The Grapes

Just as I finished punching down my must and snapped on the lid I thought "I should have taken a picture." Well, the good news is that this one looks pretty good for being my first attempt at making wine from grapes, and not even good grapes. There's way more color than when I first put them in and there's bubbling and a nice smell. I figure a good 7-10 days in primary and then I'll check the SG and rack it.

Chela my official wine kitty has taken to laying in front of the fermenters like they are going to do something interesting but she doesn't bother them. I've blocked the cabinets in the kitchen that have bottles of wine in them, since she thinks hanging in cupboards is cool.

The latest bottled batch, teh IRC was a bit of a bust, it tastes really alcoholic and thin and turns out I run the risk of oxidation if I try to open them, add glycerine and rebottle. So these might just be sangria wine or wine spritzers for the summer. The advice I got on my wine forum was that fruit wines from purees are tempermental and that I need to use more than what they suggest because they often aren't sweet enough and the acid levels are high. I'm going to start reading up on acid levels to go along with trying to figure out how to read the dang ph test strips I have and how to adjust based on those readings.

I kind of wish I had paid more attention to highschool chemistry. Well there's an idea, maybe if students were making some thing interesting that they could apply their knowledge to, maybe they would pay more attention. Useful knowledge and all.

I'm a murderer

I think I killed the yeast I pitched into the must. In my impatience I might have not waited until the must was cool enough to put the yeast in and it hit me like 3 hours later. I have to wait a couple days to make sure it hasn't taken hold and then buy more yeast. The must should be fine for a few days, especially if I throw in a couple campden tablets if nothing starts by Sunday.

BRAGGOT!

Well I prepared the yeast yesterday so I didn't really have a choice but to push forward and start the braggot. I put it all together in a 2 gal fermenter and the Brix measurement was sky high, upwards of 36 (20.7), which would have been too much for the yeast to handle and would make the drink much too alcoholic. I added water to it before I moved it to a much larger fermenter it was at 30 (17.25) and ended up with a brix of 24 (13.8 PA).

It looks a little weird but that's all the hops floating on top.

Braggot

3lbs Wheat Malt
3lbs Clover Honey
1oz Cascade hops
Wyeast London Ale
2 tsp yeast nutrient

No acid blend because of the hops. I boiled the honey and the malt so I didn't add campden tablets because I had skimmed as much of the impurities as I could. It smells really hoppy, which is good because I like hoppy beer.

My first grape wine

Taking a break from work and doing a quick post about the grape wine I'm starting. It doesn't look like something that has started wars or made grown men and women do things they only write about in letters that generations later their children's children marvel at.

So far the problems I've encountered are not insurmountable. The grapes weren't as sweet as I thought. I ended up putting 6 cups of sugar in the must, the ph was about 3.2 and I'm not sure what that level acid needs to be at, so I didn't put much acid blend in. The brix scale read at 27 after all the sugar which turned out to be 15.5% potential alcohol.

Recipe:

4lbs black and red grapes
6 cups of sugar
Montrachet yeast
1 tsp yeast nutrient
1 cup white grape juice
2 campden tablets
1/2 tsp acid blend

REFRACTOMETER!!!!!!

My new refractometer just arrived today! Perfect timing since I started those grapes and supposedly they should have enough sugar that I wouldn't need to add 3 pounds to reach a significant alcohol content. I think I'm going to shoot for 14-15%. I calibrated it and tested it out with the juice of the grapes and then with the sugar water added. Tomorrow when I add the yeast and acids and tannin I'll bump up the sugar, right now it looks to be at about 10.5% PA.

On the mead front the Ancient Orange suddenly took an interesting turn and cleared up a lot. I I can see about an inch of lees on the bottom. It'll be about a month on the 13th of April and it needs to sit for another month after that before I can think about racking to a secondary fermenter or even bottling. I was thinking that bulk aging would be a good thing to try with a 1 gallon batch, but I'm not sure I want it to be the Ancient Orange that ages in a jug and not a bottle.

Dissolution, that's the sack mead, is looking clearer but not crystal and that one needs at least 2 more months in the cabinet.

I finally racked the blueberry spice into bottles last night and tasted it. It was watery and had a strong alcohol taste but that was all. I'll admit I was really disappointed in this first batch of my own wine, not made from a kit. Partly, I think problems arose because I wasn't sure what I could or should add to fill the carboy with and often water is on hand but not the best choice. I also think I am too conservative when it comes to ingredients and rather than adding over the amount of puree or juice I top of with water.

Lessons learned.

Racked into new carboy

Today was a relatively productive day. I finished grading the bibliographies and managed to get all my clothes washed. I just have towels and sheets left.

I took a look at the cranberry-raspberry at it was looking a little odd. It was really cloudy and there were white streaks falling through it. I quickly racked it to another carboy and I'm hoping that when it settles again, I'll rack and then let it sit for another month or so.

I started the grapes I'd frozen a week ago. It took forever. I had to pluck them from the stems, put them in a mesh bag and they sat for a few hours thawing, but I hardly got any liquid from it. I took the grapes out of the bag and just crushed them in the bucket, poured a little hot water over them, added some sugar water and campden tablets, set it aside until tomorrow.

GADGETS!!!!

Ok I just ordered a refractometer on Ebay. I am a little concerned about buying something so technically specific (kinda) on Ebay but it was like 20.00 less than if I bought one at Midwest or anywhere else. I figure if I could get a good 20 batches out of this then it would be worth what I paid.

I recently bought close to 9lbs of grapes and I really want to make a grape wine, and I woke up this morning thinking today I'll start that wine, but now I'm thinking I should wait until the refractometer gets here and do it up right.