle it.

This apple mead is the only one not ready to bottle

The 2005 apple mead tasted and smelled of apple, but only a hint. I thought it was a little tart. It was the only one of the lot that I thought wasn’t clear enough to bottle.

Trying to settle a long running debate

The 2006 experiment is a test of the idea that boiling a mead’s honey-water mixture before pitching the yeast impairs the aroma by driving off volatile compounds. I split a batch, boiled one and made the other without heating. That was two years ago, and I think these meads are ready to bottle. I normally age mead for three years though, so I may let them age in the bottle then have a tasting party next February.

Update 10/28/2008 – The results are in!
It was a long running experiment with a little surprise at the end. Follow this link to see the results of my mead boiling test.

The trouble with titration

The 2006 grape mead is made from the pomace of my smallest batch of wine ever. I added honey, water, nutrient, and cream of tartar. I had some trouble checking the TA on this one because I ran short of sodium hydroxide, the base I use to titrate acid in a wine sample. I added 5 ml to the sample, and that brought the pH to 7.4. That’s very close to the end point. If I really had reached the end point, it would have indicated a TA of 5 g/L. It’s a bit more, maybe 5.25 g/L, but since I can’t be sure I just noted “5+”

Hmm, that acid measuring contraption I wrote about the other day just looks better and better.

Wines For Valentine’s Day

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Which wines are right for Valentine’s Day? The ones you sip with chocolate, of course! I have some ideas about that, but it might be better to consult an expert. There’s none better than wine writer Natalie MacLean, who describes wine as,

liquid sensuality: Its heady bouquet stimulates the appetite and its velvet caress soothes that desire. What other drink is described as both ‘voluptuous’ and ‘muscular’? And when you pair wine with the mouth-coating luxury of chocolate, the combination is impossible to resist.

No doubt, you just can’t wait to hear my thoughts on that, but maybe I’ll just go ahead and give you her top ten wine and chocolate pairings:

Wine and chocolate for Valentine’s Day

1. Dark Chocolate and Banyuls, France
2. Chocolate-Covered Biscotti and Recioto Della Valpolicella, Italy
3. Chocolate-Orange Cake and Liqueur Muscat, Australia
4. Chocolate with Nuts and Tawny Port, Portugal
5. Milk Chocolate and Tokaji, Hungary
6. Bittersweet Chocolate and Amarone, Italy
7. Chocolate-Dipped Fruit and Icewine, Canada
8. Chocolate Ganache Truffles and Sauternes, France
9. Chocolate Raspberry Cheesecake and Framboise, California
10. Chocolate Hearts with Cream Filling and Cream Sherry, Spain

You can visit her web site and click the “Food & Wine” link for many more ideas on matching food and wine. If you love her site as much as I do, you’ll want to buy her book, Red, White, and Drunk All Over: A Wine-Soaked Journey from Grape to Glass. It would make a great Valentine’s day gift – who needs flowers?

Ok, you should probably get her flowers too …

At Last!

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Dharma WineOk, it hasn’t got a lot to do with making wine, but I’ve been waiting a long time for tonight’s episode of Lost. I made a wine from Old Orchard Concord grape concentrate, yep the kind you buy in the grocery store, and labeled it in honor of the show. This sort of wine will never be great; you won’t rave about the complexity or delight in picking up subtle notes of … anything. But it’s surprisingly good and you can make it for less than $1 a bottle.

Superbowl Wine?

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Football Wine

Red wine and pizza!

Ok, it’s not often you go to a football game and hear one of the vendors bellowing, “Ice cold Chenin Blanc here!” Beer is the beverage of choice for tailgate parties, but wine definitely has it’s place in your Superbowl festivities. What could better with pizza than a full bodied red? It’s pizza with the guys watching the game though, not fancy dress with your significant other, so you don’t want to break the bank. My choice would be Lindemans Bin 50 Shiraz, a bargain red that doesn’t taste like a bargain.

A good white for the game

Still whites would be harder to fit into a Superbowl party, but if you like whites stick to full flavored ones like Sauvignon Blanc. I just placed an order for the Viu Manent 2006 Sauvignon Blanc based on a good review. I haven’t tried it yet, but it would be my choice for a still white on game day.

This relaxed sparkling wine won’t disappoint

Sparkling wine seems like on obvious choice, but you shouldn’t waste good wine by shaking the bottle and spraying it on all your friends. For something a little different than Champaign, try Prosecco. It’s an Italian sparkling wine that’s a little sweeter and more fruity than the French variety. A good one to try is il Prosecco, which comes in a distinctive bottle topped with a crown cap (like beer!).

So, by all means, stock up on beer for the Superbowl, but don’t forget the wine.

Photo courtesy of Aaron Edwards who has made it available under the creative commons license – thanks Aaron!

Update 4/19/2010 – Find your own superbowl wine by tasting blind

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.

Extracting Juice With Sugar

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Crushing and pressing is a great way to get juice from most berries, but this isn’t a one size fits all approach. Sugar extraction is a good way to “juice” hard fruits and vegetables. To do this, cut up the fruit/vegetables into 0.5 inch (1.25 centimeter) pieces and cover with sugar.


Dry Sugaring Rhubarb


In the photo, I’ve covered about 3.9 lb (1.8 kg) of rhubarb with 1 lb (450 g) of sugar. The sugar draws moisture out of the rhubarb, and in a few days I strained off this juice. After that, I put the rhubarb back in the bucket and covered with water, as a rinse, and strained again. I’ve used this procedure in making rhubarb wine and apple wine.

Tomato Wine: Defrosted, Crushed, and Pressed

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Collecting Free Run Tomato Juice


I started with about 18 lb (8.2 kg) of frozen cherry tomatoes that came up to the 4-gallon (15 liter) mark of the bucket. After they thawed, I lightly crushed them with a long spoon. That left me with about 2.25 gallons of must, which I loaded into my three-bucket press. A few hours later, I had 1.67 gallons (6.3 liters) of juice. My initial measurements were:

Specific Gravity (SG): 1.024, pH: 4.23, Titratable Acidity (TA): 4 g/L

That ain’t grape juice

Because it will change the volume significantly, it’s best to adjust the sugar first. And it will be a big adjustment. A wine with 12% alcohol starts with juice at an SG around 1.090. Dissolving sugar in boiling water is a great way to sanitize it and make sure it mixes well with the juice. I’ll be adding so much I’m going to concentrated it to an SG of 1.180. That’s close to one part sugar and one part water. Any more sugar and I might have trouble dissolving it.

How much syrup? How much acid?

Ok, if you’ve got 6.3 liters of juice with an SG of 1.024, adding 4.6 liters SG 1.180 syrup should yield almost 11 liters of SG 1.090 juice. That initial 6.3 liters of juice had 4 g/L, about 25 g, of acid. To get 6 g/L in our final 11 liters of juice, we need to add about 40 g. Sometimes pressing takes longer than you think. Sometimes schedules get out of whack. By the time I had my estimates for sugar and acid additions, it was past midnight. I decided to add the acid right away, as that would push down the pH and help protect the juice from spoilage, and go to bed. We’re nearly there, and tomorrow, I’ll pull this all together into a recipe for tomato wine!

Defrosting Tomatoes

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Four gallons (15 liters) of frozen Gold Nugget tomatoes


I finally pulled the 18 lb (8+ kg) of tomatoes out of the freezer. I’ll be making a white wine from them, so once they defrost I’ll press them into juice. Then I can see what I’ve got in terms of sugar and acid, make adjustments, and start fermenting! I say this every season, but I don’t know why I waited so long. While I’m growing and harvesting my tomatoes (and rhubarb and grapes) I can’t wait to make wine from them. Then I get busy. Well, at least I’m starting my 2007 vintage in 2007.

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.