Follow Up Warning To Increasing The Alcohol Level In Your Wine

I received a very insightful reponse to my most recent post on increasing the alcohol level in your wine, which I thought I should share with you all as there is a “darker side” to it that you should be aware of!

Mark writes:

“I have a couple comments on your blog post.  First of all, you should add a caution statement about adding sugar into fermenting wine.  It needs to be added very slowly.  The first time I did this, I dumped about 4 lbs of sugar into my 6 gallon primary while it was still actively fermenting.  WOW what a mess.  It foamed up like crazy and overflowed the primary bucket and went all over the floor.  Lesson learned. 
 
The next point is that I have found that adding extra sugar at the beginning has much the same affect if all you want is about 15% alcohol.  If you start with a brix of about 30-32 I usually end up with at least 15% alcohol without having to add sugar a second time.
 
Lastly, there may be a consideration on the type of yeast you use.  Some yeasts will burn themselves out and drown in the alcohol when it gets up around 13-14%.  I have not experimented much with this but I do know that Cote des Blancs has a good tolorance for higher alcohol content.
 
As far as the taste is concerned, you may find that the final RS needs to be higher in the bottled wine if the alcohol content is higher to achieve the same taste as you’d have with a lower alcohol content.  That has been my experience anyway.
 
I hope this information helps.

- Mark”

Thanks Mark – certainly worth mentioning to everyone!

- Scott “The Wine Making Guy”

How To Make Wine From Coca Cola

Have you ever considered making wine from Coca Cola?

I can’t really say I had … at any point in time, but I came across this video on YouTube and it peaked my interest.

See for your selfL

Sounds tempting until you see what happens when he tastes his wine “experiment” …

So what do you think? Something you’d try?

- Scott “The Wine Making Guy”

Great Idea For Labelling Your Carboy During Wine Making

Here’s how the author did it:

Recently, I have had a lot of request about where I got the signs I have on my carboys.   Well I just took some Mardi Gras beads (everyone has some of these around the house) and cut them to about 10 inches.   Then I cut up some thin plastic, which I believe was excess bathroom shower liner I had cut off some time ago.  I made small squares for the labels, and glued the Mardi Gras beads to them.   Then I just used my label maker for the wine type and year.   I kept mine in separate lines so I can don’t have to print out full labels each time.  I’ll just keep them from each type and change the year with each new batch.   If you’ve got a good idea, be sure to mention it in the wine forum where everyone is constantly learning.

I’m typically not as fancy as I write info onto either masking tape or a Post-It Note (see below) and then place that on the carboy

Masking Tape Carboy Label

 

For me these are more functional (and easy to do) but I thought the above idea was pretty cool nonetheless.

How do you tag your carboys when aging your wine?

- Scott “The Wine Making Guy”

Why You Can't Always Assume What Your Wine Is Doing

With a number of batches of wine under my belt I subconciously must have felt that I could “sense” how my current batch of wine was progressing. I quickly found out that this was unfortunately not the case and here’s why!

I started working on a batch of white wine back in November and I made the mistake of rushing through the preparation so that I could just get it done versus enjoying the moment.

The one thing I didn’t cut corners on though was cleaning the equipment, which I had soaking in a pink solution overnight so I was good there.

I added all of the ingredients as I should except for the yeast …

The package suggested that I hydrate the yeast first but I felt it would be fine if I just sprinkled it onto the wine must (as other kits I had done said to do that so I figured I was good to go). 

I tested the S.G. and temperature and everything looked good.

I then added a brew belt to the primary and let things begin.

Now I typically judge how things are progressing with my wine by the yeast smell and the bubbling in the airlock and while there was definitely a yeasty smell after a few days I didn’t see much in the way of bubbling action going on. This was concerning!

I decided to leave the brew belt on for a few more days (due to the lower temperature in my basement) to see if that would help and it didn’t seem to.

Convinced that the fermentation was stuck I went to the local wine making supply store and bought more yeast in anticipation of having to start over again.

The guy at the store suggested that the wine was starved of oxygen so leave the lid on the primary unsealed to let oxygen in – this should help with the fermentation. He also clarified that you typically don’t have to rehydrate dry yeast with kits but you would have to with fruit wine since the since the juice wasn’t balanced for things like sugar levels or acid levels and therefore need a bit of a “kit start”. Thought that was interesting!

When I got home I decided to test the SG before I added more yeast fully expecting it to only have moved a little but was absolutely shocked to find out that the fermentation was completely finished! That’s right, it had feremented from 1.08 all the way down to 0.998 but had done it really “discretely”.

I absolutely couldn’t believe it! So just when you think you can sense how well your wine is doing, it’s best to get the real picture of what’s going on by double checking with some simple measurements like SG.

Certainly a lesson learned for me!

On a side note:

I had left the yeast packet in my jacket pocket and only realized this after I had put my jacket into the washing machine that was set to use warm water. Luckily I remembered this early on in the washing process and I can only imagine how my clothees would have smelt after being washed in warm water and yeast after 30 minutes …

Can You Use RO Water in Wine Making?

I have a wine making friend and colleague (Greg) who I know through a local business group. He owns a local environmental company (Douglas Environmental Solutions) and he specializes in mold remediation as well as water quality.

At one of our meetings we discussed the use of reverse osmossis (RO) water for wine making as he makes wine himself and has access to this kind of water.

I’ve heard a lot of different opinions on water but here’s the general consensus. You could use tap water with wine kits but you risk having a chlorine taste in your wine. One thing you could do is let your water sit for 24 hours so the chlorine evaporates but then again you need to leave this open to the air so bugs could get in it. You could also filter your water but that’s a pain in the butt too. The best type of water to use is clean spring water as it has just enough trace elements in it that the yeast can use them as food.

The problem with RO treated water is that it’s “dead” so the yeast won’t have access to some minerals to act as food. I recently read that if you used RO or distilled water you could bolster the water with yeast nutrient so technically could use it.

You could use RO water to rinse your equipment (if you wanted to find a good use for the water) as RO limits adding bacteria or germs to the equipment after you’ve cleaned and sterilized it.

Here’s a good article that I found for you that can explain it in further details:

http://www.grapestompers.com/articles/winemaking_water.htm

Greg asked the author of the above article at GrapeStompers.com to clarify his position on water used in wine making and here’s what he said:

Using RO or distilled water to dilute a concentrate makes real sense to me as you are replacing what was removed. I don’t recall ever saying to add minerals to wine must as a general practice. I suspect the effect of using tap water is small unless your water is heavily mineralized with calcium.

Calcium can precipitate out tannins affecting taste and color. For example, if calcium carbonate is used to remove acid in grape must or wine, a lot of color and other flavors go down with the precipitate.  This is just like that soap scum you get around bathtubs in hard water areas and with real soap. Using un mineralized water makes sense, but I wouldn’t pay the shipping costs, just go to your local supermarket and get ozonized RO. I don’t know if chlorine (or now chloramines) will have any effect, as there is so much else that is oxidizable in the must, it will probably not affect the yeast.

BTW the best way to reduce acid and not affect the wine is to use potassium bicarbonate and then chill the wine to remove the potassium bitartrate as crystals (wine stone).

There are plenty of minerals (potassium, etc) in the grape juice to supply the yeast and the weak acids (tartaric and malic) buffer the pH, so the yeast stay within their desired pH range for fermentation.

With meads, these minerals are not present and pH control becomes more difficult as there are no weak acids in sugar or honey and leads often to stuck fermentations as the pH drops out of the operating range.  In this case, adding potassium or (less desirable) sodium carbonate  periodically during the fermentation to maintain a pH around 4 or above will cause the fermentation to finish in the same time range as wine. Beer also benefits from minerals as this can affect the after taste (dry, bitter, round, etc), but there are plenty of weak acids in most beer worts.

So I guess using RO water is that bad after all …

What type of water do you use in your wine making and what’s your opinion on the subject?

Leave your comments below!

- Scott “The Wine Making Guy”

How To Make Wine With Your Old T-Shirt

When I make wine and have a full carboy out in the open I always wrap it in an old towel (in this case, an old “Les Miserables” beach towel we weren’t using anymore).

The main reason I do it is so that the natural light coming in from the window doesn’t interfere with the wine.  If you don’t do this you could fall prey to the following:

1. The colour of your wine could fade
2. The heat from the light could cause temperatures of your wine must to go up and down throughout the day.
3. The UV light could damage your wine

I’m sure you’ve heard that you should store your wine in a cool dark room and not use clear bottles for your wine and this is why.

I was reading the December 2008 – January 2009 edition of WineMaker Magazine and saw a great idea, which I wanted to pass along. It basically takes my idea and gives a bit of a nudge.

Instead of using an old towel Scott Freedman from http://homemadewine.wordpress.com/ suggested using an old t-shirt instead.

It sounded like a great a idea so I gave it a try this evening and it works perfectly!

Think about it, the hole for the head fits nicely over the neck of the carboy (we wrapped it around the neck) and a large shirt is long enough/wide enough to fit around a 23-litre carboy.

Give it a try and let me know what you think!

- Scott “The Wine Making Guy’

How Do You Clean Your Wine Making Equipment?

I was asked the other day how I clean my wine making equipment so I thought this would be a good topic for my “question of the week” as I’m sure there are others curious as well. So here’s what I do to keep the germs off my winemaking gear:

I call it the “Double Whammy”!

Step 1 – Pink Solution (Sani Brew)

It’s comes as chlorinated pink powder that you dissolve 3.5 g per litre of cold water (5 tsp. per gal). Soak stained equipment up to 48 hours. Rinse thoroughly with hot water. Because it’s a chlorine product you want to be careful with stainless steel equipment and you’ll also want to make sure you rinse really well. I like soaking my wine and beer bottles in it for several days to clean all the “gunge” out of them, especially if they’re used. It’s also great for removing stains from your equipment (especially your primary).

Step 2 – MetaBisulphite spray down.

This is a good sanitizer as well but doesn’t clean like in step one hence why I do both.  I use a spray bottle like the one below as it really helps get you good coverage.  The nice thing about the MetaBisulphite solution is that it is reusable for up to a month.  Note that it has a strong sulphur smell so use it in a well ventilated area so you don’t irritate your lungs.  I typically rinse my equipment after using it but some people just let their equipment drip dry as it won’t be a bad thing if it gets into your wine as it will help prevent oxidization.

Anyhoo, that’s basically what I do to clean my equipment.

Oh … one thing you might want to do is go to your hardware store and invest in a short garden hose that you can attach to a tap as this’ll help you clean your primary and secondary.  I was able to pick one up that was about 6 feet long with one end open and the other with the tap connector. I’ve used it for years and it makes things really easy. Make sure that you clean this out first (i.e. in step 1) so that you clean out any bugs that might be lurking in it as well.

If you’re interested in some more details on how to clean your equipment here are two good resources for you:

• http://www.clickabrew.com/cn-0903.html (scroll down the page and look for “Cleaning & Sanitising your Winemaking Equipment”
• http://www.eckraus.com/Cleaners_-and-_Sanitizers.html (an online store where you can buy some of the sanitizers)
• http://www.grapestompers.com/sanitation.asp (lot’s of great detail here)

If you have any interesting cleaning methods please share below!

- Scott

Suggestions On How To Carbonate Your Beer, Sparkling Wine or Wine Cooler

I spend much of my time degassing my wine, however, one of my readers asked me today how she can add carbonation to her wine so that she can make a sparkling wine.

Here are some quick suggestions that I gave her:

1) Champagne and beer are actually carbonated in the bottle (for champagne it is called “methode champenoise”) so if you wanted to go the natural route so you could add corn sugar to your wine must just before you bottle your wine. This will restart the fermentation thereby naturally carbonating your wine/beer. I make beer in addition to wine and this definitely works.

For example, for a 23 litre batch of beer I would prepare a “primer syrup” by dissolving 3/4 cup of dextrose (corn sugar) in 2 cups of boiling water. Pour the syrup into a primary then rack the beer/wine must into the primary then gently stir the mixture together. You can then rack the must into your bottles and allow 2 weeks carbonation from there. If you want more carbonation add more sugar, add less sugar for less “bubbly”.

2) You can also use a carbonation system such as the Tap-A-Draft that carbonates your wine/beer in the container by adding pressurized CO2 similar to a beer kegging system. I’ve actually seen this one in one of our local wine supply stores and it’s pretty slick. Basically it adds a tap with two carbonation “taps” where you insert a small CO2 cannister (or one CO2 and one Nitrogen cannister if you’d like to have finer bubbles for say a stout style beer). Instead of a metal keg you get an oversized slender plastic bottle (similar to a two litre pop/soda bottle) They are sized to fit nicely in your fridge so that you can easily “tap your keg” and get a drink, while keeping the whole system cold. Typically takes about 5 days from the time you fill your bottle and add the carbonation tap to fully carbonate your beer/wine or wine cooler.

It’s a cool system but isn’t cheap. Expect to spend $50+ on the tap and then another $20+ per bottle.

You can go to http://www.sturmanbg.com/products/beverage_dispenser.asp to learn more.

If you have a different sneaky trick to carbonate your wine, beer or wine cooler please do let me know!

Scott “The WineMaking Guy”

P.S. Here’s an interesting article from WineMaker Magazine that goes into greater detail on how to make sparkling wine that is worth reading if you’re interested in learning more:

www.winemakermag.com/departments/288.html

Why Rack Your Wine During The Aging Process?

My goals this weekend were two-fold:

1) Celebrate “Earth Hour” on Saturday – which my wife and I did indeed do (hope you did too)

2) Get caught up on all of those wine making activities that I haven’t had time for over the last several weeks (and I know I’m not the only one in this boat …)

This mainly included:

- Cleaning out our pantry in the basement under the stairs so that we had a nice, dark and cool space to age our wine (we like to “bulk age” our wine in the carboy so that the batch has a consistent flavour)

- Racking our current batches of wine that are in the aging process so that I could get them into our new found “aging room”

I am pleased to say that for the most part I was successful in achieving my goals this weekend, but the experience was even more satisfying then expected as it reminded me of several important things about wine making that I wanted to share with you all.

Why Do We Rack Our Wine During The Aging Process?

Well, the most obvious reason is to get rid of the sediment at the bottom of the carboy as it helps clear the wine ensuring that there is less sediment in the bottle. Now of course if you are a proponent of filtering your wine this is less of an issue for you, but I’m of the mind that if you age and rack your wine properly you really don’t need to filter your wine. This is a personal opinion of course ….

The other (and often forgotten reason) is that racking your wine allows for a little bit of oxygen to be added to your wine, which in fact allows your wine to “breath” – much like when you decant your wine before enjoying it. This should help your wine develop it’s bouquet and flavours as it ages.

Do I Need To Add Anything To Wine If I Plan On Aging It For More Then Six Months?

The simple answer is yes. If you would like to age your wine past 6 months you need to add a preservative to stave off oxidization, which will potentially ruin your wine. To do this simply add 1/4 teaspoon of potassium metabisulphate to 1/2 cup of cool water then gently stir this solution into your carboy (this assumes you have 23 litres of wine).

I’ve Racked My Wine And Have An Airspace Left In The Carboy – Now What?

One of the reasons why we use carboys as the secondary and for aging is that it has narrow neck. This is to help reduce the airspace in the container to limit potential contact with oxygen thereby reducing the chance that your wine will spoil.

You’ll notice, however, that when you rack (transfer your wine from one container to the next leaving the sediment behind) that you’ll have less wine in the new carboy then what you originally had. This is simply because the sediment at the bottom of the carboy takes up some of the volume in the carboy, not to mention the fact that you’ll be leaving some of the wine behind from the bottom instead of risking having some of the sediment transfer over to the new carboy in the wine at the bottom.

You will want to top up your wine in the new carboy to within 5 cm of the bottom of the bung, so the question therefore becomes what do you use?

Here’s what I usually use (and I would be curious to hear what you use):

1) Sterile water – in my opinion though this waters down the wine depending on how much you have to add so I have been moving away from using it.

2) Similar wine to the one your making (either commercial or homemade) – it adds a unique, balanced flavour to the wine. This is what I did today with one of our wines we’re making from an expensive wine kit. It is the Stag’s Leap Merlot so I decided to added two bottles of Casa Lapostelle (a medium priced 2006 Chilean Merlot we quite like) with the hope that it will add a complex flavour to the wine. This was a little more expensive then we expected though as the wine we added cost $16 a bottle. So we’re now in for just under $200 for this wine kit so I hope it will turn out well – we justified the extra expense though as we’re still just over $6 a bottle for wine we expect will rival a $30 – $50 bottle of wine.

I’ve also heard of people making a cheaper matching wine kit to the one they’re making to specifically use as a “topper upper”. Interesting idea!

For our chocolate raspberry port I have purchased a cheap blended port to top things up once I rack it.

3) White or red grape concentrate (usually done with fruit wines) – This are usually included in the fruit wine recipes anyways to add a bit of fruitiness and depth so generally not a bad idea although I’ve heard some fruit wine advocates ask why you’d want a fruit wine to taste like a grape wine? Personal preference I guess.

4) Something else – This is where you can experiment a bit. For our crabapple wine, for example, I added two 500 ml cans of Strongbow dry cider and was also considering adding some unsweetened apple juice.

Which ones are right and which ones are wrong? I guess it really comes down to personal taste and you really won’t know how things turn out till you bottle your wine and try it for the first time.

Sometimes you wine and sometimes you lose but at least you can be comforted knowing that chances are you’ll still be able to use your wine in some fashion regardless. This could be as part of your cooking, as a wine spritzer in the summer (i.e. add Sprite or 7-Up to it) or you can even gussy it up with some drink crystals.

Remember to record what you’ve added and how much so that you can replicate your wine again if it turns out really well!

Anyhoo, just some ideas to throw your way this evening.

I’d be curious to know what your thoughts are on racking (i.e. how often during aging), wine filtering and what you use to up your wine during the aging process.

I look forward to hearing from you soon.

- Scott

Do You Have To Add Extra Ingredients To Pails of Juice To Make Wine?

Well I certainly thought so until I received an interesting email from one of my readers the other day, which asked if you had to add ingredients (such as yeast, bentonite and a clearing agent) to a pail of juice like you do with a typical wine kit.

The reason why he was asking was that he has made several batches of wine using pails of juice, which turned out really well (was nice and clear plus had great “legs) and he didn’t have to add anything to it. He did note though that he left the lid slightly ajar during the primary stage so that leads me to believe that the fermentation was caused by natural yeast in the air (which, incidentally was how monks invented wine in the first place).

I asked him to make another batch using a juice pail and add the extra ingredients to see what kind of difference that will make. I’m curious what the results will be!

Have you had any experience with making wine the “natural” way? If so, I’d love to hear from you on how it turned out!

- Scott