Posts Tagged ‘yeast’

I managed to obtain one Imperial gallon of maple syrup at a cost of $45.00. That’s a pretty fair price these days. What I have is dark syrup, which should have more nutrients – and flavour – over light syrup.

I am trying to decide what to do with it as far as some homemade wine. I’ve come across a few different recipes – all using American measurements. The one that seems the most popular – and easiest is John Gorman’s maple wine which calls for 8 to 9 pints of maple syrup, then water added to bring it to 5 gallons. An Imperial Gallon contains about 4.8 US quarts. So going by Gorman’s recipe, that should do 2 1/2 US gallons, or about 9.5 litres. But then, what yeast should I use? I suppose the best thing to do would be to make about 9 litres of maple wine and water solution and test the SG, and make some decisions about what potential alcohol I want while considering whether I’ll want dry or sweeter.

Or maybe I should just try Gorman’s recipe and see what I end up with. Not sure if I will start this homemade maple wine this evening – taking a break from some other things, or wait until tomorrow. Probably a good time to take stock of my yeast strains in the freezer.

Although some consider a maple wine to be a mead, or “mead-like,” some refer to it as an “acerglyn,” but I think this would be more correct if honey is also used in the recipe in addition to the maple syrup.

Decisions, decisions!

I’m sometimes asked when I tell others that I make my own wine, “Ian, how can I make wine?” As someone else once wrote (I think it was Jack Keller, but I’m not certain right now) my response is “You don’t make wine. Yeast make wine.” Sometimes I find it amazing that these single celled organisms are responsible for the turning juice into a beverage that many of us enjoy for it’s flavors, aromas, and of course, gently intoxicating effects.

So, how to make wine? Well, considering it’s the yeast that consume sugar, turning it into alcohol and carbon dioxide, we get to control so much of the process however, including the type of yeast we are going to use. There are many varieties of yeast available to make wine today, and are selected for a variety of characteristics they have. Some have higher tolerance to alcohol and temperature changes, while others are more suitable for wines that are meant to finish sweet or semi-sweet.

Of course, in wine making, there is also the choice of the main ingredient. Will it be juice from grapes or other fruits? How about mead made from honey? Even vegetables can be used to make wine. Until someone has tried it, they may think that making a parsnip wine would be rather awful tasting, but in fact parsnip wine after some aging is quite nice.

When wine is being made, what we try to do is control the conditions as much as possible that the wine is being made in by the yeast we’ve selected. During and after the fermentation (and sometimes before fermentation starts), adjustments will be made to try to get the right acidity, sweetness or dryness, clarity, and the all important flavours and aromas.

If you are using a wine kit, you won’t have to worry about those adjustments – the concentrated juice you will receive has already been balanced and had the necessary ingredients added to complete a fermentation that will turn out similar to a wine purchased retail made of the same grape variety(s). And for the beginner, this is probably the easiest way to begin learning about how to make wine.

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.