Archive for July, 2005

I picked up an inexpensive Polaroid camera (I cashed in some Airmiles) as I didn’t want to keep travelling with the expensive Nikon while fly fishing and wading rivers. The camera arrived yesterday, and it doesn’t take as good quality images as my Nikon.

I was trying it out, and decided to take a picture of the first Valpolicella wine I bottled last evening. It’s sitting on my desk beside my small fountain pen collection.

I won’t be opening this bottle for awhile. Perhaps after I have perfected making Valpolicella wine, I’ll open it up, or I may just keep it for posterity sake.

I like have 30 (well, I’m down to 28 now) bottles of wine. The total cost was $55.00 Canadian, which means that each bottle of wine was less than $2.00. The quality is as good as any 12.00 Valpolicella in the liquor store.

Great way to by pass the taxman. Make your own wine.

Here’s another view:

For those following my wine making adventures, with all the recent nonsense going on I neglected to mention that I started a new batch – from Raspberries. The recipe for this is basically the same as the Blueberry wine recipe that I started the other day. I’ve noticed that I have visitors that have found their way to this blog using search terms on Google that include “wine making recipes.”

So for the benefit of those, here is the recipe that I used:

3 pounds of raspberries
4 1/2 cups of sugar, mixed into water to produce a gallon
1 Teaspoon of yeast nutrient
1 Teaspoon of pectin enzyme
1 Campden tablet
Yeast

The above ingredients, (except of course for the raspberries, sugar and water) may be obtained at your own local wine making supply store.

Again, this won’t be ready for 6 months or so before I can bottle it. I apologise for the long delay that will occur before I taste this!

Oh, I should mention that indeed I used nylon stocking in which I put the crushed raspberries. The proprietor at my local convenience store did look at me funny when I purchased pantyhose from him, and made some joking remarks at my expense. I think he believed me when I told him what the pantyhose was for.

As mentioned previously, it’s about time to stabilize the Liebramilch and Valpolicella musts. Although not necessary, I decided to rack both wines at this stage as well, as it helps to remove sediment.

First, I started with the white Liebframilch, racked from the carboy into a pail and added Potassium Sorbate. Potassium Sorbate is the salt of sorbic acid, and is used to inhibit further growth of the yeast. In other words, we’re stopping the fermentation process when adding potassium sorbate.

The Liebramilch kit came with a liquid fining agent – fining agents are used to “clarify” the wine, and in winemaking, this is generally made of Isinglass.

The Specific Gravity of the Liebramilch was 0.992, less than what it was two days ago. So I’m looking at quite a dry wine here when it’s finally bottled.

After mixing in the potassium sorbate and liquid isinglass, I racked the wine back into the carboy, topped it up with a bit of water, and we’ll let it sit now for another two weeks. There should be observable clearing of the wine in the next day or two as well.

The same steps were pretty much carried out with the Valpolicella, except that I also added sulphite. Sulphite will help to assure that the wine is “sanitized” so that no bacteria will grow in it, as well as act as an antioxidant. Camden tablets are also available, which are made of sodium metabisulphite. Some people are allergic to sulphites – folks who get headaches after drinking red wine, for example.

Therefore, it’s best to use as little sulphite as possible – one way of doing this is to increase the acidity of the wine with citric acid. The higher the acid level, the less sulphite that is required to do the same job.

If you enjoy red wine, but find you get headaches after drinking it, you just might want to try making your own, and foregoing the sulphite.

The red wine could be bottled in about 7 days from now – the white will be about 14 days. I could also bulk age the red longer (and the white for that matter), but I’ll likely bottle it next week.

Another possibility if I can find more gallon jugs is to bottle some of the red, and bulk age some smaller quantities. I haven’t decided yet

I have a really cool floor size corking tool, which I’ll snap some pictures of next week during bottling.

I was going to start a raspberry batch this evening, but racking 10 gallons of wine, cleaning the carboys, then racking again back into the carboys was enough for me.

I think with the rasbperry, I’ll crush the fruit in a nylon type of bag instead of just mixing in the sugar water solution directly with the fruit like I did with the blueberry batch. It will make it much easier to get the specific gravity readings rather than try to strain the bits of fruit from the liquid. A nylon stocking will work fine for this – I have never bought nylon stockings before though!

I love Valpolicella wines. Masi produces a wonderful full bodied Valpolicella, and even last year, the Ianism winery produced a Valpolicella that was simply awesome. It was so awesome, it never got bottled because every day, there were demands for this wine – so instead of bottling, the Ianism Winery simply siphoned off the wine from the carboy on an “as needed” basis. And with that definition of “need” in mind, the wine was consumed within a month.

I’m not sure that this years Ianism Winery’s Valpolicella will meet with the same quality as last year, nevertheless I am looking forward to letting this one bulk age a bit. I’ll probably rack it tomorrow after racking the Liebframilch and add the stabilizing and clarification ingredients which include Sulphite, Potassium Sorbate, and Isinglass – a fish by product, believe it or not.

Note the very rich red colour. This is one wine that will definitely leave red stains on your tongue if you drink copious amounts of it. After sharing a bottle or two with friends in an evening, my tongue needed a lot of extra brushing while cleaning my teeth to remove the marks.

But if it turns out well, as I’m hoping, it will be a wonderful, rich, full bodied wine that is a pleasure to taste as well as swallow. Yes, I swallow too Red wine, that is

This must was racked on July 3rd, and I managed to clear a lot of dead yeast cells – but if you look closely, and click on the image for a larger one, you might see that there is still a lot of sediment at the bottom as dead yeast cells have sunk.

If you’re looking for a wine to sip while in the company of spirited and robust conversation with friends, you’ll be hard pressed to find something better than a good Valpolicella, in my opinion.

This is an interesting image. The series of images that I’m providing were motivated by the request of Eric, who makes his own beer but has never tried wine.

The reason it is interesting (to me) is because this is a Chamblaise, or “Chablis” that I started yesterday. In previous wine making experiments, I have seen a lot of foaming like the image of the Blueberry must in the earlier post.

When I took the lid off the pail to take a picture of the yeast working on the Chamblaise, I was quite surprised to not find foam on top. This morning, there was a great deal of foam – however, this evening I did see that the must was still “working” as there is much bubble activity going on.

Chamblaise is a new wine style for me, so I’m not sure if the lack of foam on top has something to do with the variety, or perhaps the yeast that came with the kit. I’m interested to know why the foaming seemed to have declined sooner than in other wines I have made. I’m not sure if you will be able to see the bubbles from the image.

This is a picture of my Liebframilch in the Carboy before it has been clarified. I’m not sure if you will be able to see them, but there are still some elderflowers floating around in the must. I spent some time yesterday and today degassing the must, and tomorrow it should be ready for clarification when I’ll add a fining agent as well as Potassium Sorbate to stabilize it.

Unfortunately, my blog software won’t allow me to upload more than one image per post, and although I could go and do it manually, I’m too lazy at the moment.

So, the next bunch of posts will be images, with some descriptions, including pictures of my recent wine making adventures, some forgotten pictures of one of the greatest loves of my life – my wee son David Hugh, and perhaps some fly fishing images.

This first one is an image of mashed blueberries before adding the sugar water solution, the other ingredients, and yeast as I began my attempt at making wine from fruit and not using a wine kit.

Tonight was the night I “degassed” the white wine I had started on the 19th of June. The Specific Gravity measured in at 0.994, so we’re looking at a wine around 10 or 11% alcohol. I have to admit that I did not like the taste of it when I began siphoning it into a primary fermenter for degassing and and adding the Potassium metabisulphite. I’m wondering if the elder flowers in this batch have given it a taste that is too “heavy.” At the same time, it’s not chilled either.. and white wine always tastes better chilled.

But anyhow, I did spend some time on degassing it, and will continue to do so for the next couple of days. I know that for some, it’s a pain to syphon and rack, but I prefer to do that for the next couple of days, at least once per day, as it helps to remove the sediment.

I also started two new batches tonight as well! I’ve finally decided to try making a wine from the berries, and not a wine kit. Ever since I was a kid, I’ve liked blueberries, and I wonder what blueberry wine will be like. So, I bought a few pounds of pure frozen blueberries, followed a recipe I found in a book, and started a gallon worth of blueberry wine. If it turns out enjoyable, for about 7 or 8 bucks, I’ll have about five bottles of wine.

I thawed the frozen blueberries and then mashed them with a potato masher. According to the recipe I have, I made up a solution of 4 1/2 cups of sugar and a gallon of water, then added a teaspoon of “yeast nutrient,” a teaspoon of “acid blend,” and a teaspoon of “pectic enzyme.”

Mixed it all together, then poured it over my mashed up blueberries in my primary fermenter. Mixed that up really well, tried to determine the specific gravity, but I’m not so sure I have an accurate reading as pieces of the fruit were floating in my sample. But from what it read anyhow, I’ll have a wine of about 14 or 15% alcohol. I do think though that the reading was a little high, due to the floaty bits of fruit in my sample.

I’m only making a gallon of this, as I have no idea if I will like blueberry wine, and I didn’t want to make five gallons of something I might not enjoy. This is more of an experiment for me, and even though it will be at least six months before I can bottle it, I thought I’d just make a small amount now, and if I enjoy, I’ll make a larger batch later.

I also plan on trying some wine from raspberries too.

For blueberry wine, according to the recipe I have, about 2 1/2 pounds of blueberries are required. I bought two 600 gram containers of frozen blue berries, and used about one and half containers of them.

Raspberries, for one gallon of wine, seem to require about 3 lbs. of berries.

I also started a white Chamblaise wine this evening, from a Grand Cru kit. I am told this is similar to a Chablis. A wee bit sweet, and goes well with cold food, like cold pasta salad, chicken pasta salad, and similar.

I eat a lot of salad!

Before adding the Bentonite, the specific gravity of this was 1.180. That means I should, if all goes well, end up with a wine of about 11 or 12% alcohol.

I also need to head back to the wine supply store to pick up a new plastic pail and spoon. My long plastic spoon broke this evening, while stirring my Liebramilch while degassing.

I once enjoyed a very nice black currant home made wine. So, along with the raspberry, I want to try both a honey mead and black currant in the next week or two as well. Making wine from the pure fruit takes a good bit longer than from a kit, but this is becoming an enjoyable hobby for me, and now that I have all the equipment and ingredients necessary, I’m looking forward to experimenting, trying new things, and coming up with my own recipes to see how it all turns out.

If anyone wants to help pick dandelions next spring, and pick off the petals, (it takes about 3/4 POUNDS of dandelion petals to make one gallon), let me know. A pound of dandelion petals seems like an enormous number of picked dandelions to me. And of course, I won’t want dandelions that have been treated with weed spray either.

Oh, I forgot about Mullberry wine. Mullberries are similar, if not pretty much the same as Blackberries, and I know a tree that produces tons of mullberries, near a beach on Lake Huron. In August, I’ll try to get out there, and pick pounds and pounds worth, and try some mullberry wine as well.

Any other ideas or suggestions? I’m off to bed, while I let my yeast work, eat up sugar, produce alcohol for me, and turn stuff into wine.

Last week, I wrote about starting my first batch of home made wine since the summer of 2004. Although it’s normal to leave the wine alone for 8 to 10 days, I checked the specific gravity of the liquid in the primary fermentor and found it was already at 1.000.

So, with the help of my son Colin, 13 years, who is visting me for a week, I decided to rack the wine into the carboy. After cleaning, sterilizing, and rinsing the carboy, I siphoned the liquid from the primary into the carboy.

This reminds me of the time my brother Andrew first tried siphoning. He called me up one night, at about 10:30PM, slurring his words, giggling, and already half drunk. “Ian, how do you use a siphon? Every time I try to do this, I end up with a mouthful of wine that I have to swallow.”

“How many mouthfuls have you had, Andrew?”

“giggle I dunno anymore.” More giggles. I can hear his lovely wife in the background laughing at him.

I tell him to put his wife on the phone, and after some rude but fun comments about sucking, I explain to her how to get a siphon going, and what to do next.

Back to my rack day. Once I had the carboy filled, I noticed that there was a lot of carbon dioxide in the liquid that was coming out of the wine. I tried putting on the fermentation lock, but after about half an hour, it was filled up with bubbles and some of the juices. Best to leave the lock off for a couple of hours to let the gasses escape, top it up with some water, and put the lock on later.

So what’s the “red” part of the day? Well, it was the day to start my red wine, of course. I chose a Valpolicella from Grand Cru – a robust Italian grape, with juice for a 4 to 5 week fermentation before bottling.

The specific gravity of this once I was finished mixing water, the concentrated juice, and the bentonite was 1.080 – which means a wine with about 10% alcohol content. This wine also came with an oak chip infusion bag – Valpolicella does very well with the oak added.

Next week, I’ll check the specific gravity of the red wine, and likely will rack it into another carboy, while checking the white to see if it is ready for degassing – which means a specific gravity of about 0.990 and no observable signs of yeast activity.

For now, I’m enjoying store bought South African wine – a white Two Oceans Sauvignon Blanc.

Wine making is fun, and for those that drink wine and are libertarians, there’s probably no better way than to make your own and stop supporting government owned businesses that compete with others.