Archive for the ‘Fruit’ Category

There are a few things about making my own wine I don’t like: Cleaning and sanitizing bottles, trying to figure out where I’m going to store carboys not in use along with wines I’ve just bottled, and being disappointed about something.

Today, I’m disappointed. Very very disappointed. Hey, when you’re a home winemaker, it can happen. You put a lot of time and effort into trying something – wait two or three years, and with much anticipation – you sniff the aromas and put the liquid to your mouth. Will it be as good as you hoped? Was the patience of waiting worth it?

How about this one? “I didn’t make enough!”

Back in 2006, I went to the grocery store and bought a bunch of Kiwi fruit. About nine pounds. Then I followed this recipe. Except, I stopped racking after a year and just let it age in the carboy for another 2 years and 4 months. I bottled it the other day into 375 ml bottles. Last evening, I put a few of those bottles into the fridge to chill. Then I opened one. I smelled. I tasted. I drank. Then another bottle was opened. I tasted. I drank. Then another…

You get the picture.

Heck, even the hangover tastes good. Now, where’s my Milk Thistle?

Oh, I am so disappointed that I only made three gallons. And a few of these bottles are marked already as gifts which leaves me with even less to enjoy over the summer. Kiwi Melomel is something you can enjoy with anything you’d eat that would call for a white wine – but I can also see myself sipping this on a hot day while sitting out in the sun.

I’m off to buy about 40 pounds of kiwi fruit (thankfully, there are three grocery stores in my town. Not sure what they would think of me at Zehr’s buying up ever last Kiwi they have in stock). I’ve got enough honey to do make two five gallon batches. If you enjoy home winemaking, and are thinking about trying some meads – seriously give Kiwi melomel lots of consideration. Tell your friends when you offer it to them that I told you to try it. Your friends will thank me.

For me, learning about how to make wine just never stops. I can remember years ago, making my first wine from a kit and being amazed at the simplicity of home winemaking. Since those first days, I’ve gone on to make many different fruit wines, meads, and yes – the odd time I have made beer as well. My preference remains wine although a cold home brew is nice on a hot sunny summer day.

Today, I was browsing through Daniel Pambianchi’s book, Techniques in Home Winemaking, (my review of the book is here) when I came across a note I had made in it about bentonite. Daniel writes in his book:

“Bentonite inactivates enzymes, and specifically, it should not be used concurrently with lysozyme.”
~ Page 261

Up to this point in time, I’ve never used bentonite in any of the fruit wines I’ve made, but there could be a time when I will. This information was good to know because when you make wines from fruit that are high in pectin, you need to add pectic enzyme to the juice. As those who make jams and jellies will know, pectin is a gelling agent. It’s also present in fruit and when making wine, can cause a haze. Pectic enzyme therefore is used to breakdown pectin. It works quickly but often, a winemaker will add bentonite to the juice before beginning the fermentation process at about the same time pectic enzyme is added. So now we know that we should add the pectic enzyme first and wait a couple of days before the bentonite addition.

P.S. If you want to learn how to make wine other than simply from store bought wine kits, I highly recommend you get Daniel Pambianchi’s book.

Today was Opening Day of the trout season where I am. Some readers will know that as well as making wine, I also am an avid fly fisher. I had plans to go out this afternoon. The weather forecast originally said it was going to be warm and sunny all day – I figured an afternoon and then into the evening might offer some nice results. However, the forecast changed. Instead of the sunshine, we had wild thunderstorms with winds gusting to 100 KM/H (60 MPH). I am not too bad at casting in windy conditions – but that is just nuts. And I certainly don’t want to be out on the water with a long piece of graphite while lightning is striking!

So instead of heading out, I thought I would give my wines some attention. I had meant to do this a couple of weeks ago, but decided on a spur of the moment trip to see Colleen for five days. When I returned, I had a lot of catching up to do on work related activities – home winemaking activities needed to be put on hold.

One thing I’m frustrated about – the GSM is still holding carbon dioxide gas. There were two things today I’ve never seen before – the second one I’ll get to in a moment. But the first one – this GSM that I started March 8/09 still has tons of tiny bubbles coming up when it’s agitated. It’s been in a warm spot for a month, and I’ve never seen a wine hold gas like this.

I also racked the Granache I started about a month ago – it’s tasting very good although of course, young. As readers may recall, my plan is to blend the Granache with the GSM. This evening, I added Kieselsol and then Chitosan which came with the kit. The Granache has very little CO2 in it, thankfully. Maybe sitting in the primary for 9 days does help with degassing.

Do you remember the “Mystery Wine?” There was a LOT of sediment on the bottom of the 5 gallon carboy it was in and I decided to rack it off of that. I ended up racking to a 4 gallon carboy and then there was enough left over to two thirds fill a gallon jug. Now, this was the wine that I had fermentation problems with, and was a bit concerned about it. I had a taste of it this evening – all I can say is that it is wonderful! It’s not much like the blackcurrant wine although it does have some notes in the flavor that were similar – I’m wondering if the berries in the freezer were indeed a mixture of black currant and purple gooseberries. I don’t know. But it sure is a “yummy” wine.

Now, the interesting thing – the second thing today I’ve never seen before: I took a specific gravity reading, and this was below the 0.900 mark. So I don’t really know exactly what the SG is. I’ve never seen a wine go below 0.900 when I’ve made it, previously. The beginning SG of this wine before fermenting was 1.104. I thought it might end up a little sweet – but it’s not. And it does not need sweetening – it’s quite good the way it is.

Too finish things off, I racked the Liebfraumilch as well. It has a nice fruity taste to it – I just had a very tiny sample – and it needs some degassing before adding clarifying ingredients. I was hoping to get to the Potato Wine, but time ran out. If I had more room, I could be doing a couple or more things at once, but right now space is limited. Hopefully that will be resolved soon, and I can get some of these winemaking activities done faster and in less time.

Tomorrow, I should give the potato wine some attention, and then if the weather co-operates, I’ll be wetting some flies and catching a few rainbow trout!

I’ve been seeing advertisements and statements to the effect that some “expert” winemaker will teach you how to make wine for free. Can you make wine for free? Absolutely! But it’s unlikely it will turn out all that great. Nothing is really “free” – so I’ve written a two part series about this.

Part One

Part Two.

Comments and questions are welcome!

The sun is shining brightly outside, and the other day I heard geese flying north. Although it’s still below freezing, warmer weather is sure to arrive. We’ve already had a number of days where the temperature rises to above freezing during the day, but drops below at night. Perfect weather for collecting sap from the Maple trees.

I’ve been thinking of purchasing some maple syrup to try making wine from that, but the price of the stuff is getting out of hand! One litre sells for $29.99 retail. When I was a young boy living in what is now industrial and residential but then was maple trees and farms, we had gallons of the stuff from our neighbours. Those were the days! It was fun to see the sap boiling outdoors in big cast iron cauldrons over an open fire that would be kept going 24 hours a day.

My potato wine has the appearance right now of a medium maple syrup. Not very appetizing as far as wines go. But it will clear eventually. I racked it into a 3 gallon carboy yesterday – it had been 7 days since I started it, and the specific gravity was 1.020.

The “Mystery” wine is showing much better fermentation signs now, although I did forget to take an SG reading. I’ll have to do that later today, and crossing fingers that it will be showing a considerably greater fermentation rate that previously.

Ah, the adventures of home winemaking!

I’ve been monitoring closely my “Mystery” wine that I suspect the the majority of the berries were dark gooseberries, but possibly something else mixed in. It was started on March 11: Ten days ago. At the time, it had a starting Specific Gravity of 1.104. I used Lalvin EC-1118 yeast.

Several days later, I started the Potato Wine. Again, I used Lalvin EC-1118 yeast. It had a starting SG of 1.128. Yet within six days, it was down to 1.026.

After ten days, the “Mystery Wine” SG is 1.042. The fermentation seems sluggish to me. I think it should have been down to this SG several days ago, at least. So I added a 1/2 teaspoon of yeast nutrient, dissolved in about an 1/8 cup of water, to the five gallons of fermenting wine. About four hours later, there is obvious improved activity going on with significant more Carbon Dioxide being created. Was it the yeast nutrient?

Same yeast, same ambient air temperature, different sugar and different base.

March 11th, I started the “Mystery” Berry Wine. At that time, it had a starting specific gravity of 1.104

On March 13th, it was 1.092
Today, March 19th, 1.054. This is after 8 days.

March 15th, started the Potato Wine (using Demerara Sugar). Starting SG of 1.128
Today, March 19th, SG is 1.050. This is 4 days of fermentation.

In both, I used EC-1118 yeast.

Do you enjoy mysteries? Sometimes, I do. It is a mystery to me how this wine I started this evening will turn out. But from the taste of the juice, it just might be very good.

Sometime ago, I purchased what I thought were 2 lb bags of gooseberries. I bought 10 lbs in all, hoping to make some gooseberry wine similar to this one. Except, what I ended up with in those five bags was nothing like the gooseberries I used for that wine. I’m not sure what I have. They do have the appearance of gooseberries in shape. But they are a very dark colour. Darker than the purple gooseberries I’m familiar with. And they were of assorted sizes. The smaller ones looked almost like overly large currants. There were some that were sweet to the taste, and some that had that tart flavor I associate with gooseberries. The juice was a very rich purply red color. I think they might have been some variety of gooseberry that I’ve not seen before, but I can’t say for sure.

I had taken all the bags out of the freezer to make up a five gallon batch, and thought… “Well, what the heck. Let’s get at it.” I know that some people put all their fruit into a straining bag – I’ve done that as well, but sometimes I’ll just liquify the fruit in a blender. Which is what I did. I heated up some water and added sugar to the hot water, in one gallon batches. Added 2 1/2 teaspoons of pectic enzyme. The total amount of sugar I added was 5 KG or about 11 lbs. The starting SG was 1.104 – but that is not exact with some of the fruity bits floating around in there. By the time I had taken the SG, much of the bits had come to the top, so I was able to get a fairly clear sample of the juice to measure the SG.

Pitched some yeast – and let’s see what happens!

Did you know that you can count to about 400 while bottling 5 gallons of wine? Well, if you’re six years old and you get “messed up” a few times and lose track, you can.  Ok, the six year old wasn’t actually bottling the wine, but he was practicing his math skills as he looked at the floor and saw five rows of six bottles and knew I was going to fill thirty bottles.

When I began to fill them, David decided to see how high he could count. So I listened to him go all the way to 400, just as I was finishing up bottle number 30.  He continued on past 400 while we corked the bottles – David putting the cork into the corker, helping me push down on the lever, and he’d be reaching for the next cork as I removed the bottle.

So we did bottle 30 bottles of blueberry wine.  I suppose it will soon be time to try another batch of it and use the EC-1118 yeast instead of DV10.  Perhaps it wasn’t the yeast, maybe it was the blueberries, but this batch is just not as good as what I had before.  But it’s in the bottles and the labels have been printed off,  just awaiting the “wee man’s” colouring skills before we gluestick them on.

I think I’ll also try a blueberry wine with a some sweetness to it.  But before I do that, I have black currants and elderberries in the freezer that are crying out for attention.

If David is around when I start making the black currant wine, I’m sure he’ll be beyond 900 from the time I start to the time I pitch the yeast.

If you regularly read (well, read my irregular posting here), you may remember that I started a blueberry wine back in November, 2005. I commented on it, on April 22, 2006, writing,

“… I used DV10 yeast. The specific gravity this past week was 0.990 – very dry – and I’m not sure I’ll use this yeast again for blueberry wine, but we’ll see how it turns out with more time.

First, the bouquet was not very attractive. Admittedly, I only had a quick, little taste – not a mouthful – but I did not enjoy it nearly as much as I did this blueberry wine. There was something I liked about it, but it didn’t beg for more, if you know what I mean.”

Since April 2006, the carboy has been sealed. I figured I may as well check out this wine and see how it’s been doing, three years later. Today, there was a noticeable improvement on the bouquet. I very much enjoyed what my nose was detecting. However, I’m not convinced it will be as good as the other blueberry wine noted above, where I used a different yeast. This batch fermented using DV-10 yeast.

It just doesn’t seem as bold. However, the first blueberry wine needed some time “in the air” before the full flavours came out so perhaps this one will too. One thing I did notice was too much sulfite. I like to sulfite my wines before racking them, and I figured that after almost three years, the quarter to half teaspoon I put in the five gallons of wine would have at least partially dissipated. So I added just over 1/4 teaspoon before racking today. I don’t think I needed to do that at all. I’ll have to learn more about measuring free sulfite levels in wine.

I’m going to rack it a few times in the next day before bottling it to let some of the sulfite dissipate, keep a bottle to try in a couple of weeks (I’ll give it lots of time to decant before drinking) and depending on how the taste test goes, give away some bottles as gifts and cellar most of it. If the taste test does not go so well, I’ll just cellar all of it – don’t want to be giving good friends lousy wine!