Notes of my Journey into Winemaking

Life has been a bit crazy, so blogging has not been top on my list of stuff to do. My wine was let go for a bit, too, but luckily was in a position to cruise for a bit anyway.

I know some people were actually reading this, and may even want to know how things turned out. Since the blog was moved (yeah, I know, that was MONTHS ago) I hadn't popped on long enough to figure out how to use the new software. Hopefully I can play with it enough to get things updated. That would be great, as then I could get rid of all the post-its with notes jotted down.

The good news is that the wine is bottled. I have the information on what was left of the process. I have the % alcohol on this wine, and it got a name.

The bad news is that I am waaaay too tired to post it now, but I will hopefully get it up here soon.

Now I have three empty carboys. Whatever shall I do???? (No worries, there are cranberries in the freezer).

Today is  bottling day!!!

After putting the carboys up in a cupboard almost three months ago, it became quite easy to forget them. That actually is not all bad, as it is recommended to forget them for a couple of months to let things age and clear. But, it is usually recommended that you at least check the airlock to be sure that is doing ok...

I started by checking the wine, tapping it to see if any bubbles rose. Nope. Good. A sample was then taken, and just for fun checked the SG. Read at 0.990 again, but today it is far from hot. No adjustment to be made for temperature. I will have to make due with the totally not-understood negative potential alcohol.

A taste of the wine was quite pleasant. There was a smooth consistency, but with the tang/bite of wine. The aftertaste faded to a lingering strawberry essence, bringing to mind for me a summer evening on a porch eating sun warmed-fresh from the garden berries.

Bottling was interesting. Somehow, the number of ways suggested to go about it and the preparations is equal to the number of sources consulted. In the end, I find it best to do a combination of the sources, focusing on the commonalities, then adjust based on what seems to work for me. Some sources say boil the corks, some say soak in cold water and santizier, some say if you boil they will turn to mush. Some say soak overnight, some say soak 20 minutes.  In the end, i put a small pot of water on to boil, and when boiling was achieved, in went the corks. Those little buggers float quite well! I guess that is where all the floating-cork references come from. I used a pan lid smaller than the pot to put over the corks for submersion, thenI let them boil while I prepped the bottles.

Everything went into a big sanitizer bath. This included the siphoning tubing, auto-siphon, and the hands-free bottle filler doohickey. I have brand new 750ml bottles to use, so bottle prep was quite easy. Given that during the bottling, you are trying to make sure your siphon does not touch bottom and stir up any remaining lees, you are trying to fill the bottle not too high and not too low (without tipping it over), and juggle tubing, other bottles, etc., the hands free bottle filler thingy is wonderful. There is a small valve with pin at the bottom- when the tube is resting on the bottle bottom the pin pushes up and the wine flows. When it is lifted, the pin drops and the valve closes. Very simple, but very nice. I filled 4.5 bottles.

Corking took me a minute, and hopefully next time 'round will go better. There is a very important yet very limited level for filling appropriate, and it varies with cork. Too low fluid level and you have oxidation from too much air, to high and the air pressure pushes the cork back out. I found that you do need a little less wine than you think to get the cork to stay. Alternatively, I read in one reference, that you could use a piece of string or wire and put this in the bottle neck along side the cork. Once the cork was in place, this would be pulled out and the air pressure would follow. This would re-seal as the cork expanded.  I had to use a straightened, sanitized paperclip, try to wedge this between the cork and the neck and release some air. That did help, but was a pain. Next time, I know what I will do differently!!

One of the hardest parts of this, for me, was making a label! One would think that it would be easy. I have Microsoft Office 2003, with the Avery Wizard plug-in. Knowing how easy it is to import data lists from other Office software, I made the label I wanted in Word, then figured I could import it. Well, not so much. My goal was a graphic in the background, more faded like a printed watermark, with the details on that. Apparently this does not import. I finally, after crashing the software about five times, figured out how to re-do the design in the Avery Wizard, and am actually pleased with the outcome.

I do have photos, and I do intend to post them. But, it is 1:26am, I still have to input the data on the other wine, and I have been up since 5am. Me-is-tired!!

Today was supposed to be a quick racking. Only problem was, I noted that the wine had started bubbling again. Not a lot, but there was definitely something fermenting. The color is still a very pretty fuschia.

A check of the specific gravity put things at 0.990 (meaning PA is -1.3%??)...the thermometer in the room does read at 86 degrees F, so just in case it turns out to matter later, I adjusted the SG by +4, putting it at 1.003, with a PA of 0.5%. Of course, given that I have no idea where the SG started, this means nothing in regards to what the final product will be alcohol content-wise.

A quick taste assured me that the wine was still tasting like wine, and hadn't been going to vinnegar with its latest bubbling stunt.

So, I racked the wine to a clean carboy, then added 1 campden tablet, 1/2 tsp stabilizer to boiling water, then topped off the carboy with that, pupped in the bung and airlock, and tucked the wine away. I cleared some space in a cupboard in the kitchen. The stuff will store there nicely, out of the way and in the dark.

Hopefully our next encounter will be the bottling.

Start date:         Bottle date:       Type/Content:                    Titled:

04-27-08          10-01-08          Blackberry/Strawberry       Virgin Berry

05-21-08          10-01-08          Spearmint/Lemon              Folsom Prison Water      

I live in West Michigan with my husband and a house full of fur and feather kids.  We have been working on adding the human type for some time, but something's not working quite right.

My husband is a network adminstrator (interpret: computer geek) for a small company. Luckily, he is the only IT guy, and thus has job security.

I am a veterinarian. I primarily work emergency and critical care, but occasionally fill in here and there for other practices as well. It is fun work. Though, a recent study found that veterinarians have a fourfold higher suicide rate than the general population, and twice the suicide rate of other health professionals. After eight years of grueling studies, $120,000 in student loans that the government insists on being paid for, one would wonder what the draw is.. I guess I have some job security as well.

For some reason, working an unpredictable schedule of round the clock shifts isn't enough for me. I insist on taking on more hobbies. I garden, and hope to grow my own fodder for wine making. My goal is to learn canning this summer as well, provided the garden does well. The garden has to be cleared and planted first though.. I have also decided that remodeling my bathroom single-handedly is also a good idea, and bought all the stuff.  With food, taking on more than you can eat is classified as "eyes being bigger than your stomach".  What if you take on too many projects?  I guess that is easily classified as "chaos".

I racked my wine for the first time tonight. I got home from work, and had enough time for a change. I am reading the book by Terry Garey, “The Joy of Home Winemaking”. It is a light and easy read, packed with information. But, according to this, I should have racked my wine a week or two ago. It has been “sitting on its lees” too long. Other sources I have seen, not complete sources granted, have said nothing about this…I just thought you racked once secondary fermentation was done, when you stopped seeing bubbles. I was still seeing bubbles- little tiny ones going to the surface now and again. But, for fear of ruining my wine or turning it to vinegar, I decided to rack sooner rather than later. There has been a thick coat of sediment for at least a week.

I only have one one gallon growler. I did, however, have a 64oz growler that I emptied last night. It was from a local brewery and had been filled with beer. I washed that and sterilized it. I realized that all of my wine would not fit in this other container. What I was hoping for was to rack the one gallon fermentor into the 64oz bottle, then clean my one gallon, rack the stuff in the wine bottle into it, then re-rack my other back to that as well. This was all working fine and dandy…except the 64oz bottle is a dark amber- difficult to see fluid level when you are standing above it. So, before I know it, I have wine spilling over onto the floor. Got that up, and realized that I would have to improvise. In the meantime I tested a sample for SG. Well below 1.000, potential alcohol below 0. Hmm. Guess its done. I then sanitized my primary, finished racking into that, then cleaned and sanitized my secondary as planned. I managed to rack the wine into it, and put the rest into the gallon as well as planned. Except now, because of the spilled wine (which my dog really enjoyed, by the way) my fluid level was too low. I needed to “top off”.  I have read a variety of methods to topping off- use water, fruit juice, boiled water, boiled sugar water, etc. I have read about adding campden or not adding campden. Stabilizer, or no stabilizer. I didn’t anticipate having to worry about this yet, as I didn’t think my secondary fermentation would be done already.

In the end, I ended up boiling just over 3 cups of tap water, adding ½ cup of sugar, 1 campden tablet, and ½ tsp of stabilizer. To top off, I used maybe ½ cup of this solution. I don’t know if the campden or stabilizer will even be in a quantity enough to make a difference.

I did taste the wine before adding this. Not bad, tastes like wine. I think I can sense the berry essence, but it’s not the greatest. I didn’t sample after topping off- will save that for next racking. The wine looks a bit more like Hawaiian Punch right now than wine.

I will note that before next racking I will be getting another gallon carboy. And will be hoping I didn’t ruin the wine with my topping off method.

Much more progress has been made! By this morning bubbles were moving through the airlock every 5 seconds or so. SG today is to 1.042, so not much longer now before moving to the secondary. Things were still very fizzy. I am apparently very nervous about this next step, as I had dreams of it last night. I couldn’t figure out the siphon or anything. Hopefully I will figure it out before then. I don’t think there is really much to do with that step, its more the racking to clear before bottling that makes me nervous- adding the right stabilizers, etc. And knowing for sure (source recommendations differ) on whether I do or don’t add another campden tablet. Better get to the bookstore.

I am switching to working third shift today, so this might mess up my schedule some too. I will have to plan ahead better to be sure to have enough time in the evenings to do my testing. Though, it seems I won’t have to do the daily stuff much longer.

What I have been doing, is filling my cleaned sink with about a gallon worth of warm water and the sanitizer. I put my hydrometer, testing bottle, funnel, and a ladle in the water. I disconnect the airlock, put that in the sanitizer, remove the fermentor lid and put that in sanitizer. Using the ladle, I mix my wine, then ladle about two scoops of fluid through the funnel into my tester. Then add the hydrometer, take a reading. Dump the tested wine back into the bucket, put everything else back in the sanitizer. Then, using the ladle I mix the wine solution again, and push on the nylon sack of pulp a bit.  Replace lid, replace airlock with fresh sanitizer. Rinse tools and put them up until the next day. Moves pretty quickly.

Wine is looking a bit better in the new, smaller bucket. It was VERY fizzy today, almost like it was carbonated. I stirred it before getting my sample for the hydrometer. I don’t know if that is proper. I figure it gives me a better profile of the entire bucket in that sample, but the bubbles and fizzing make it hard to read the hygrometer. I also noted that the bucket did not show any sign of lid concavity or changes to the air lock. I think its because I couldn’t get the lid on tight. It does have markings and an imprint reading “to remove lid cut/break bottom of slots”.  I cut/broke nothing and wonder if that’s why I couldn’t get the lid on.

The SG was down to 1.065 today. Improvement, but don’t know what level of improvement to expect over a 24 hour period. Did not note the really yeasty smell like yesterday though; it definitely seemed more fruity.

After stirring again, mashing the nylon bag of fruit pieces/pulp, I replaced the lid. I did use wire cutters to clip the bottom of the slots, soaked the lid in cleaner again, and put the lid on. I still had to put the bucket on the floor and really get over it to put the lid on properly. We’ll see how things look tomorrow- if the lid tightening makes a difference. I think there’s less likely to be oxygen leakage to mess anything up this way, so hopefully…

Addendum: Ten minutes after writing the above, I looked at my airlock- it is sending up big bubbles every 10-15 seconds. Ferment away little yeasties!!

Oh boy. I did a bunch of reading today, and just began to realize how much I don’t know. I am thinking that maybe I should have started with a kit while so green and in the brand new to learning process. I am seeing information on treating yeast before adding if dry, evaluating sugar content for the specific brew based on potential alcohol by volume %, how oxygen affects fermentation, and on and on and on.

Thus it dawned on me. How the heck was I gonna make 1 gallon of wine in a 6 gallon secondary fermentor. You have to “top off” to get rid of as much air as possible…uh, that would mean that my wine would be almost purely water. So, back to Siciliano’s I go. I ended up getting a 1 gallon growler with a bung to fit for the next steps, rather than using el gigantor fermentor. Also got a smaller primary fermentor with more of a 2-3 gallon capacity, which is perfect for the volume I have including the fruit in nylon still sitting in there.

So then the question was, if decreased oxygen volume is important, thus the airlock, etc., wouldn’t it make sense to move my concoction to the smaller bucket when I test the SG today? Guy says no, let it be…but I can’t test the SG without taking the lid off, thus refilling the dead space with oxygenated air anyhow. Unless there is a magic technique of which I am unaware to get the wine into a testing bottle.

What I ended up doing was sanitizing a ladle, a funnel, the testing bottle, the hydrometer, and the small bucket. Used ladle and funnel to get potential wine (is it still “must” at this point??) into testing bottle, then used hydrometer. The specific gravity today is 1.074, with a potential ABV of 9.9%. I am assuming this (SG) is down from yesterday (beginning to see how maybe it’s a good idea to test every step of the way) but don’t really know what fermentation process may be going on. I also think that the 9.9% ABV reading may indicate % to go, not end product. So maybe yesterday the potential ABV was more like 12?  I did note the air lock had changed and the lid of the fermentor was convexly bowed. There was quite a yeasty odor when I removed the lid, too, and when stirred my mixture seemed to bubble or fizz. I think those are good signs?

Once the value was noted, I poured everything into the smaller bucket, put the lid on, and attached the airlock.

We’ll see if this makes a difference by tomorrow. Meanwhile, I guess I have a LOT more reading to do. I see a trip to the bookstore in my near future.