Archive for September, 2005

Many home vintners and home zymurgists don’t know about the single most important ingredient available for use in their home brews. I’m talking about liquid yeast.

Liquid yeast is cultured in labs at all of the major labels. It is propagated from slants sometimes dating back to Pasteur himself. A slant is is simply a bacterial culture. Yeast eats the nutrient rich agar in a culture glass or test tube. Commercial enterprises have taken cultured yeasts specialised for particular beer styles or a grape and made available to the home brewer a simple pure yeast culture to pitch into their creations.

I use Wyeast Labs, not out of any preference, but because fresh packs are available locally from Paddock Wood where I get all of my brewing supplies.

Liquid yeast can be propagated from a single yeast cell. It is as pure as it can be. Dry yeast while much more numerous in active yeast cells, suffers from impurities. Liquid yeasts have much more choice compared to dry yeasts. As Ian is a wine maker, and as an example of the variety of wine yeast strains, here is a listing of Wyeast Labs available wine yeasts.

Liquid yeasts are not hard to use . . . and the added advantage is that if you take proper precautions, a few simple steps can extend the life of the yeast through more then a few generations of brew. That’s something unheard of with dry yeasts. I’ll talk about that at a later date. As a hook, my latest lager is the fifth lager I’ve done with this yeast.

Yeast is the single greatest ingredient to beer and wine. The
malts and juices provide the basis, but the yeasts create the
flavours, the alcohol and the balance. Proper yeast selection
can make or break the quaff-ability of a drink. Take some time
selecting the proper liquid yeast and you’ll notice the
difference.

As a computer kind of guy, I enjoy the art of hacking. Contrary to how the media has portrayed “hackers,” hackers are in fact good guys. The bad guys are “crackers.” A hacker is someone who experiments, plays around, learns new things, tries to find different ways to do something.

I guess I’m now officially a wine hacker too. I’ve searched around to see if there is anything I can do to save my Baco must that had already fermented with wild yeast before picking it up. I have not been able to find anything. I have no idea if I can do anything with it that will turn it into something enjoyable, but I’m going to try a couple of different things:

One pail, I’m going to simply let nature take its course – IF the wild yeast are robust enough to continue fermenting what is there.

The second pail, I’ve decided to referment. This is the pail of juice that when I arrived home, I immediately added sulphite to in order to weaken or kill off any wild yeast before I realized the stuff had already fermented. So, I added enough sugar to bring the specific gravity up to 1.070, added three teaspoons of yeast nutrient, and then mixed in a package of champagne yeast.

So, we’ll see what happens with wine hacking!

As mentioned in this post, I was quite disappointed with the fact that my Baco juice I ordered from Lakeview Cellars had already fermented by the time I picked it up.

I spoke with the store manager, Bonnie and after going through her records, agreed that there was no record of Lakeview calling me in time to pick up the juice while it was still fresh. Lakeview did the right thing and has agreed to refund me the money I paid for the juice.

Kudos to them!

I do have a couple of ideas so that hopefully the Baco juice won’t be a total write-off. I have two pails; one I’m going to find out the results of letting nature take its course. We’ll find out if the wild yeast of the Beamsville area can produce decent wine.

The second pail of Baco must I’m considering refermenting by adding sugar to bring the specific gravity back up and then adding my wine yeast. I have no idea if this is a worthwhile excercise, but it will only cost a couple of pounds of sugar and 75 cents for yeast, and of course the space of the pail for now.

Next week, Lakeview better call me asap when the Reisling is harvested! I don’t want my juice sitting for a week, that’s for sure.

More about my day yesterday and how much I enjoyed the “adventure” with my 3 year old son. For now though, I must say I’m quite disappointed.

I drove down to Lakeview Cellars yesterday to pick my Baco Noir must that I had ordered from them.

I was so excited about this; making wine from the fresh must instead of a “kit.” This year’s crop was supposed to be a great crop, quality wise. Here’s the sequence of events:

September 18 – Received a phone call from Lakeview advising me that this was a “heads up” call. The Baco was scheduled to be harvested shortly. I was told it depended on a variety of factors including weather. I was told I would also receive another phone call to let me know exactly when it would be harvested, but it might be an idea to think of a trip to the cellar over the coming weekend. But don’t come if I haven’t received that second phone call.

September 26 – The weekend had come and gone, and as I wanted to plan my week, I called Lakeview for an update. I spoke with a fellow who told me that he thought the Baco was coming off the field “tonight” but would have someone else call me back.

Later that day, I received a message from someone else at Lakeview that my Baco was ready.

September 28 – I drive down to Beamsville to pick up my Baco. I drive home. I bring in a pail of the stuff, strain some juice and measure the specific gravity. “Huh?” I ask myself. The reading is 1.014. “Am I supposed to add sugar to this stuff?”

Last night, I post a message in the active newsgroup, rec.crafts.winemaking, about this. Tom S., replies and suggests there is either something wrong with my hydrometer or that the must may have already started to ferment.

I double check my hydrometer against water and other wines I have on the go, and it seems fine. I taste the juice… interestingly it doesn’t have much of a fermented smell – but it sure doesn’t taste like fresh sweet grape juice.

I think someone at Lakeview Cellars screwed up. In fact, I’m pretty darn sure of it. I have a telephone that records incoming calls, and keeps a log. There are only two calls listed from Lakeview – the “heads up” call on the 18th, and then the call on the 26th after I had called them.

I also have a “redundant” voice mail answering system here as well – in case my power should go out and my internal voice mail not work for some reason, Bell Canada’s voice mail will pick up. There were NO messages at any time on either voice mail from Lakeview.

So it looks like I’ve got 40 kg (over 80 pounds) of half fermented Baco Noir that was supposed to be from one of the highest quality crops.

Blah.

If you read my blog back in July, you may recall that I started a blueberry wine from this recipe. About a week after starting, I racked into a one gallon carboy and since then, it’s been patiently (or perhaps I’m the one who has had the patience) aging and fermenting.

Since it’s been about two months, I decided to rack it yesterday, which gave me the opportunity to have a wee taste as well. Wow! It is already quite lovely – although I only had the tiniest of a sip, I can hardly wait to try it when it will supposedly be even better in about six months from now.

I let Wendy have a sip too. Her eyes opened wide and declared that it was the most different thing she has ever tasted, yet something she wanted to have more of in her mouth to savour. She’ll have to wait for that.

I also racked the raspberry wine as well. The wine itself is quite clear except for some continued bubbling going on with CO2 gasses escaping. The raspberry was not as impressive in taste – in fact, it quite tasted like raspberry juice still. I have faith it will improve with more aging however.

If you are interested, the specific gravity came for the blueberry was 0.990 and the raspberry 0.994.

I also added a crushed campden tablet to each gallon.

Wendy says I must make try making five gallons of the blueberry! Five bottles just won’t last very long, she threatens.

Yes, all you wine lovers – I admit I enjoy a good cold one every so often as well. And making your own beer is almost as fun as making your own wine. Well… that’s not totally true, at least the way I’ve been making it.

Some folks like Lance at Catprint In The Mash go all out with their beer making. I’ve only used kits which contain all the ingredients mashed up, and ready to be mixed with water.

The last batch of Canadian Red style beer is gone, having been drank by all my friends. I think I had two bottles total. I’m going to be starting a new Canadian Red beer in the next day or so – today I bottled a Cooper’s lager.

I do have to bottle some Liebfraumilch shortly, as well as rack Gewurztraminer. A Pinot Noir will also be ready for bottling any time soon – but I just may let it age a while longer.

I also received a phone call this week from Lakeview Cellars to let me know that the Baco Noir is being harvested this week. That means a trip to Beamsville to pick up the 40 KG of must I ordered a few weeks back! I’m looking forward to that, probably on Sunday.

Now, I’m not really whining about too much work – it pays the bills, helps me buy additional carboys and will pay for a trip out west later in the year – but it has put a bit of a dent on my winemaking the past week.

I did start a Gewurztraminer as well as a light beer earlier in the week, so I’ll have something to look forward to checking out this evening when the rush slows down. I also want to get to bottling my Shiraz that’s been waiting, and possibly another Valpolicella. Can you tell I like Valpolicella?

More soon!

I suppose it was bound to happen sooner or later. The dreaded smell of vinegar. I suppose I should rephrase that – vinegar itself is not so bad – except when the goal was lovely wine.

Back in July, I bottled some Valpolicella. It was quite good, new and although I gave a lot of it away (which I hope was drunk fairly quickly), I thought I’d keep a few bottles and age them longer before consuming.

I also kept a reserve bottle – the very last one of the batch which had some lees in it, in the fridge. I thought I would use it to top up a future Valpolicella. Today was that day. I went to the fridge, uncorked the reserve bottle, and of course, smelled it.

I wasn’t sure if I really was detecting a light vinegar or asectic acid smell – so I decided to taste it. Sure enough, although not overpowering, was that distinct taste of vinegar. But it was a very very light taste. So light, I thought maybe it was just me. So, I took the bottle upstairs to Wendy, and said, “Mmmm.. you should taste this!” I thought if I gave her the impression there might be something wrong, she’d taste something wrong.

She had a sip of it, looked at me, and said, “Well, at first it’s very nice, but there’s a funny aftertaste, almost like… vinegar!”

So that confirmed it wasn’t my taste buds playing games. I went and opened one of the bottles I had aging on its side, and sure enough – I could detect the same subtle smell – not strong like a bottle of vinegar you’d buy in the store, but unpleasant enough that I didn’t want to sit down with a glass of the stuff.

I imagine somewhere along the way, bacteria entered the wine either before or during bottling. It was good the first six weeks after bottling though. I thought I had taken very good care to ensure sanitization of everything, but I suppose sometimes, it pays to make sure you over sanitize if necessary, and then rinse.

But all is not lost. I’ve ended up with something I can cook with, or perhaps even try making Switchel or Shrub.

I think I’m getting the hang of the Fizz-X tool for degassing wine. I’ve done a couple of batches now and have had more success. I think this is due in part to using a fresh battery in my drill!

The first couple of times I used it, I didn’t get the results that I had imagined I would, however after using a fresh battery, pulling the trigger on full blast and letting it spin away, I was impressed with the foamish bubbles that began rising to the top. A lot more than I ever got with vigorous shaking or stirring.

I racked my Shiraz this evening, and am hoping to bottle tomorrow. I’ve got a friend coming and I’d like her to sample some of my new wine. She’s a red wine drinker and I think she’ll be impressed. At least I hope

It was a busy winemaking day for me today. First, I spent some time in an enjoyable chat with Bob Collin, the proprietor of Winemakers here in Orangeville. Bought some stuff including a couple of used 19 litre glass carboys. I also picked up another can of beermaking stuff – thise one from Australia.

Later in the afternoon, I decided to check the specific gravity of the Red Currant wine I recently started. It was at 0.102, so I decided to rack it. What a brilliant colour of red it is. Not a deep red like red wine from grapes, but a lighter but brighter colour red.

Of course, I had to have a little taste. Boy, Jack Keller is right! That stuff is tart. At the same time though, there was a pleasantness beyond the tartness, so perhaps we’ll end up with something that in about a year or two from now will be quite enjoyable. When I think about it, I’ll take a picture and upload it, and hopefully nothing in the colour will be lost in the image.

I also racked the Liebfraumilch, the Granache, and the Festa White that I have. The Liebfraumilch is from a four week kit, so I also stabilized it, added Isinglass, and used the Fizz-X to do some degassing. There was a lot of foam that came up while degassing, hopefully this tool will solve some of my degassing issues.

Of course, I have a bunch of pails I now need to clean. I think I’ll leave them until the morning.