Posts Tagged ‘home winemaking’

Home winemakers have a love of tasting and enjoying their wines as well as sharing them with friends. Often, clubs will meet where wine tastings of different home made wines will occur. In most instances, home winemakers drink “responsibly” and are very careful about how much alcohol they consume before driving.

There is the old “rule of thumb” that it is safe to drink one standard alcoholic drink an hour and a person will be “safe” as far as driving is concerned. In this case, a “standard” drink of wine is about 4 oz. with an alcohol content of about 12%.

However, this rule of thumb is simply not an accurate way to know whether one is below the legal limit of 0.08% blood alcohol concentration. There are many factors that contribute to how fast alcohol is metabolized in the body. Even varying rates of body fat percentage can have an effect on alcohol metabolization. Alcohol can be diluted by water, but not by fat and therefore those who have a higher body fat percent will have a higher BAC than a person who has less fat and more muscle. Muscle contains more water.

In Canada, some Provinces like British Columbia and Nova Scotia have instituted lower BAC limits for driving on their respective Provincial roads. This means that many of us will have a much more difficult time in knowing if we are legally “safe” to drive. The new Provincial regulations can be draconian in the sense that you are immediately assumed guilty of an offense if a Police Officer demands a breath sample and you blow over the new lower limits.

Your driver’s license can be suspended immediately for 7 days, your vehicle can be impounded, and its up to you to pay for all the costs involved even though you haven’t actually been found guilty by a court and have had a fair trial.

This is a home winemaking blog and it’s not about politics, or inherent rights, or whether or not it is constitutional for individuals to be punished by the State before they have had the opportunity to a fair and impartial trial with the ability to mount a vigorous defense and question the evidence.

However, this is an issue that those of us who enjoy making wine and enjoy a glass of it with friends should be aware of. The new regulations are not likely to change anytime soon, and we must be more aware of how alcohol is metabolized in our bodies and what it could take to put us over the new lower provincial legal limits.

It should be noted that these Provincial regulations are not “Criminal.” The Canadian Criminal Code still provides for a legal limit of 0.08 mg alcohol per 100 ml blood. So if you are stopped and penalized for between 0.05 and 0.08 mg, they won’t mean you have a Criminal Record.

American readers will probably know that each State in the US has their own DUI laws and penalties (although the legal limit of 0.08 is standard as a BAC limit). You can get information on American State By State DUI Penalties.

Funny story in The Derrick News Herald:

“Authorities in central Pennsylvania who were called to investigate a suspicious odor at an abandoned house thought they had found a meth lab.

It turned out to be an old winemaking operation.

Police in North Cornwall Township searched the home’s basement and discovered fivegallon pails and hundreds of glass beakers, jars and other containers filled with unknown liquids on Saturday.

Police say the items are consistent with equipment used in the manufacture of methamphetamine. But further tests and research led police to conclude the home’s former tenant, who died about five years ago, had been making wine in the basement.

Police re-secured the residence, which is owned by a man who police believe lives in nearby Lancaster.”

Might not have been so funny if there were real live people in the house, just making wine for Christmas though.

It has been awhile since I’ve updated the blog with my winemaking activities. The reason for that is simple: During the warmer months, I can be found more often on lakes and rivers with a fly fishing rod in hand, than in the winemaking room. I know many winemakers that start their wines in the summer and autumn when the fruit is being harvested. This means they are taking advantage of whatever local produce is available to them for their wine.

Well, I prefer to have the bulk of my winemaking activities when I can’t fly fish. I do start the odd batch during warmer months, but I really try to take advantage of the time that I have to do as much fly fishing as I can. Where I live, it is almost impossible to do that in the winter.

I’ll be quite busy over the next few weeks as I help my girlfriend (seems odd to use that word when your in your 40′s) move across Canada, but I do have some plans for some wines to start and articles to write. Soooo keep an eye out here! I have a couple of kits that I have not started yet, and also a promise of donations of honey from a local apiarist for some meads that I have in mind.

Have you ever looked at your airlocks popping up and down as carbon dioxide gas is being released and wondered just how much co2 you might be responsible for generating? There was an interesting discussion started by a user “Dhorton” at the WineMakingTalk forum who was wondering if there was any concern in regard to co2 amounts in their apartment as a result of making wine at home.

Apparently, since Dhorton began making wine, their smoke/carbon monoxide detector was activated a few times. I imagine the detector detects carbon monoxide specifically, and there could be a number of reasons for false alarms including humidity, dust and even bugs getting into the unit. But to a new winemaker, I can understand the concern seeing all these carbon dioxide bubbles coming up and wondering if the quantity is enough to affect the air inside.

An engineer, “Kiljoy” who admits to having too much time on his hands responded to the forum thread and figured that one gallon of wine with a specific gravity of 1.09 would release about .07433 lbs. of carbon dioxide per day over a 14 day fermentation period. The calculations then went on to show that this was a negligible amount, even in a small apartment.

Later in the thread, a link to a blog post that discussed carbon dioxide emissions by breweries was posted. In that post, Pablo concludes:

“Maybe this doesn’t sound like much, but let me put it in perspective: in 2004, Americans drank 23.974 billion liters of beer, resulting in 1,491,182 mT of CO2 emissions. Global beer consumption in 2004 was 150.392 billion liters, resulting in 9,354,382 mT of CO2 emissions. For a little something more to think about, the US emitted a total of 1,446,777,000 mT of CO2 in 1996. Now, keep in mind that this is based on an assumption of a brix value of 12. The average beer may be a bit weaker than that. Feel free to plug in your own assumptions to see what you get. Either way, the CO2 emissions from brewing are not negligible.”

Well, it seems to me that Pablo’s logic might be a bit off if he is suggesting that the brewing industry alone is responsible for this. Bare in mind that we are talking about emissions from the fermentation of organic material that contains sugars. I could be wrong, but I think that there would still be quite a bit of CO2 even if it wasn’t used in the brewing or winemaking industry – as the stuff rots it would likely release plenty of CO2. Humans release CO2 in their farts after eating organic plant material so either way – fermented or digested, or left to rot, CO2 will likely be produced. I’m just not sure if it would be in the same quantities – does simply rotting matter convert sugars to CO2? What I’m saying is that this plant material would release CO2 in time, whether it’s fermented or not.

In my opinion, trying to put some blame or pin global warming causes to include brewing or fermenting is a bit much. I don’t think home winemakers have anything to worry about, even if they do put great stock in theories about CO2 emissions and global warming.

I recently wrote about the homemade maple syrup wine that I started on May 5, 2009. On May 14th, I racked it to a carboy with the specific gravity at 1.016.

Since then, it has begun to clear nicely and the colour is very interesting. It’s a very autumn or fall looking colour – the colour of some maple leaves after they have turned their colours at that time of the year. It’s hard to describe exactly, but perhaps vermillion .. or light cinnamon might be descriptive enough.

Although the SG was 0.997 last week, it is still showing signs of fermentation with lots of CO2 rising through the wine and the airlock continues to bounce every so often.

I’m going to let it continue doing what it is doing for another couple of weeks, then measure the SG, rack and likely add sulfite.

About a year ago, I had a friend who “makes” wine at a local store (in other words, my friend pitches the yeast and then helps with the bottling – all the work is done by the store) give me a bottle of a Gewurtztraminer that he had “made.” The bottle was 375 ml in size. I know some folk who will bottle some of their wine in these small size bottles, and I do the same at times. However, a comment on Jack Keller’s blog got me to thinking a bit more about when and why I choose 375 ml over 750 ml, and when I might even select magnum size bottles.

Jack’s comment:

“A preface. I do not put all of my mead in 375 mL bottles, even though I know many do. I only fill two 375 mL bottles with each mead, and these are for tasting to see if the mead has aged enough to drink. I enter full, 750 mL bottles in competition unless 375 mL bottles are actually required, which they rarely are. You do as you desire.”
~ Jack Keller (Scroll down to the May 22nd, 2009 entry)

Personally, I’d never give anything less than a 750 ml bottle of wine as a gift if I’ve made wine from a kit that makes 23 litres of wine. It just seems “chintzy” to me. However, there are times when I do consider a 375 ml bottle for both gift purposes and my own use. I have my own arbitrary thoughts about it and as Jack says, “You do as you desire.”

First, I seldom bottle into 375 ml or magnum size bottles. Most of my wines and meads go into 750 ml. But then, most of my wines are 23 litre (5 Imperial gallons). I like the standard 750 size, and corking them is easy. Corking the 375 ml bottles with my Portuguese floor corker is a bit awkward – I need to put a block of wood over the bottle stand in order to give them enough height to be corked. And that means I also need to hold them steady. As well, obviously there are more bottles to be filled when using 375 ml.

When I do bottle into 375 ml size bottles, it’s when I’ve made 3 or less gallons of a particular wine or mead, or when I’ve made something exceptional and I’d like to be able to give away as many as possible to friends and clients while still keeping a good amount for myself. For example, a few years ago I made a 5 gallon batch of blackcurrant wine that turned out to be like heaven. That went into 350 ml bottles – and many were given away. The recent Kiwi Melomel that I made was 3 gallons, and it too turned out exceptional, so I have all of it in the smaller size bottles.

As far as magnum size bottles, the only time I can think of that I’d consider bottling into those would be if I was making wine for some special event where there was a corkage fee for bringing my own wine instead of purchasing the wine provided by the venue. If I were trying to save costs, then reducing the number of bottles that needed to be opened might be a time I’d think of magnums.

But then, that’s just another advantage of home winemaking. You can choose whatever size of bottles you’d like to use for whatever your purposes or reasons are. One caution though: smaller quantities might be more susceptible to temperature changes when aging your wine. Just as wine in a 5 gallon carboy won’t be as susceptible to temperature variations while aging as much as wine in a 750 ml bottle will be, wines in 375 ml bottles will be more susceptible than that in 750 ml bottles.

I am awaiting a very important phone call at this late hour (3:30AM) from the most special woman – to let me know she arrived at her house safely. Due to some circumstances beyond our control at this time, she lives a four hour plane ride and then about a two hour drive away. Tonight, I dropped her off at the airport in Toronto after we spent a wonderful five days together. Some of that time was enjoying some of the homemade wine and mead I’ve made. But one of the highlights of our weekend was being able to take in Leonard Cohen together in London, Ontario on Sunday night.

Mr. Cohen is such a fine old gentleman that we decided to dress for the occasion, and it was very nice to get compliments from the staff at the John Labatt Centre as we walked through the turnstyles and had ushers and usherettes direct us to our floor level seats. And I was able to “whisper sing” in my beautiful lady’s ear, along with Leonard Cohen, “If you want a doctor….. I’m your man.” Of course, in his older age, and his Marlboro cigarette “enhanced” voice, Leonard does it much better than I do, but the sentiment is the same.. if not deeper.. when I sing it.

Anyhow, as I wait for that phone call to know Colleen has arrived home safely, I thought I might as well add a post here. If you enjoy it, very good. If not, perhaps some of the other content here will be of more interest to you. I don’t mind.

I haven’t started another batch of kiwi melomel yet, but am thinking I might do that on the weekend. My beekeeper friend/client might be dropping off quite a load of honey to me on Friday. Thus far, the kiwi melomel has been met with compliments and this time, I’m going to make sure I make ten gallons of it. It will make for a very good gift to friends and clients.

I was also going through some photos and came across one of my six year old son helping me cork some bottles. He’s a great wee man, and perhaps this photo says it all about his constant happiness and love for doing things.

Ok… here’s the photo… and hopefully, the phone will be ringing in minutes!

Ring…! There’s the phone!

Home winemaking can be a lot of fun, coming up with wines made with different fruits and vegetables. Some years ago, I made a batch of garlic wine using this recipe here. When I’ve told people about it, the usual first reaction is to hold up their nose and have a quizzical look on their face. “Who’d want to drink garlic wine? What home winemaker would want to even make it?”

Well, I don’t drink it out of a glass. But I did have it with my dinner this evening. I took out a chuck roast out of the freezer – not the most tender of cuts and best cooked with liquid. After it had thawed, I decided to put it in a small roasting pan with a cup of garlic wine and a half cup of water. Into the oven it went at 250F for three hours. The roast turned out very good – and the gravy was wonderful!

After the roast had cooked, I added some oregano to the juice, a bit of salt and some corn starch to thicken it, brought it to a boil and then simmered for several minutes while constantly stirring.

If you’ve ever thought of a “different” kind of homemade wine to make, consider a gallon of garlic wine for cooking with. It does have a wonderful flavor and makes for a good marinade too. Again, here’s the garlic wine recipe.

Won’t get into the details – but an interesting, challenging, and tough week. Thanks to my family who where there for me. It meant a lot. More than I can say.

Hey, did I ever mention that I have an awesome 20 year old son named Alex who is a drummer in a Rock ‘n Roll band? Wise, Young & King is their name, and these guys are “GOOD!” That is, if you like the sounds of classic rock – and WY&K write all their own material. I’m listening to one of my favorite songs right now that has a LOT of meaning to me. I think this song was written especially for me sometimes. Or.. especially for “US.” It’s called “Angels Cry.” You can have a listen to it, along with a few other of their songs, here. Tell me what you think. They are all awesome, but of course, I’m especially proud of that drumming sound….

I was going to provide an update on my earlier Maple Wine that I started. My math must have been wrong, when I was checking the SG and adding water – I’ll write more on that when I go over my notes.

This evening, I discovered I had forgotten to add the Isokleer to the Liebfraumilch. I was wondering why it was still cloudy. This was an inexpensive kit wine that I wanted to make and bottle fairly quickly – six weeks to bottle – so I’d have some available for a special event that is/was to occur next weekend. Things are up in the air – we’ll see. Maybe. I don’t know.

I am still undecided as to how I will proceed with the “Special Wine” I’ve been carefully making and taking care of. Trying to decide when I will blend them together to age – or let them age as they are now, and blend later.

I always wished things could be perfect – even though I’m a realist and don’t expect it – but striving for it is good, no? Trying? Hoping? Mediocrity is something I’ve never settled for.

Ok.. back to Wise, Young & King!

Yesterday, I spent a fantastic 8 or 9 hours in the company of Home Winemaking expert Daniel Pambianchi at his Niagara-On-The-Lake vineyard. For readers still not familiar, Daniel wrote the book, “Techniques in Home Winemaking,” a book that I recommend to any home winemaker that wants to improve their skills and learn more about the art and science of winemaking. My review of the book is here.

Daniel operates a 14 acre vineyard just off the QEW in a very pretty part of Ontario. When I arrived (about a two hour drive), I was met by Daniel and his friendly staff. We had fun discussing wine while sampling some of the delicious bottled wines that Maleta has produced. And then on to some Grappa! I’d never had Grappa before, but Daniel had several styles ready for me to try including one that had been aged in Oak, one that had been aged with a hot pepper in the bottle, and a delicious espresso version.

After the introductions were all made, it was time to learn more about Maleta Winery and the services they can offer those who make their own wine. I had brought down a small sample of my “Mystery Wine.” I was curious about the specific gravity being below 0.900 and wondered what the alcohol content was. Daniel “fired” up the DuJardin-Salleron ebulliometer, calibrated it, and we discovered that my fruit wine was 16% alcohol by volume. Yes, it does taste a bit hot, and I’ll experiment with it. I was then shown some of the other interesting tools and testing equipment in the lab and felt like a kid in a candy store.

It was soon dinner time, and we watched the sun setting while enjoying a barbecued dinner on the deck while discussing a variety of home winemaking subjects. Daniel was very helpful and gracious in sharing some of his knowledge with me and I’ve come away with some ideas on improving my own wines. Shortly after dinner, we explored some of the wines he has aging in French and American oak barrels – and all I can say is that you’ll definitely be wanting to keep Maleta Winery’s wines in mind! We sampled several different varieties (unfortunately, I was unable to fully enjoy it all as I was driving home later) it various stages.

All in all, it was a super day! I learned much, enjoyed very good company and was introduced to some very good wine! Thank you Daniel!