Wino

Had a bit of routine wine work to do today, handy since doing anything outside is totally out of the question.

The Riesling reached the proper SG (.098), and the sediment was starting to settle on its own, as you can see in the picture. If I was patient, I could just let the wine settle and clear, with no additives. It would take a year, but there would be no sulfites in the wine. Sulfites don't give me headaches, and I am not patient.

So, I sanitized a new carboy and the siphon, and put (grunt, heave, strain back muscles) the full carboy on the dining room table, trying not to jostle the sediment too much. Then I racked the wine, leaving about 1" of sludge on the bottom of the old carboy. That sludge was active yeast. The alcohol content of the wine hadn't exceeded it's genetic limit, it just ran out of sugar to eat. If I added it to a new batch of juice, it would be up and bubbling in an hour. If I added more sugar to the riesling, it would be bubbling again as well. In fact, adding more sugar and yeast is how champagne and sparkling wines are made.

I stirred in 1/4 tsp of sodium metabisulfite to kill the yeast, and then gently stirred in 1 cup of Sparkolloid mixture to clarify the wine. We usually use Isinglass, but Northern Brewer said that Sparkolloid was the best clarifier they'd found. I'll be curious to see how well and quickly it works. The last task was topping off the wine to minimize the air space under the fermentation lock (if I had a bottle of home made Riesling on hand, I would have used that, but alas, it's all gone. So I used filtered water). Now we just wait for the wine to clear- that can take 3 weeks or 3 months, or it can take a year, depending on the wine, the clarifying agent, the temp, and whether or not I chanted the proper magic charm when I started this enterprise. We'll rack the wine several times as it clarifies- whenever there is an inch or more of sediment in the bottom of the carboy. When there is no more dropping out, and the wine is crystal clear, it's done. At which time it can be sweetened (if desired) and bottled.

The Hard Lemonade is bubbling and slowly dropping SG (1.050 this morning- it has to be 1.020-1.030 when it goes to anaerobic fermentation). The foam is totally different than the foam on the grape wines, which I find fascinating (I amuse easily). Next up, I think a 5 gallon batch of Merlot, after the Hard Lemonade goes into the carboy.

Socks and Fermentation

We have an odd range of interests in my house...

I finished the Miss Picky Socks, and I love them. Again, it's Twisted Fiber Arts Kabam (wool/bamboo), Minstrel colorway, worked on 2.75mm needles, shoe size 2. If she doesn't like these, I will just buy her socks until her feet toughen up.

The Riesling completed the aerobic fermentation stage this morning. The Specific Gravity was 1.025, so we racked (siphoned) the must from the bucket into a 5 gallon glass carboy. The wine needs to be in an air-tight container for the anaerobic fermentation, but the yeast is not only pooping alcohol (after eating the sugar in the must), it is also farting CO2, which needs to be released (or we'll have a big, messy BOOM). In order to keep the air out, but also allow the release of gasses, a fermentation lock is placed in the neck of the carboy. The liquid in the reservoir keeps air from seeping back into the carboy, while letting the gasses formed by fermentation escape. It's a handy little device- so much better than the balloons that college kids use while fermenting grape juice rotgut in their dorm room closets.

This phase will last until the specific gravity reaches 1.000. The longer the yeast works, the higher the alcohol content of the wine, and the drier the final product. If we were making a Chardonnay, we'd allow the fermentation to continue until the SG was .998, but since Riesling is a sweeter wine, "stopping" the wine, by killing the yeast, will keep the alcohol percentage a little lower but will also leave some residual sugar in the wine.

Wine yeast is engineered specifically to die when the alcohol content is about 12%(regardless of the residual sugar). Bread yeast (which we used on our very first wine making experiment about 20 years ago) will continue to ferment as long as there is sugar in the mix. We made some knock-your-socks-off Crabapple wine that year, lemee tellya.

So now, we just sit and watch the bazillion bubbles (I'm not kidding), and wait a week or two for the SG to drop. After that, we kill the yeast, add clarifiers, and rack the wine to a new carboy, and wait some more while the sediment settles out (remember how clear the Rhubarb wine was when we bottled it?). Lots of waiting in wine making.

Today, I think I'll start a 3 gallon batch of Hard Lemonade. This stuff is just for fun, and there is no clarifying or bottling- it goes directly into the freezer after fermentation and sweetening, to be scooped out later, and mixed with pop, and thoroughly enjoyed.

Winemaking- The Beginning of the Riesling

While we were bottling the ancient Rhubarb wine on Sunday, we started a 5 gallon batch of Riesling. I like crisp white wines like Mueller Thurgau, and dry Chardonnays, but Reisling is my favorite wine (I have a weakness for sweet stuff), and our homemade riesling comes out very well. We have no idea how it ages because we tend to drink it up, or give it away, pretty quickly. But living in Diabetesville means a much lower alcohol consumption, so this wine has an actual chance to age properly.

It's been a long time since we started a wine, and I had forgotten the steps. Luckily, I took obsessive notes back in the Wine Heyday, and with them, it all came back pretty quickly.

As always, any wine making enterprise begins with sparkling clean equipment, which is then sanitized with a food-grade no-rinse sanitizer (from a spritzer). We get our water from an artesian well, which has a heavy mineral content, so we used about 4 gallons of filtered water from the fridge, run directly into a 5 gallon brewing pail (food-grade plastic, purchased specifically for wine making, and used for no other purpose) through a tube, using a high-tech system involving a Fresca can to keep the lever pressed (necessity was the father of invention after my husband stood for 20 minutes, manually holding the lever).

While the water ran into the pail, I *started* the yeast by stirring a packet of wine yeast into a pint jar with a cup of warm no-preservative apple juice and 1tsp of Yeast Nutrient. That mixture was covered with a cloth and set aside, to let the yeast wake up and activate (wine is yeast poop- by the way. Alcohol is the by-product of the yeast's sugar consumption).

To the water bucket, we added: 2- 46oz cans of Alexander's Sun Country Emerald Riesling juice concentrate, 5 cups of sugar, 2 more tsps of Yeast Nutrient, and 10 tsps of Acid Blend (a specific blend of acids for wine making), and stirred vigorously to dissolve the sugar. We then tested the specific gravity of the mixture with a hydrometer. The SG was 1.080, which is exactly where it's supposed to be.

We warmed the bucket warm to room temp with the help of a blanket and a heating pad, and stirred in the yeast starter. Wine yeast is not bread yeast, but it's still yeast- it likes warmth.

After that, there was nothing to do but sit back and wait for fermentation to begin. By the next morning, the top of the must (the juice/sugar/yeast mixture) was covered with bubbles. All we do now is keep the bucket lightly covered (this is the aerobic portion of fermentation, it needs air), stir it once a day, and test the SG periodically.

This morning, it was foaming merrily away. The SG was 1.065. When the SG reaches 1.030 (tomorrow, or the day after, I suspect), we'll rack the must from the bucket, into a 5 gallon carboy, for the anaerobic fermentation phase.

It's an amazing process. Expense so far: 2 cans of Juice concentrate at $18@, about $3 in sugar, and maybe 50 cents in other ingredients. We'll get about 24 bottles of wine from this batch, at around $1.64 @.

And I am in the winemaking mood now, so after the riesling goes into the carboy, I am going to start a 5 gallon Merlot batch. I ordered a can of Muscat concentrate for a 3 gallon batch of sweet wine. And I am going to start a 3 gallon batch of hard lemonade (made college-dorm-room style, with frozen lemonade concentrate. This stuff isn't cleared or bottled, it's frozen as slush. Yummy!)

p.s. If you want to try winemaking, but are leery about assembling all of the ingredients yourself (or raiding the neighbor's rhubarb patch), you can buy winemaking kits, which have all of the ingredients and full instructions for fermentation. The kits, which come in every wine variety imaginable, can run from $80-$180, but you're still only paying $3-$9 per bottle, which is a bargain. Check out Northern Brewer for kits (link in yesterday's post).