Archive for November, 2005

An observation on the blackberry wine I started on the 17th of November. Using this recipe included using Lalvin DV10 yeast.

As I noted the other day, I racked it from a primary into a secondary fermentation vessel 9 days later. After I finished racking, there was no sign of any further fermentation going on and the Specific Gravity was 0.092 – that’s about as dry as it’s going to get, I’m sure.

This is my first use of DV10 yeast and I’m wondering if it always provides such a quick fermentation.

The blueberry wine which I started a couple of days earlier had a starting Specific Gravity of 1.104. Nine days later, the SG was 1.020.

After racking, the blackberry wine also was an interesting colour – very close to a blood red. Mind you, that’s with a lot of “stuff” still mixed in before it starts to settle.

First, hello to AD. I’d like to let AD know that I had thoughts Hope the “Holy Cow” fun goes well with the nephews.

For American readers, they may not be aware that this weekend in Canada is the Grey Cup weekend for our CFL – akin to your Super Bowl – some weeks earlier – but a big weekend nonetheless. And of course, this past weekend has been your Thanksgiving Holiday, and I hope it was swell for you; that you were able to eat lots of turkey, and of course, enjoy wine.

I’m not much into the CFL, although if the Toronto Argonauts were playing, I may have paid more attention. I do know Edmonton beat Montreal, but I found that out AFTER I spent hours on my winemaking hobby this weekend.

Let me refer to my notes while I sip on a young Zinfandel:

If you’ve been following along, I started a blackberry wine on the 17th of November. Interesting to me, the starting specific gravity was 1.092. I used DV10 yeast, and today, just 9 days later, the specific gravity was 0.092. That’s a fast fermentation! It’s interesting because I used DV10 Yeast in my blueberry wine that I started a day or so before the blackberry, the specific gravity when I started was 1.104 and tonight it was only down to 1.020. Activitiy is still going strong in that blueberry wine, and the airlock is bouncing up and down regularly.

Anyhow, I racked the blackberry into a three gallon carboy this evening, and had little left over – with an inch of airspace. I did taste it, and it was nice to the tastebuds but a might tart. We’ll see how some ageing does to that.

Next, I gave my attention to the Riesling I started from fresh Riesling juice back on October 3rd. I ended up with one 23 litre carboy and a 19 litre carboy, with a wee bit left over sealed. I did a little experiment, and added some Vineco Isokleer which is liquid isinglas to the 19 litre carboy, but left the 23 litre to clear on it’s own. The 19 litre has become brilliantly clear while the other carboy has not.

So, I racked both of the Rieslings, and added a package of Isokleer to the larger carboy, had a taste.. “mmm… a touch of sweetness that helps with the high acid level,” and I’ll let that age a while longer before bottling.

Next, I poured myself more Zinfandel.

I then racked and degasssed the four week Chateauneuf-de-Pape (Vieux Chateau du Roi) and had a wee sip which was very yummy.

Who knows how the football game was going by this time.. I still have more wine to take care of, and the Liebfraumilch that I had started a couple of weeks ago had a specific gravity of 0.098 – a good time to stablize and rack, which I did. Topped it up with a about one cup of Riesling.

Then it was time to start my gooseberry wine, which I did according to this recipe. After looking at several other recipes, researching gooseberries, that recipe is what I settled on for three gallons of gooseberry wine.

So that was my “Grey Cup” weekend. With some other errands mixed in, including getting my three year old son new winter boots, having his help with some of the wine racking, and trying to decide when I should bottle the blueberry wine I started six months ago. And the Ginger wine as well… ah, another month of bulk ageing will do them all fine, I’m sure.

When it comes to wine, patience is good. Other things… well.. sometimes I guess you just need to create patience. So how was your thanksgiving or Grey Cup weekend?

One of those all nighters, where you try to do everything all at once, including fixing servers, write love letters (if I had a love to write to, it would be even better), bottle wine, and make room for more wine.

I finally got my Zinfandel bottled – from a cheapie kit so I won’t be planning on ageing it very long – and racked another wine – a kit wine that I plan on writing a review about. Was it worth the money? Well, I’ll let you know shortly.

Still have a few tasks to do, but for now, I think it is bedtime. And I’ll leave you with “Dance Me To The End Of Love.” Good song for bottling and drinking red wine, don’t you think?

Back in August, I had about half a gallon of Granache and 1/2 a gallon of “Festa White” that didn’t fit in the carboys I had racked each into. I also didn’t have any spare bottles or 1/2 gallon carboys but I did have a spare 1 gallon carboy.

I thought, what the heck.. why waste this when I can try something. So, I mixed both the Granache and the Festa White into the one gallon carboy, and have let it age since August.

Last night, I was curious and decided to give it a try. Poured a small glass – it had a very bright appearance. I took a sip, and just about spat the stuff out.

It may have been that my taste buds just would not adjust to this as I had earlier been sipping some Granache which I was enjoying very much. However, I was tempted just to toss the lot of this blend. But I thought I’d get a second opinion, and called Wendy down. Poured her a glass and just asked her to taste it and get her opinion. She asked me what it was, but I didn’t tell her. Boy, that’s trust isn’t it?

She sipped it, and went “Mmmmmm! I like that!” I looked at her funny.

“Really? Seriously?”

“Yeah, what is it? It has a nice feel in the mouth, and I like the taste,” she replied.

I told her what it was, and what I had thought of doing with it. But she assured me she enjoyed it, so I won’t be tossing it down the drain.

So either there is simply no accounting for some people’s taste, or it really is a very personal thing, even when it comes to wine. What is one person’s swill is another’s delight. And this brings up an interesting discussion on the annual Beaujolais Nouveau arrival, over at Vinography. I’ve never bought or tried a bottle of Beaujolais; perhaps I should just so that I can offer up something to the debate. And I’ll have to admit that I do enjoy young wines as well as older ones.

I made it in to Winemakers today, and friendly, pretty Debbie asked as soon as I walked in, “Oh, you’re here for your air locks and bungs?”

Someone reads my blog – thanks Bob!

So I picked up a few extra airlocks, bungs and a couple more carboys. Recently Debbie pointed out to me that the “Mexican” carboys, although stouter in shape, have about a half cup less volume than the Italian ones. That is handy for wines that you don’t want to top up very much, so I purchased one of those as well as another 19 litre carboy.

Unfortunately, one of the products I was hoping to get was not in stock – the large size “Hops Boiling” bags.

Basically the same as cheesecloth, but better. At least for my use. What I like about the large size is that it fits tightly around the top of a plastic pail, and then the rest of the “bag” sits inside the pail. This means that when I have a fruit wine like blueberry, I can pour one pail into the other that’s been fitted with the large size hops boiling bag. It catches all the larger size bits of fruit while allowing the juice to pass – and then after, I get in a good wrist workout by slowly squeezing the fruit that is left in the bag, pressing the remaining juice right out of it.

That was my plan for this evening with the blueberry wine that I started last week. I headed over to the grocery store and picked up some cheesecloth, figuring I could rig something up from that, but truly it is not wide enough to work well.

So, I thought I just try racking with the syphon tube. That wen’t “o.k” for awhile, but then bits of blueberry would get stuck in the tube, and it became a pain to try to massage and caress the tube in order to get the flow started again.

After about 30 minutes (yes, the flow was quite slow), and the pail was about a quarter full, I decided to try my funnel with the screen filter. That didn’t work so well, as the filter is so fine, that it got clogged.

So then I used a large hunk of cheesecloth inside the funnel, and poured from the pail into that. That worked, kind of. I finally got all the blueberry wine into the carboy, with of course, some berry pieces in there as well. But that’s ok.

What did surprise me though was the amount of wine I actually had. If you’ve been following my blog, last week when I started this, I used 12 1/2 lbs. of blueberries, which took up quite a bit of space in the pail.

I estimated I’d have to add at least half a gallon, perhaps even a full gallon of water later to bring the total amount of liquid to five gallons.

Not so. The amount of pulp that I took out was relatively small to the amount of space those blueberries took up in the first place. I’m estimating there’s about 1.5 litres of headspace right now in the carboy – which I’m not topping up just yet as the Specific Gravity was a bit higher than I had thought it would be at 1.030 – so I want room for the continued fermentation that I expect.

Anyhow, it was all a bit of a mess, with splashes here and there, a funnel to clean, some kitchen utensils that I also used to press the berries, and two pails later. It also took me longer than I expected so I’ll leave the racking of the blackberry and black currant wines until tomorrow.

I did however rack a 4 week Zinfandel kit, that I’ll bottle in the next few days. I’m going to set aside some bottles for longer ageing so I also added a 1/4 teaspoon of sulphite to that after it was racked. I’ll probably bottle that in about two or three days.

As mentioned in a previous post, I’ve got NO room for even walking in my winemaking area. And I’ve got a bunch of wines that need racking from primaries to secondary carboys.

I’ve got one spare carboy, but no extra bungs and airlocks. Don’t you just hate it when that happens, when you want to do something, but you don’t have the right equipment? Guess another visit to Winemakers is on my schedule.

But I did make a little room, bottling the Granache that I started back in August. 19 litres – just over 24 bottles. It already tastes quite yummy!

Then, I racked the Liebfraumilch I started last week – the specific gravity today was right on 1.000. I used a Mexican style carboy – which are a bit stouter than the traditional Italian style carboys, and about a half cup less in capacity. With that, I didn’t have to top up at all.

So that was my wine making day. Tomorrow, there is going to be a lot more work, as I rack the fruit wines I started last week, pressing the fruit bits and pieces through cheesecloth first. While I think about it, I’m going to just go and stare at the hypnotizing sight of the bubbles and bits of dried elderberry flowers rushing to the top of the carboy of Liebfraumilch while I sip some wine.

Well, after the past few days, I’ve got barely room to stand in my winemaking area. I’ve got primaries everywhere, carboys up on the counter and the floor, and I’ll have to wait a bit before starting anything new methinks. Or else I’ll be put out of the house for taking it over!

In addition to the blueberry wine I started the other day, I’ve also started a blackberry wine and a black currant wine. The blackberry wine was based on a recipe I found in a book, while the blackcurrant wine was mostly based on my own whim after doing some research on blackberries.

The recipes are here:

Blackberry Wine

Black Currant Wine

Most of the black currant wine recipes that I found on the Internet were more for a port style wine, which is not what I want. The one or two others didn’t seem to take into consideration the high pectin content of black currants and the fact these berries have pretty tough skin. We’ll see what we end up with!

I think, for the next week or so, I’ll be monitoring specific gravity levels, doing some racking, and lots of reading. Wendy will be happy – after I clean up the juice spills that seem to be all over the kitchen. It’s a pain when the plastic bag (even though it was heavy duty plastic) decided to leak while I was thawing berries in the fridge. Good thing today is garbage day.

Took a quick peak at the blueberry fermentation this morning – and the DV10 yeast has certainly got a vigorous ferment going on.

The crushed blueberries have formed a cap similar to that of a red wine fermenting with the skins, so I’ll be punching down that a few times a day with the trusty 2X4.

The odour of fermenting blueberries is quite nice. If I were a fruit fly, I’d be attracted to it.

One of those days when I should have had the camera. Well, I didn’t get as much accomplished that I had originally hoped, but in the end, probably accomplished much more in different ways that I hadn’t planned on.

This evening, I had hoped to start about three separate batches of wine, and I began with the blueberry. Now, my three year old son David just loves blueberries. I was wondering what he was going to do when he saw me pour approximately 12 and a half pounds of blueberries into a pail – ah, I’ve got a great little kid! He just wanted to help, and help he did. We made a bit of a mess, but who cares? And more on the mess as well, in another paragraph or two.

I explained to him that I was going to make wine from those blueberries, and he just demanded to help, “I’m a big helper, Dad.” And yes he was.

After we got all the blueberries into the pail, I got out a big old piece of 2X4 and started crushing. David had to help with that as well. So we both smashed that 2×4 down into the berries, splashing as we did, but it was fun. David watches too much “Dora The Explorer” I think; he was saying the Spanish words for “up” and “down” every time we lifted and crushed. The kid is teaching me stuff!

Because I was using this recipe here which was originally made for one gallon, I quintupled the ingredients as I want to make five gallons of blueberry wine this time.

There’s about 10 cups of sugar in a 2lb. bag, but it was more fun to count each cup.. and that was David’s way of helping with that as well. All the way up to 24? Well.. David can count that high, but he got tired of that after about 16 cups. Don’t blame him either.

We mixed it all up, and if you ever need someone to stir and stir, and not stop stirring, even when Daddy says, “Ok, that’s enough stirring,” well give me a call. I’ll be the agent for the best must stirrer there is that never gives up.

At that point though is when I realized I didn’t have enough yeast nutrient, pectic enzyme or acid blend to start the other batches I wanted to start. So David and I took out our “handy dandy notebooks,” figured out what we did have, and stirred what we needed into our blueberry must.

Now, 12 1/2 pounds of crushed blueberries does take up a bit of space in the pail, and even after I press it later, it’s not quite going to make 5 gallons of liquid. With the 4.5 lbs. of sugar that I added, the specific gravity was at about 1.088 – however, after taking into consideration that there is going to be some topping up to do next week, I increased the sugar until I reached a specific gravity of 1.104. I lost count of how much extra sugar I added, but my goal was not really to record sugar quantity, but to get the specific gravity up to a decent level (as far as I could tell) taking into consideration that I’ll be topping up after pressing the berries, probably next week.

Now as far as the package I received in the mail: A few weeks ago, when I went to the Scotch Block Winery and had the opportunity to speak with winemaker Fred Bulbeck, he recommended that I use Lalvin DV10 yeast for blueberry and/or raspberry wines.

I’m no yeast expert, but I like to learn and experiment and take other people’s advice from time to time. And after tasting Fred’s black currant wine, I figured his advice was something I’d not ignore.

So in today’s care package from California was DV10 yeast. I actually bought some in a bulk quantity – so I measured in about 2 teaspoons into a starter solution before adding it to my must.

David helped with the whole process, a few times looking at his own “handy dandy notebook,” and making his own notes as I did in mine. Ah yes.. clean up time.. well, the great little helper never left my hip, as soon as we went to clean up the splashes of blueberry juice on the floor, there was David, taking the paper towels right out of my hand, saying, “Dad, I can do it for you.” Oh, he might have taken about 5 minutes longer than I would have, but he got up every little spot.

Every winemaker needs a little helper like that.

Anyhow, if you’re interested in the actual details, here they are:

Approx. 12.5 lbs. blueberries
Approx. 6 lbs. of sugar
5 tsp. yeast nutrient
7 tsp. acid blend
5 tsp. pectic enzyme
Water to fill up to the near top of my just over 23 litre pail.
2 teaspoons DV10 yeast.

Beginning pH: 3.6 (I’ll likely want to drop that a bit, but it’s real close to the 3.5 upper limit)
Beginning SG: 1.104

5 Hours after I pitched the yeast, there are noticeable signs of fermentation going on.

Say yes to lots of blueberry wine for Christmas in 2007! And a great dad and son team making the stuff. I’ll have to have him help me design some neat labels for this.

I ordered some products from Beer, Beer & More Beer last week, including a variety of yeast strains that my local supplier doesn’t carry. It arrived today, so I’ve taken the frozen fruit out of the freezer, and I need to pick up a few more pails as well as carboys from my supplier, and hopefully later this evening, I’ll have some news for you on what new wines I have started.

I ordered two yeast strains for making mead – one for sweet mead, and the other for dry. It will be my first experience with liquid yeast. One of my clients is a bee keeper, so he’ll be getting a phone call from me shortly with my annual order of honey; this time an additional amount for some mead making experiments.

One of the items I ordered was a three piece wine thief. I have found my original one piece thief to be difficult to clean, so I thought I’d give the three piecer a try. This looks like it will be much easier to clean and will store quite easily in a drawer as well.

And some books! More on those later too. For now, I’ve got work to do.