Archive for the ‘Wine Making’ Category

There will be lots of potatoes in my diet over the next little while. But being from Northern Ireland, I shouldn’t have any problems with that!

I was in an experimental mood today and thought I’d try a recipe for Potato Wine that I found in a book. But first, I needed to find some ingredients I did not have in hand: Citric acid and Amylozyme. Wasn’t sure exactly where I’d find them but on a hunch which turned out to be a good hunch, I called Bob over at Orangeville Winemakers. Sure enough Bob had the Citric Acid. “Amylozyme?” he asked. “What’s that for?” I told him it was an enzyme used to break down starches. “I have Amylase which does that.”

Yes, the same thing, I think. The book that the recipe is in was published in the UK so some terminology might be different. Now that I knew I could get the ingredients today, I planned on making the wine in the evening. Here’s the recipe for potato wine.

I’ve added a new link to my sidebar – a new blog just recently started by Daniel Pambianchi.

Daniel took time out of his day to comment on my post, “A Bulk Aging Disagreement” and provided some of his thoughts. I’m looking forward to watching Daniel’s blog grow and I’m sure many of us will learn a thing or three from him.

Daniel is the President of Cadenza Wines, Inc. and the General Manager of the Maleta Winery in Niagara-On-The-Lake, Ontario. One of their wines, a Riesling, won Silver at a major competition last week.

As well as being the Technical Editor for WineMaker Magazine, Daniel has written “Techniques in Home Winemaking: The Comprehensive Guide to Making Chateau-Style Wines” and another book that should be of interest to home winemakers wanting to improve their skills with making wine from kits, “Kit Winemaking: The Illustrated Beginner’s Guide to Making Wines from Concentrate”

Welcome to world of home winemaking blogging, Daniel!

Daniel’s blog is here.

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!

Some data that may or may not be of interest to anyone. The KenRidge GSM Kit that I started on March 8th has been showing some very vigorous fermentation. I decided to stir and press down the grape skin pack and noticed immediately the warmth coming off the pail.

Not a full two days, probably about 18 hours since I started the wine:

Specific Gravity: 1.049
Wine Temperature: 82F
Air Temperature: about 70F

The yeast is generating a lot of heat.

I’m expecting a special event to happen in the future. I don’t know when exactly, but it will be more than a year. Perhaps two. Perhaps three. When it happens, I want to have my own home made wine for those who attend.

One of my favorite wines is the La Fiole du Pape Chateauneuf-de-Pape. It’s not just the interesting bottle, but the wine itself is a wine I enjoy very much. It has been part of a few special occasions in the past year. While I will not duplicate this wine, I want something close to it.

La Fiole du Pape is a blend of four different grape varieties from the Chateauneuf-de-Pape AOC:

80% Grenache
7% Syrah
7% Mourvédre.
6% Cinsault

I discussed this with the owner of Winemakers, Bob Collins. After some thought and consideration, we decided that it would be best to make wine using two different wine kits. Unfortunately, we don’t know the exact ratio of the grape varieties in the KenRidge Ultra Premium “Founder’s Series,” but there is a kit that contains a blend of Grenache, Syrah, and Mourvedre. According to Bob though, this wine on it’s own can have some bold leather tastes that some might not enjoy, probably from the Mourvre.

In order to soften that boldness, I’m going to make another batch of Grenache, a Cru Select Australian Bush Vine Grenache. After both batches have fully fermented, I will blend them together and allow them to bulk age together. It would be nice to source some Cinsault, but I haven’t found any yet.

The GSM kit comes with Lalvin EC-1118 yeast, which I will use, but I’m also going to add a packet of Lalvin Bourgovin RC 212.

Several years ago when I visited Scotch Block Winery, I had a chat with their Winemaker Fred Bulbeck. Based on some things we talked about, I came up with this recipe for Blackcurrant Wine. If you look at the recipe, it calls for two different yeast strains, EC1118 AND D254.

That blackcurrant wine turned out absolutely incredible. I wrote about it here. I regretted that I had made only 3 gallons of it.

I mentioned to some that I had co-inoculated the juice with two different strains of yeast and there were some funny looks. I’m no expert on yeasts, but it turns out that there is evidence to show that using two different strains of yeast when making wine can produce benefits that aren’t available when using only a single strain of yeast.

The Australian Wine Research Institute conducted a study on the use of co-inoculation on a Sauvignon blanc variety. Their conclusion:

“Co-inoculations, using both VIN7/QA23 and the Anchor Alchemy yeast combinations, have enhanced chemical and sensorial aroma profiles when compared to single yeast strain fermented wines and blends of the latter single yeast strain fermentation wines. This phenomenon is most likely due to metabolic interactions between wine yeasts (Howell et al., 2006). At the moment very little information is available about the metabolic interaction of various wine yeasts during fermentation. Researchers at the AWRI are currently involved in generating more information about possible yeast-yeast interactions during wine fermentation.”

The study was published in WineLand Magazine and reproduced for the Internet here.

This evening, I checked the specific gravity of the Winery Series Old Vine Zinfandel that I started last week. Yesterday, the SG was 1.031.

This evening, the reading was 1.018 – good enough for me to rack into the secondary carboy. Before doing so, the bag of grape skins was squeezed and squeezed to get every drop of juice that I could out of it. This will maximize the colour and tannin extraction.

I don’t top up at this stage. I’m not worried one bit about air in the headspace as the fermentation is continuing and whatever air was in there has now been replaced by Carbon Dioxide coming out of the wine and escaping through the airlock. When I do rack again, it will be into a Mexican 5 Gallon carboy which are stouter and shorter than the other ones I have. They seem to require less water or wine to top up and must have a bit less total capacity.

Other than sometimes being hypnotized by watching the airlock bounce up and down, I’ll not give this Zinfandel attention for about another week. At that time, I may take a specific gravity reading out of curiosity, but that’s about it for about two to three weeks.

I was thinking I might rack the Zinfandel that I started six days ago from the primary fermenter to a carboy. But, the Specific Gravity is 1.031, so it will be at least another day before I’ll rack. I want the SG to be below 1.020.

Speaking of racking, I’ve noticed quite a few searches done on how to siphon or rack wine. I’ve written an article with instructions on how to start a siphon available here: “How To Siphon And Rack Wine.”

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.

More than four years ago, when my “wee man” was less than two years old, he began to play a guessing game that he still plays from time to time today.  It doesn’t hold quite as much fascination for him as it did when he was 18 months old, but he still has fun with it.

He’d fill a glass or some other container with water, and then find different things like marbles, acorns, pieces of wood, crayons – whatever he could get his hands on, and say out loud, “Sink or Float?” Then he’d try to guess what would happen when he dropped whatever item he had into the water – then clap his hands with a big smile on his face when he predicted correctly. Most of the time, he predicted correctly.  He was quite confused though when I showed him how he could make a pin “float” on water – when he dropped the pin, of course it would sink.

Yesterday, I started a RJ Spagnols Winery Series Red Zinfandel.  It came with 5.5 pounds of crushed grape skins which was put into a straining bag included with the kit, and then add to the juice before you pitch the yeast.  When I first added the bag of skins, it dropped to the bottom of the primary fermenter and stayed there for over 12 hours.  I stirred the must earlier today and the bag was still at the bottom.

This evening, I stirred the must again, and this time the bag of skins was floating on the top.  I wished the “wee man” had seen both the fact it had first sunk, and then later floated.  I wonder what he would have thought.

I’m still thinking about it myself, and I’m sure there is an obvious explanation, but I’m too tired to think much about it tonight.