Depth of Processing: Food & Wine

2012 Mead

2012-01-29T16:08:00.000-08:00

My 2010 Mead in the foreground with the new 2012

mead in the demijohn in back. See the clementine peels floating

at the top.

Mead is the easiest kind of wine to make, and this very old and traditional beverage is getting more popular.

I wish I knew a beekeeper, but I bought my honey at the store. I bought a few different kinds including dark honey and wild flower honey. The clover honey is the cheapest, and least flavorful.

It feels expensive to make mead since you buy all the honey at once, but it is no more expensive than making wine from fruit. My mead will be about $3/L.

For some reason people like to flavor their meads; perhaps because the flavor of honey is so mild, and because the old-time recipes often have spices or fruit. No one flavors grape wine or fruit wine in this way.

I think it is smart to find a dark, strongly-flavored honey. Having said that I like the flavor of orange in mead, and the acidity is needed in a wine like this. In my 2010 mead I liked the little bit of spice I added.

2012 Mead Recipe
18 lb honey (6 lb of clover honey, 3 lb of wild flower honey, 9 lb of dark honey)
Water sufficient to make 15 L = 4 gal total
2 t yeast energizer (t = teaspoon)
1.5 t pectic enzyme
Juice of 13 clementine/tangerines /no pulp
Peels from 13 clementines
3/4 t nutmeg
0.5 t allspice
2 T ground vanilla beans
1 packet Red Star Pasteur Champagne Yeast

I did not boil or otherwise pasteurize the mixture as some recipe's say to do. My honey was all pasteurized. I put it all in a 15 L demijohn, and added the yeast. I also used tap water so there are some minerals for the yeasts to eat.

You might ask "Why use pectic enzyme since there is no pectin in honey?" There isn't, but there is a lot of pectin in the orange rinds.

The refractive index of the must was 1.35, which makes for 20% alcohol. I expect the fermentation to stop short of 20% leaving me with a strong, but still sweet wine. That is what happened in 2010, and it is really good. My DW especially likes it, but you can't drink too much because of the sweetness and the potency.

The fermentation took hold rapidly, and it is bubbling hard at less than 24 hours.

2011 Pinot Grigio

2011-10-09T05:00:00.000-07:00

I really like the flavor of the unfermented Pinot Grigio juice. As you can see this is a light red grape, and one presses it immediately after crushing to get a white wine. The idea is to avoid the plant-y flavor and get a fruitier and flowery flavor.

I bought 108 lb of Lodi Gold California Pinot Grigio. There are about nine gallons of juice. These grapes had were in good shape as you see in the picture, but also had some with mold, and a few rotten.

I tried to pick out the rotten ones, not being a fan of the so-called noble rot. I mean the actual rot, not the rock band. My grandfather used to leave these in with the idea that the natural yeast will improve the flavor. He was probably too cheap to through them away. My Dad usually left them in as well.

Recipe

108 lb grapes
45 g Yeast Energizer
12 g pectic enzyme
1 packet Red Star Premier Curvee'

The refractive index of the juice was 26 degrees Brix and the density was 1.11 g/ml. According to Pambianchi's Techniques in Home Winemaking, it has 29% sugar content. I am always surprised, and pleased when the two techniques agree.

A sugar content of 29% which will produce a 13.7% ethanol content. This is a little high for a white wine, but the juice does not seem over concentrated by taste, and I am afraid to dilute the flavor by adding water.

There were dried grapes in with the crushed grapes. It would have had higher sugar content if I'd try to make it as a Rose'.

Now the wine is fermenting in the primary fermenter. I hope to transfer to glass in five or six days. I have taken to following the progression of fermentation by flavor. It is much easier than watching the refractive index change, and I don

2011 Zinfandel Wine

2011-09-25T17:52:00.000-07:00

I made the Merlot last week, and this week I wanted to make white wine, but here were not any good grapes at the store, so I came home with Zinfandel. The grapes looked good. They were pretty juicy, but there a few dried clumps. Juicy grapes typically means a little higher yield, but with lower overall sugar content. My objective is to get the grapiest flavor that I can get. All else can be added later!

Recipe

Here is the wine crate. Notice there
is some woman's photo on the box. Who is she?
I expect she is a modern day wine nymph, but
really she must be the owner's daughter.

108 lb Zinfandel grapes (Beauty of the Valley, California)

12 g yeast energizer

[no sodium bisulfide this time]

2.5 lb sugar (heated with juice until dissolved)

1 packet Red Star Pasteur Red

I made the juice, and measured the density and the refractive index. I looked them up in Techniques for Home Winemaking, and happily, magically they agreed with each other. The density was 1.094 g/ml and the refractive index was 22.4 degrees BRIX (a scale calibrated to sucrose content in water,) and these correspond to 24% sugar which will make 11.7% ethanol. To get to 13% alcohol, in the 8.25 gallons of juice that I have, I added 2.5 pounds of sugar.

I let the juice sit until it came to room temperature about ten hours, and then I sprinkled the yeast on top. I decided not to add the bisulfite because the grapes looked pretty free from rot, and I did not want to inhibit the regular fermentation.

The next evening the fermentation was going pretty fast.

7 Days Later
I pressed the juice and got 32 liters of wine. The wine continued to ferment pretty fast.

I took 8 liters of the Zinfandel and mixed with the overage on the Merlot to make a blend.

2011 Merlot Wine

2011-09-18T05:16:00.000-07:00

The 2011 Merlot grapes are small and grapy. I got three 36 pound cases at California Wine Grapes on Fort Street, and crushed them, pulling most of the stems out by hand.

The density is 1.107 g/ml which and a BRIX refractive index of 24.8 degrees. (One degree Brix is the refractive index for 1% (w/v) of sucrose/water.) This should be 13 to 13.5 alcohol, which is pretty good.

2011 Merlot Recipe

108 lb Merlot Grapes (DePalma; Ripon, CA)
6 g bisulfite (added after crushing to kill wild yeast)
5 g yeast energizer (added the next morning)
1 packet Red Star Montrachet (sprinkled on top, then stirred after ten minutes)

Right now the grape juice is very very sweet and very grape-y too.

Update

The juice fermented quickly in the primary fermenter and I pressed it after six days. I got 29 liters of wine. The wine in the carboy is not emitting carbon dioxide fast at all. When I taste it, it seems pretty low sugar, but I tend to think the yeast died some how. I added extra yeast nutrient. ( I intend to rack the wine, and then add some Champagne yeast to restart it.

Cherry, What Am I Tasting?

2011-07-12T17:39:00.000-07:00

I was wondering what Cherries tasted like, and I found this article by Nui and several other Chinese authors. They linked the molecules to the flavor profile. 29 compounds contribute to the taste including slightly disturbing chemicals like benzaldehyde.

Fifty-one odor-active (OA) compounds were detected by GC–O and quantified by GC–MS, and 45 of them were identified. Twenty-nine OA compounds having more than 50% detection frequency were selected as specific compounds correlated to sensory attributes by partial least squares regression (PLSR).

The correlation result showed ethyl 2-methyl propionate, 2,3-butanedione, ethyl butyrate, ethyl pentanoate, 3-methyl-1-butanol, ethyl hexanoate, 3-hydroxy-2-butanone, ethyl lactate, 1-hexanol, (Z)-3-hexen-1-ol, ethyl hydroxyacetate, acetic acid, furfural, 2-ethyl-1-hexanol, benzaldehyde, propanoic acid, butanoic acid, guaiacol, beta-citronellol, hexanoic acid, 2-methoxy-4-methylphenol, 2-ethyl-3-hydroxy-4H-pyran-4-one, ethyl cinnamate, 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol were typical OA compounds, which covaried with characteristic aroma of cherry wines.

My 2011 continues to ferment, and ferment quickly. It has been 48 hours and the sweetness is diminishing. The cherry fragrance is still there. The alcohol is still to faint to pick out.

2011 Cherry Wine

2011-07-10T16:45:00.000-07:00

It's Summer, and I drove out to find cherries, hopefully Michigan cherries for my cherry wine. My three year old cherry tree produced about five cherries this year.

I could have driven to Western Michigan, but that would have taken all weekend. Instead, I went to the Eastern Market, which is a local Farmer's Market in Detroit. Cherries were hard to find, but I came home with six pounds of tart Michigan Cherries. I also got some California Black Cherries there and at the grocery. I also got ten pounds of frozen tart cherries from GFS -- these are pitted, so much easier to use.

I bought the different cherries so that I would get a "broader" flavor profile. I think that the Black Cherries are the best though. They seem to be the most flavorful.

I boiled the cherries, and added eighteen pounds of sugar.

2011 Cherry Wine Recipe

Michigan tart cherries 6 lb
Black Cherries 24 lb
Rainer Cherries 5 lb
Frozen Tart Cherries 10 lb
TOTAL 45 lb, all boiled than then broken open with a potato masher
Sugar 18 lb, added as syrup
Water to make 8 gallons; density is 1.14, 1.33 Brix - perhaps too high
Pectic enzyme 6 g
Yeast Energizer 3 g
Red Star Curvee 1 packet

This is a little more sugar and cherry concentration than last year's 36 pounds of cherries. The plan is to make a desert wine, and that is why it is so strong.
.

Wine Label Art

2011-06-11T09:47:00.000-07:00

I have bought bottles wine that I did not want to open because the bottle looks so nice. Some of the best commercial art is from wine labels; here is one that I liked so much I took a picture of.

The picture does not capture how cool the bottle looked in the store and at home.

This is the problem with wine label art, it only looks good on the bottle. There are people who save bottles, but that seems a little weird to me.

Matthew Latkiewicz made a clever post that was in NY Mag about wine labels.

I liked way he categorized labels from French to Clever to Graphic Design Student.

2010 Cherry Wine

2011-05-08T17:16:00.000-07:00

The 2010 Cherry Wine has been trouble. I missed the local cherry season, and had to buy frozen cherries. First the wine tasted like cough syrup, and then it was just flavorless.

I dosed it with sugar and yeast, and got the alcohol level up. Time worked it's magic, and it is now definitely drinkable. The cherry flavor is back, and a little more alcohol seems to fix multiple flaws.

I went to the local beer store and got some 1/2 liter flip-top bottles. I bottled out a case or 6 liters of cherry wine. I put in 3 grams of corn sugar in each. The extra sugar is fermented in to carbon dioxide and the wine will be fizzy. Supposedly corn sugar is easier for the yeast to use.

The fizziness should compensate for the any deficiencies in the wine, since everyone likes bubbles.

2010 Muscato 2 -- from Juice

2011-02-06T05:25:00.000-08:00

Muscato is such a useful wine because it blends well with other wines that have problems - -and I have a few batches that I am worried about. If I don't need it for blending, Muscato is drinkable by itself too. Plus my DW likes it. Muscato is also called Muscat or Muscatel.

I bought a pail of refrigerated juice that had been packed in September, so it had partially fermented. In fact it was under pressure since the pressure-relieve valve in the lid wasn't working right.

See my Cabernet Sauvignon post for more about making wine from juice.

Recipe for Muscato Wine from Juice

20 L of Muscato Juice (Regina)
1 lb (454 g) sugar
2.5 g Yeast Energizer

(Using the wild yeast already in the juice -- no added yeast.)

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I added the sugar by heating the juice on the stove and stirring in the sugar. I added the sugar just to be on the safe side. The juice just tasted barely sweet and did not seem that alcoholic -- although I am sure it was more alcoholic than it seemed.

This was really easy, and I am not worried about this wine. I am pretty sure that this batch is going to turn out OK.

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Update March 26, 2011
The wine still has not clarified, and never bubbled very hard. It is slightly sweet, but the flavor is good. I am concerned that the wild yeast did not take the fermentation far enough -- nonetheless the fruity flavor of the Muscato will still deliver a good beverage.

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Update September 17, 2011
The wine has improved a great deal. It has a little planty or viney flavor that I don't like much, but it is not objectionable. I think it should be blended with a red wine like the 2010 Zinfandel.

2010 Cabernet Sauvignon 2 from Juice

2011-02-06T05:11:00.000-08:00

I had some time on my hands, and I my wine shelf was drying up, so I bought some grape juice.

This was refrigerated juice not sterilized concentrate. Interestingly, pails of juice ferment as they age, and it has been four months. The juice is just barely sweet, and has a noticable alcohol content -- as if I had been fermenting fresh grape juice for about three days at room temp.

Recipe

6 gallons (23 L) of Cabernet Sauvignon juice (Regina)
3L Muscato juice (Regina)
600 g sugar (1.5 lb)
3g Yeast Energizer

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The juice was already fermenting with half an inch of yeast at the bottom. I allowed it to warm. The density was about 1, although it was cooler than room temperature -- either way it was not going to be possible to get a good reading on the original sugar content to project the final alcohol content. I tasted it, and decided to add sugar -- largely because I added it last time I made Cabernet Sauvignon I added sugar.

The lady at the California Wine Grapes Store insisted that I should just let the wild yeast fermentation finish, and not put new yeast in on top. She said it might be impossible to restart the fermentation once I killed the wild yeast.
I added the yeast Energizer since the batch is fermenting with wild yeast, so it might need "energizing."

I added the Muscato because I find Cab to lack grapy flavor, and the Muscato has plenty of fruitiness. I also needed to top off the demijohn.

As the juice is warming it is continuing to ferment. I am sure this wine will be drinkable, but I don't know if it going to be the quality that I want.

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March 26, 2011 Update

I just left the wild yeast, and it may not have been the right decision. It has been six weeks and the wine is still sweet. I stirred in a packet of Champagne yeast. I also racked it.

I am worried about this one.

2010 Mead

2010-11-06T15:18:00.000-07:00

Well this one is a real experiment.

I went to the beer store with my DW, and she said something to the clerk about mead. The clerk said he had a kit which included a packet of chemicals and that they sell a 1 gallon bucket of honey just for making mead. I though she was going to make mead, but it turned out she decided that I should make mead.

The mead is an experiment because my wife is involved enough to give directions, but not involved enough to do any of the work. She wants to stick slavishly to the recipe in the kit, which has three kinds of mead: dry, sack, and sweet. Dry mead gets 10 lb of honey, sack gets 15 lb, and sweet gets 20 lb of honey per five gallons total. "Sack mead" is a traditional sweet version of mead. "Sweet" is over-the-top in sweetness for our 21st Century tastebuds.

The recipe I am using is:

20 lb honey
3.5 gallons of spring water (Walmart brand)
7 g yeast nutrient from the kit
7 g of pectic enzyme from the kit
5 oranges, not in the original recipe, but to provide acidity, and some flavor. These were cut, and crushed in my grape crusher
Lavlin EC-1118 yeast (a Champagne type)

I did not boil or otherwise pasteurize the mixture.
After the fermentation started I added:

50 g of chopped raisins (10t)
4.5 cinnamon sticks
1/4 t of cloves
1/2 nutmeg
[would have added 1/4t allspice, but I didn't have any.)

Crushing the oranges into the honey-water.

The tricky aspect of this is that the sugar content is wildly high. It has a Brix that is literally offscale at 32.2, and a density of 1.42, which might make a skull-crushing 34% alcohol (by density). A Brix of 20 and an alcohol content of 13% might be more normal. On the there hand, the yeast will die before it gets that intense, and what we will get is a dessert wine. I am worried, what I am going to get is pancake syrup.

I fermented it a week in a open top plastic container, and then transferred it to glass fermenters. The Brix was still 29, where 0-5 would be typical for fruit wine.

I left the orange rinds in the must because I think leaching the limonene out of the rind will give some welcome bitterness.

The plan is to let it ferment until clarity, then hit it with sorbate to kill the yeast with residual sweetness. I may take some and try to make sparkling wine too.

2010 Zinfandel

2010-10-10T04:55:00.000-07:00

I went to the local grape market, and found some wonderful "old vine" zinfandel grapes. I have taken to wondering around the warehouse looking for grapes that seem good to me. I originally was looking for Merlot grapes, and there were some good ones, but these zinfandel grapes were so more flavorful and sweet.

2010 Zinfandel Recipe

144 lb or 4 cases of "old vine" Zinfandel grapes from F. Colavita's of Stockton CA; crushed to juice;

13 g of ammonium bisulfite
10 g pectic enzyme

Let stand until morning.

10 g yeast energizer
900 ml water
2 packets of yeast - Montrachet

===============================================================================

I crushed the grapes in my humble wood crank grape crusher. I pulled out the larger stems, but these grapes had a good number of sugary raisins so I left those stems in. I pulled a lot of stems out though, and I double crushed them by running them through the crusher twice.

Ammonium bisulfite is to kill the wild yeast. The pectic enzyme helps the wine to be clearer.

The density of the juice was 1.122g/ml, and the Brix refractive index was 27.4. This should give a high alcohol content in the range of 16.7%. These grapes had a large number of raisins so I think the sugar content will probably go up. I added 900 ml of water, which should drop the alcohol to about 14%.

I decided to use two packets of yeast since the cabernet sauvignon fermentation was too slow.

My art photo using the zinfandel grapes.

_____________________________________________________________

I tracked the refractive index over the first week.

Oct 10 7 PM 26.4 Brix (Yeast added)

Oct 11 7 AM 26.4 Brix (Its the same!! :-(

Oct 11 8 PM 24.5

Oct 12 7 AM 19.2

Oct 13 no measurement, but huge volumes of carbon dioxide bubbles I spent time dividing the juice into two containers to avoid overflow

Oct 14 7 AM 9.5 (huge drop in Brix)
Oct 14 7 PM 9.5 (Its the same.)
Oct 15 7 AM 9.5 (Its the same?)
Oct 15 10 AM 9.5 (Strangely the same. Yes it measures water correctly. The juice seems fermented by flavor.)

I pressed the grapes, which went well. I got 41 liters of juice from the four cases of grapes.

Muscato and Cabaret Sauvignon Update

2010-10-09T06:54:00.000-07:00

As described below, I made the grape juice from the Muscato grapes, and fermented it for 7 days in open top primary fermentor before transferring to a demijohn. I got about 18 liters yield from the three cases of grapes. I did not adjust the sugar content.

I tracked the refractive index to monitor the fermentation:

27 Sept 23 (so called Brix units)
28 Sept 15
29 Sept 12
30 Sept 9
1 Oct 8

The book says that the refractive index should go negative before moving to a secondary fermentor, but I did not to that.

It has been a week since then, and the wine is slowly clarifying. The wine is not evolving carbon dioxide quickly though the trap though, so I am a little worried.

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The cabaret sauvignon fermentation started more slowly. I monitored the refractive index twice a day since I was worried about it.

27 Sept pm 24.4 (so called Brix units)

28 Sept am 24.1

pm 22.8

29 Sept am 21.8

pm 19.7

30 Sept am 15.8

pm 13

1 Oct am 11.6

pm 10.3

2 Oct am 9.7

Similarly I wish I could have let this go farther. I pressed the grapes, and got about 36 L from the four cases of grapes.

2010 Muscato

2010-09-26T17:38:00.000-07:00

The grapes were juicy, but there were some
past their prime. This may produce a sweeter flavor,
but keep the yield in juice per box down.

I am making a Muscato, also called Muscatel or just Muscat, because my brother Glenn has made some excellent Muscato, and it is useful for blending with other wine. Also my DW likes it, although I'd need to finish it sweet for her to really like it.

2010 Muscato Recipe

72 lb Muscato grapes (Medaglia D-Oro, Stockton CA)
4 g potassium bisulfite
5 g pectic enzyme
4 g yeast energizer
1 packet of Red Star Pasteur Champagne yeast from Red Star (added the next day)

I crushed the grapes in less than an hour --they were very juicy -- and then pressed them. The pressing was hard because they squeezed through all the gaps in the press. They squirted out of the wooden cage and made a mess. Later I pressed the escaped grapes in a nylon bag.

2010 Cabernet Sauvignon

2010-09-26T17:25:00.000-07:00

I started the 2010 Cabernet Sauvignon today because the grapes at the market (California Wine Grapes on Fort Street) looked so good. It is actually three cases of Cabernet Sauvinon and one case of Merlot -- all from California. The sugar content is good at 1.12 g/ml for over 13% alcohol content, however the refractive index measured at 23.2 Brix (whatever a Brix is), and that is good for 12%. I added another 550 g of sugar, which on approximately 10 gallons or 38 L of juice, should be good for 13.5 % alcohol or so.

2010 Cabernet Sauvignon Recipe
108 lb (3 cases) Cabernet Sauvignon (Top Brass from Earlemart CA)
36 lb Merlot (Lodi Gold, Lodi CA)
13 g potassium bisulfite
10 g pectic enzyme
550 g sugar
10 g yeast energizer
1 packet Montrachet yeast from Red Star (added the next morning)

It took me about three hours to make the juice in my hand turned machine, and then I fished most of the stems out by hand.

In the grape crusher

Pizza From China

2010-08-26T18:00:00.000-07:00

A chinese pizza would be a wheat bread dough with chinese vegetables on it, and a sweet spicy sauce -- maybe some soy flavor.

When I was in fifth grade, I told everyone that pizza was invented in China.

In fifth grade, I had heard about the story about Marco Polo bringing spaghetti to Italy from China, I think from watching Jeopardy! I told my teacher, who did not believe me. Being a good teacher, he told me to look it up. Like most fifth graders, I could not spell "spaghetti", so I looked up "pizza" instead.

Soon I was telling kids and my teacher that pizza came from China --though I never could prove it. Other kids were more sensible than me, and did not believe it.

I wonder how my brain worked in fifth grade!

Spaghetti does not come from China either, primarily because the Chinese did not have seminola or durm flour in ancient times. The Marco Polo story is false, although he did use the Latin word for noodles when describing some of the Chinese food. The point being that there was a Latin word for noodle already, so he did discover them in China first.

Having said all this; I seldom eat spaghetti today because I am too carbophobic.

I do eat pizza because I like it so much.
.

Champaign Bubbles

2010-08-01T17:02:00.000-07:00

An image of the carbon dioxide flowing out of a glass of cold champaign. From Gérard Liger-Belair of the University of Reims Champagne-Ardenne, in France where else?
(J. Agric. Food Chem., DOI:10.1021/jf101239w).

The carbon dioxide is colder than the room air, and it is heavier than air as well.

2009 Dry Zinfandel

2010-07-26T17:41:00.000-07:00

2009 Zinfandel - Nice clarity and beautiful color. It is a light red

as zinfandels usually are.

In this picture, you can't tell how how big the glass really is.

I bottled out 3 gallons of the 2009 Zinfandel yesterday. It was strong and clear. It was fruity and not heavily tannined. I had added some oak chips but not many. Its flavor is fine, but not complicated.

The wine is still young, and I am still aging another 6 gallons of it in another carboy.

After 48 hours the flavor has changed considerably due to the oxygenation of the wine on filling. I am constantly amazed at the effect of oxygenation on flavor. Today's flavor is much matured.

Recall, the plan for this wine was to stop the fermentation of part, and make a sweet Zinfandel, but that did not work, and it all turned out dry.

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Jan 2011 Update: This wine has matured well, and is quite drinkable now with an alcohol content in the 13% neighborhood. It does not have any off flavors.

2010 Cherry Wine

2010-07-04T06:19:00.000-07:00

One of the best things last winter was discovering how Wonderful my 2009 Cherry Wine was. So this Spring I was excited to get some fresh Michigan Cherries and make more.

Sadly, the Spring was unusually warm and I missed the season. I managed to get some fresh cherries at the store, but I could not find the abundance and price that I hoped for. I settled a mixture of fresh and frozen cherries from GFS Gordon's Food Service. The GFS cherries were whole PITTED sweet cherries without sugar.

Let me say that buying cherries that are PITTED is a million times easier. It took me over an hour to remove the pits from the fresh cherries this year. Last year I gave up after a while, and fermented without removing the pits.

I have a tip on removing pits by hand. Pit removal is easier with a the needle-like prongs from a corncob holder. I could pierce the cherry and push the pit out using the prongs pretty fast. Much easier than last year, when I eventually gave up. This year I had the whole mixture de-pitted, and I could run them through my grape crusher. Ordinarily even one cherry pit would jam the grape crusher. With the grape crusher, I am sure I will get much better extraction of the cherry juice.

I started with the recipe from 2009 with a few changes notably the yeast, the yeast energizer, and the larger 6.5 gallon size.

Cherry must with the yeast broadcast on top.
After another minute, I stirred it in.

2010 Cherry Wine Recipe

36lb cherries (30lb frozen + 6 lb fresh)
6 gallons of water
9 bags of Lipton tea
12.5 lb of sugar
1.5 t of metabisulfite
9 g of yeast energizer
6 g of pectin enzyme
1 pack of Red Star Pasteur Champagne yeast

Cherries are not very sweet and not very juicy either. One needs to add more water than you'd think. I added 11 lb of sugar to get to 1.088g/ml which would be 10.5% alcohol. I adjusted it in two steps with 50% sugar syrup to 1.102 which should give 13.5% alcohol. There should be a theoretical way to adjust the sugar content, but I don't know how fast the volume changes with each increment of dissolved sugar. One can make assumptions based on no volume change, but that under represents the addition. Once I had an adjustment, I extrapolated.

The idea of the tea is to add flavor. It seems better to use tea rather than oak chips to get a tannin flavor. The metabisulfite was added Saturday night to keep the natural yeast under control while the juice warmed to room temperature. I put the yeast energizer and yeast in on Sunday morning. I used the Red Star Pasteur Champagne yeast because I had it leftover from last year's apple wine disaster (see below.)

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December 30, 2010 Update

I tasted the wine and was quite disappointed. It did not have the depth of flavor I wanted. It was cherry-like, but not strongly so.

I decided to add more sugar to run the alcohol content up, and to make more of a dessert wine.

I added 2.6% by weight of regular sugar on the 25 liter batch or 660 grams (1.5 lb.) I'll let you know how it turns out.

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This is another recipe that calls for boiling.

2009 Apple Wine / Hard Cider

2010-07-04T06:18:00.000-07:00

I never posted on my 2009 Apple Wine adventure because it ended so badly. Now that some time has past, I think I will put something up.

Jenny had been buying Hard Cider at the store lately, and wanted me to try some -- different than wanting us to try some. We went to Downriver landmark Block's Farmstand to buy 1.5 bushels of Michigan apples.

I found a kit at the local beer store, which essentially was a packet of preweighed chemicals. I liked this kit because it had a hard cider recipe, which is:

5 gallons apple juice
3.75 t acid blend
2.5 t pectic enzyme
1.25 t wine tannin
1 pack yeast
2.5 t potassium sorbate

This seems like a lot of chemicals for five gallons, but it is from a wine chemical vendor. Worse, the kit is missing the potassium sorbate.

The problem was getting the juice. I thought I could mash the apples well enough with the food processor, but that was way too slow. I eventually gave up on most of the apples, and ended up buying juice. (After a while, most of the apples ended up in my garden's compost pit.)

The resulting juice was flavorless, but I fermented it anyway.

By Thanksgiving, I knew I did not have a tastey Hard Cider, which is after all a weak apple wine --rather I had weak flavorless liquid not good for anything.

I thought for a while I could save it by blending it with other wine,; most notably my 2009 Blueberry wine which had a strong tannin flavor, but not enough fruitiness. No way though. The Apple wine wrecks whatever it touches.

I did find something to blend it with. Fortifying it with brandy helps a lot. Fortifying with grain alcohol does not give the right flavor. Either one makes helps the wine to clear. I had given up getting to become clear, but adding the extra alcohol made it all settle to the bottom of the bottle. One can see sediment at the bottom of the bottle in the photo.

Flavoring it with honey also helps. I bottled off some Pseudo-Mead with brandy and honey that is decent.

The lesson I have learned is that only flavorful juice makes flavorful wine. The second lesson is that the main flavor in apple juice is sugar.

French Colleges May Soon Require Wine Appreciation Classes

2010-04-25T04:12:00.000-07:00

The French are seriously debating making wine appreciation are REQUIRED college class.
It looks like a scan from the wine growers to promote wine consumption. This is from Time Magazine

Now the authors of a recent government study have come up with a controversial way to teach young French that famous savoir vivre in sensible drinking: hold wine tasting sessions in college cafeterias.

Commissioned by the French Higher Education Ministry, and co-authored by a pair of respected French gastronomes — former director of Paris Sorbonne University, Jean-Robert Pitte, and television presenter Jean-Pierre Coffe — the report, published in March, includes a range of proposals on how to improve students' diets and consumption habits. Pitte and Coffe believe a university education shouldn't stop at the cafeteria door, and that alcohol should be on the syllabus too, in the form of lunchtime tasting classes. "We thought it was good to begin to instill a sense of responsibility in students, and teach them to how to appreciate good wine in great moderation," Pitte told France INFO radio last month. "And to show them that it is pleasurable and healthy, and part of our national heritage."

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1984065,00.html#ixzz0m2yQyEVW

In my view this is a case where politicians and commercial interests should keep themselves out of the classroom. It is interesting to consider that French colleges are more subject to this interference because they get so much more government aid.

Wine Grape Authentication

2010-04-24T03:53:00.000-07:00

It is hard to know whether the grapes we buy are what they claim to be. Beyond looking at the label on the side of the crate there is little anyone can do to be sure. Recently Gallo bought Merlot grapes thinking they were buying Pinot Nior grapes.

If one is a big vineyard, one could hire a lab to analyze the grapes, although I tend to think it is smarter to visit the farmer. If you are a little guy, what hope do you have?

Chemists at Ege University in Turkey looked at grape authentication, and found a number of solutions that involve heavy instrumentation. The best is restriction length fragment polymorphism RLFP, which involves extracting DNA, and treating it with enzymes to cut it at determined points, and then analyzing the length with an agarose electrophorsis gel. There are more advanced versions of this technique. Most species identification is done this way, as are many paternity tests. It is hard to find a lab that will run samples, but one is Marin Biologics. There was a technique involving electrophoresis of the grape juice, which I found interesting since one can do it after pressing.

Having said all this, there is no good way to ensure that your grapes are what they say they are. The reputation of the vendor is important, but even the big vintners even buy mislabelled grapes from time-to-time. Gallo caught the scam. How many other scams go undetected?

My recommendation is to look at the grapes when buying, and pick ones that you like the appearance of. Don't pay too much because you can't ever be sure of what you are buying.

2009 Riesling Not Ready Yet

2010-04-04T16:05:00.000-07:00

Being Easter, I wanted to celebrate by trying some of the new wine, and my reds are definitely not ready. I was hoping that my 2009 Riesling would cooperate.

I opened it, and transferred it to a smaller demijohn and some gallons. The wine has a pleasing reddish color because I left the skins with the juice overnight. That is not so unusual, my books says that people sometimes do that, but it made the wine darker than most people's Riesling.

The problem with the wine is that it is still harsh. It is not undrinkable, but it is not smooth yet. The flavor improves with aeration, but not completely.

Last year's white, a pino grigio, has mellowed since last year. I am hoping patience will be the key. I am going to age the wine in the garage while it is still cool to try to get any precipitate to drop out.

2009 Wine Update

2010-03-13T09:22:00.000-08:00

It has been a while since I have updated my wines.

2008 Merlot
For the record, I am very pleased with the 2008 Merlot. It turned out very well, and I only wish I had made more. It was made from juice that I bought from California, and it is very lightly oaked. Wonderful.

2008 Pinot Grigio
The 2008 Pinot Grigio is a decent white wine, but I am not overly enthusiastic about it. It does not have the grapy flavor that I was hoping for. My friends like it better than I do. I bottled this one early last year, and there is not that much left.

2009 Cherry
The star of my fruit wines from last year is the 2009 Cherry. It has an intense cherry flavor, that has mellowed from the cough syrup variety to a fragrant and tasty mixture. It is strong though. I know I mis-measured the sugar content, and this wine almost too strong. I probably should blend it off with something. The wine has matured well, and I have been drinking it since Christmas.

2009 Blueberry
The blueberry fruit that this was made from were so inviting that I made this wine without enough research. The wine has a tannin flavor without a lot of fruitiness. Its best attribute is its pleasant fragrance, but there is no flavor to match. I think it could be blended with a red grape wine to give complexity. Not so good on its own.

2009 Apple
The clear loser of the lot. After a failed effort to press apples, I purchased juice. The apple wine is almost flavorless with just the slightest hint of appleness. I had been hoping to blend this with something -- like the cherry, but this wine wrecks whatever it touches. It is probably destined to be poured down the drain. It is slightly better if I sweeten it with honey, but I think it is a waste of good honey.

2009 Merlot/Syrah
I made this from two cases of Merlot grapes and one case of California Syrah grape. I am quite happy with this, and only wish I made more. It is still aging, but it is drinkable already.

2009 Riesling
I made this wine from grapes, and allowed the skins, which are white (of course) to soak overnight with the wine, so it is more amber and more grapey than most Rieslings. The wine has the color of the juice that is picture below. It is a dry Riesling, at least right now. I am not above taking a portion of this and sweetening it.

I tasted it yesterday, and it has a harsh flavor to it that I don't like. I am hoping that is still yeast, and that it will age out. I am not in a hurry to bottle this one. It is possible that I should filter it.

2009 Zinfandel
When I made this wine last fall, I was thinking that I did not get the yield out of the Merlot/Syrah project, and decided to visit the grape store again. At the time, they OLD VINE NAPA VALLEY, and I put one case it. All these grapes were really nice looking.

Now that the wine has aged this far, the wine is drinkable, but far more tannin-y than I'd like. This is despite the fact that I did not add any oak chips It is less fruity than I wanted. It is a good candidate for blending with the Blueberry or the Riesling.

I racked this one yesterday, and it is drinkable, but too harsh.

Does "blintzes" rhymes with "kisses?" -- A Valentine's day blintz recipe

2010-02-14T10:17:00.000-08:00

I was working on some bad Valentine's verse, and I was looking for a rhyme for kisses. I did not like "misses" or "hisses"; rhymer.com suggested blintzes. I don't agree that "blintzes" rhymes well with "kisses", but I don't write good poetry.

Anyway, this got me free associating on cheese blintzes. ["Blueberry blintzes" doesn't fit the meter of my poem.]

I liked this blintz video, so much that I wanted to post a link here.

http://video.about.com/kosherfood/Easy-Cheese-Blintzes.htm

I liked how nicely this was produced. This is a style that I think I might try to copy. John Mitziwich, the cook, is friendly and likeable.

Having said that I'm not planning to make a blintz. I am going to make a cheese blintz filling and put it in a flakey puff pastry. I will use the easy blueberry sauce though.

What rhymes with pastry?

USB Wine

2010-01-24T10:32:00.000-08:00

Click here to watch the video, which is great. I need to get one of these!

The video is pretty funny. Even funnier in French.

All about Chianti

2010-01-16T03:46:00.000-08:00

I found a great article on Chianti on Slate. Here is the second paragraph. (I have upgraded my journalistic standards, so I don't just swipe whole articles anymore.)

The constant wrangling over Chianti has been part of a broader debate in Tuscany concerning the role of sangiovese, the region's signature grape. sangiovese, which means "blood of Jove" and is indigenous to Tuscany, was traditionally regarded as too coarse and tannic to stand on its own and was believed to perform well only when blended with other grapes. Beginning in the mid-1800s, the accepted formula for Chianti was to mix sangiovese with a hefty percentage of canaiolo and two white wine grapes, trebbiano and malvasia. This recipe was enshrined in 1967, when the Italian authorities ruled that Chianti had to be an amalgam of these four varieties and that the white grapes had to account for 10 percent to 30 percent of the final blend. But there actually wasn't much synergy between the white grapes and sangiovese, and this unhappy marriage, coupled with excessive crop yields, inferior vines, and poor winemaking, produced a lot of rotgut.

My big thing with Chianti is that you don't know what you are getting. A good Chianti is wonderful, but the bad Chianti's out-number the good ones. As with most wines, the expensive ones are necessarily the good ones. The nice thing about Chianti is their unpretentious ness. They are friendly and accessible.

The other aspect of Chianti is that it is a blend of red wine with white wine at 10-30%. This is something traditional in Italian wine that Italian-American wine makers do. My brother gave me some white-red blend like this over Christmas, and it was pretty good. Soon I was mixing my 2008 Pinot Grigio with Australian Syrah, and pleased with the result. It certainly helps the Syrah.

The other thing about Chianti is the straw covered bottles, that are cute for a while then tacky. They are called fiascos. The nicer Chiantis don't have them. I encounter fiascos all the time. (According to the OED, the two definitions of fiasco are not related.)

I think of the problematically-named Dago Red as a blend of red and white grapes. That is the recipe that they give out at California Wine Grapes, my local grape source.

More on the Redox Potential of Wine

2009-11-28T05:05:00.000-08:00

I continue to be interested in the change in wine as it is exposed to the air.

One way to measure that is with the redox potential, which is measured like pH, but with a platinum electrode instead of a glass electrode.

Anyway, I got an article by Tomlinson and Kilmartin from New Zealand, (J Appl Electrochem 29:1:9 (1997) 1125-1137), and they explain how there are a multitude of redox couples active in a bottle of wine.

The electrochemical potential is a thermodynamic property, but in wine there are multiple equilibria, and we typically don't want the wine to degrade before we measure it at equilibrium. People often want to test it in as it is stored in the bottle, and after several months or years - it must be fairly stable. My interest is in the rapid change in tannin, fruit and other flavors as the wine breathes. It strikes me that there must be a lot of chemistry happening all at once.

Tomlinson & Kilmartin also point out the pH generally correlates with reduction potential -- perhaps because H+ ion is involved in a lot of the reactions. This is good for me since I am unlikely to buy a platinum electrode for my wine shop.

Zoecklein from Virginia Tech prepared the chart above showing different kinds of equilibria in wine. Most notable is the oxidation of ethanol to acetaldehyde or ethanal. Bad because acetaldehyde is poisonous, and because there is 13% alcohol for the reaction to work with. I am also interested in trying to control the redox potential with ascorbate rather than sulfite to avoid the flavor problem.

The 2009 Zinfandel

2009-10-18T11:22:00.000-07:00

One of the big disappointments from the 2009 Merlot is that there is only 28 liters of it or about 8 gallons. I really wanted twelve gallons. As I was making the Riesling, I had the problem of being about 1 gallon of juice short to fill the demijohn. I could have put commercial wine in, but I wanted it to be more homemade.
I devised the idea of buying a case of Riesling grapes, topping off the Riesling demijohn, and then mixing the rest with a new batch of red. What a great idea!

I went to California Wine Grapes in Detroit, in the Corktown neighborhood, and they were out of Riesling. The only grape they had was Muscato, which does not have a great reputation because people typically make a sweet wino grade wine, but it is often used to blend. I am glad I got it, since it had a wonderful flavor, and the grapes were good quality.

I also bought two cases of Zinfandel from Lodi California, and one case of Old Vine Zinfandel from NAPA VALLEY no less. Actually the Napa Valley grapes were on sale because I got them on Sunday -- having decided I was still short on juice. I don't think they are much superior to the ones from Lodi.

2009 Zinfandel Wine Recipe

108 lb Zinfandel grapes (one case from Napa)
24 lb of Muscato grapes
1.5 t (5 grams) bisulfite
5 g pectic enzyme

Allow to stand until warm or overnight

Red Star Montrachet Yeast

<<Update post>>

2009 Riesling Wine

2009-10-13T17:16:00.000-07:00

On Saturday (10-Oct) I purchased two cases of Riesling grapes. I crushed them, squeezed them, and got about 5.5 gallons. I took the pressed grapes and heated them with about three quarts of hot water, and got about 6 1/4 gallons altogether. The grape juice was sweet even after dilution at 1.11 g/ml. I did not need to add sugar.

Riesling Recipe

6 gallons of fresh squeezed Reisling grape juice from 72 pounds of grapes*
3/4 t potassium sulfite
1/2 t pectic enzyme
9 grams (3 t) yeast energizer

*I actually crushed the grapes and added the sulfite, and then pressed the grapes in the morning. No doubt this is going to give me a darker color and more tannin flavor. On the other hand, there was no other way. I understand that California style Riesling is always pressed immediately, while European vintners vary. Notice that the Riesling grapes are not really green grapes but have some color on the skin. The juice, pictured below, is a little red. It will be interesting to see how dark it is when the pulp has settled.

I used my new fruit press. I thought I was only going to get four gallons, but with patience coxed another 1.5 gallons out.

i put this in a ten gallon plastic primary fermenter and covered it with plastic. The wine has been fermenting for 21/2 days now, and is still sweet, but distinctly alcoholic --especially the fragrance.

This juice was from DePalma in Ripon California. I have old DePalma grape creates from when my father made wine in the 1970's and the labels are almost identical. Having said that the grapes were pretty dirty and had a lot of leaves. I took to rinsing them with water, and the first rinse water was pretty dark.

Alcohol Content of Wine

2009-10-11T08:26:00.000-07:00

I am working on a new Riesling wine made from California grapes, and it is time to balance the sugar level and pick the alcohol content.

Most people would have no way of knowing, but my blog page that gets the most traffic is this table on alcohol content of wines that I put in months ago.

Here is a link to another one from http://www.alcoholcontents.com/wine/wine.htm. I don't like it because it is far too vague. The lesson is that regular white wines like Chardonnay and Riesling are at 10% for medium and 11.5% alcohol by volume for dry. Medium red wines start at 11% and go to 12%. Dry reds are 12-14%. Hardy deep reds can be as high as 17%. The author says that Shiraz and Syrah which are the same grape, have different alcohol content when made in the Australlian style (Shiraz) than in the French/California style (Syrah) -- not sure how believable that is.

Analytical work on wines show that the alcohol content on the label is almost always over reported. It would be smart to subtract 1% from all of them.

There are many ways to measure alcohol content, and about the simplest is distillation. Industrially, GC and a this Anton Paar flow-through densitometer are used. Jean Jacobson wrote an in-depth segment in a monograph on Amazon. Another good link on alcohol measurement.

Thin Crust Pizza

2009-10-04T10:00:00.000-07:00

I have come across a good thin crust pizza site that I want to recommend, and come back to. It is written by Steve Zinski.

This is a thin crust dough recipe, which is not the same as above:

3/4 c water
1 3/4 c bread flour - ideally high gluten flour
1/2 t salt
1/4 t sugar
1 T yeast

Squeezing the Merlot

2009-10-04T04:58:00.000-07:00

I picked up a little wine press on Wednesday, it is a Weston Fruit and Wine Press Model 05-0101. It is a small press with the screw running through the center of the basket -- like many of the new ones.

I pressed the 2009 Merlot wine after six days with my new wine press.

I had run a malolactic fermentation for two days I used Bacchus by Lalvin for the starter. I am still unsure of the usefulness of the malolactic. I like how Wikipedia says that it imparts "roundness" to the flavor. I think it is defensive by using Oenococcus oeni, one protects against less flavorful bacteria.

The press worked well, although the free run juice accounted for the vast majority of the wine. For red wine, I am not sure how much I needed the press.

I bottled up the wine in a demijohn, but I only got 7.5 gallons for 109 pounds of grapes. I had been hoping for ten gallons. I think this is going to mean a follow up batch of something, or I may do a larger batch of white wine this year -- perhaps a white zinfandel or a blend.

The fermentation ran fast; density was 1.0 by four days. Now that it is in the demijohn, I am not seeing as much bubbling on the gas trap as I'd like. I am trying not to worry.

The 2009 Merlot

2009-09-27T17:12:00.000-07:00

The big news this weekend is the 2009 Merlot, which is not really a Merlot, but a blend of two cases of merlot grapes with one case of syrah grapes. I got the grapes at California Wine Grapes in Detroit proper -- one of my favorite stores.

This was a big advance for me in that it involved grapes and not grape juice as last year. My little grape crusher ground through the three cases pretty well, but the sorting out of the grape stems took a while. I have a little grape press on order. Hope it is here by next weekend. [My DW has a request in for hard cider.]

The grape juice was sweet at 1.105 by density -- perfect. The juice did not taste satisfying though. The White Grenache juice for last year was like liquid heaven -- so great to drink. The Merlot will no doubt be better after fermentation since it is not so great today.

The recipe for the wine is:

72 lb California Merlot grapes
36 lb California Syrah grapes
1.25 t potassium bisulfite
10 gram of pectic enzyme

Allow to sit overnight

1 packet of Montrachet from Red Star

The plan is to ferment until Friday, then:

Malto-lactic bacteria

Press the grapes on Saturday, and move to the secondary fermentors, which are glass demijohns.

More: Grape crates have these kitschy labels that the growers must like. I save these crates and organize my basement junk with them. Here is the label from this year's Merlot.

December 30, 2010 Update

I tasted this wine, and it was too acidic in flavor. I tried to measure the pH, and my (cheap little) pH meter did not read correctly. I added 1 gram of potassium carbonate per 750 ml bottle, and allowed the wine to age.

This showed a bubbly reaction as the salt dissolved, and the carbonate bubbled into the air as carbon dioxide. The potassium ion is supposed to precipitate with tarterate ion and settle to the bottom. The wine is less tart than it was.

Non-Fermenting Sugars

2009-09-19T10:40:00.000-07:00

I am toying with making a Hard Cider or sweeting some part of my 2009 Cherry wine. While I think that Spenda, sucralose, is an interesting idea, it is shockingly non-traditional, and I don't really like the idea of adding chlorinated chemicals to my wine. [Of course I add it to my coffee, but -- well never mind.]

Spenda would work because it sweetens, but yeast can't digest it, so the wine will be sweet to the taste rather than extra hearty.

The common solution is lactose, milk sugar, which is at right. It is notable because about 35% of the world's adults can't metabolize it, but then yeast can't either. It also isn't that sweet. Lactose is at right.

Another choice is malto-dextran, which is the main ingredient in corn syrup. It has not been degraded enough to ferment.

An excellent resource is this site from Aussie Home Brewing in Brisbane.

2009 Blueberry Wine and Wine Update

2009-08-16T16:11:00.001-07:00

It's been three weeks since I started the blueberry wine, and I racked it for the first time today. I also removed it from its oversized demijohn and put in a three gallon carboy, where it will be for a while.

The flavor has changed a great deal in the last three weeks. The last remaining sweetness is gone. The wine is very fruity, very dark in color, strong tannin flavor, light in alcohol, very yeasty, and a little too sour. The color has changed and it is less red. It was more red than my cherry wine for a while.

I checked the pH and it was 3.2 by pH paper, which is about normal. I bought a little handheld pH meter and a set of standards, but I have set it up yet. I decided that regardless of what it was, it was too early to adjust it. I will wait for a few months before doing anything.

=======================================================================

Update on other wines:

It's been five weeks on the 2009 cherry wine -- so far so good.

It's nearing 10 months on the 2008 Merlot. I am going to have to transfer it out of its demijohn soon to make room for this year's grape wine. I am hoping to get petite Syrah grapes. If I do a white, it will be a Riesling.

I have been drinking my 10 month old 2008 White Grenache. After much work, I have gotten it to clarify with a bentonite addition. I like it better now that it is clear. I like it; it is a fruity simple wine -- not so complex.

Racking the 2009 Cherry and Blueberry

2009-08-01T14:00:00.000-07:00

2009 Cherry Racking

It has been two weeks since I made the Cherry wine, and the sugar content is low. I can tell by the absence of sweetness -- I did not bother to measure it. I racked the wine a second time and took out about a gallon of lees.

I am worried about it. The sweetened cherry juice was delicious, but it tasted a bit like cherry cough syrup. Now that the sugar has fermented, there still is a distinct cherry cough syrup flavor. The wine seems to be on the strong side since I overshot the sugar at 1.12 rather than 1.08-1.09 like I wanted. I will worry about what to do with that later after the flavor matures. I probably will blend it with a white grape wine.

The cherry wine is very dark - as dark as my 2008 Merlot, and only slightly redder.

2009 Blueberry Wine -- First Racking

I measured the density (specific gravity) of the primary fermenter and got 1.022. This is pretty good, but I would have liked it to be lower after six days. I am concerned about spoilage so I transfered it to an oversized demijohn.

The flavor is pretty good right now, very fruity, but it is also sweet since the fermentation is not done. Hopefully it will keep going in the secondary fermenter.

At right is the partially fermented juice in the primary fermenter prior to racking. The color is redder than my cherry wine.

2009 Blueberry Wine and Recipe

2009-07-25T12:01:00.000-07:00

I was at the store and the blueberries were $1.79/lb, which is a great price for grocery blueberries -- about what I paid for the cherries. So I decided it would be fun to try some blueberry wine -- why not?

I passed the blueberries though a manual "food mill" -- really a slotted funnel that the berries were pressed though with a funnel. I added both the juice and the skins. These berries were pretty clean, so there were very few stems or leaves.

Blueberry Wine Recipe

12 pounds of blueberries, crushed
2.5 pounds of apples, peeled, cored, and made into apple sauce
7 pounds of sugar
2.5 gallons of boiling water
3/4 teaspoon metabisulfite
1.5 teaspoons yeast energizer
1.5 teaspoons pectin enzyme
Levlin 71B 1122 yeast

I actually used 3/4 t yeast energizer and 1.5 t yeast nutrient so I could use up my yeast nutrient.

2009 Cherry Wine: in the secondary fermenter

2009-07-24T17:24:00.000-07:00

The cherry wine fermentation took off after the first day, and the sugar disappeared. I let it go five days and filtered it through a nylon bag filter that I got at the wine store. I put it in an oversized demijohn, because I don't have on the fits.

I intend to wait a few more days and then put it in my three gallon carboy, and a gallon jug.

The top picture is the bright red cherry juice. The bottom picture is the five day old cherry wine. The change in color is real.

See the wine recipe posting.

Bentonite Clarifies the White Grenache

2009-07-21T18:02:00.000-07:00

I am thrilled to report that 4 grams per gallon of Bentonite clay has clarified my White Granache wine. See the post below for the cloudy wine pictures.

Bentonite is a smectite clay with negative and positive layers. This means that it can grab a wide variety of proteins and drag them to the bottom of the bottle.

I dumped up all of my bottled White Granache, and put them in gallons.

I took the four grams of clay and added water drop-wise with stirring in a small cup-- like making a white sauce, and then I poured the mixture into the bottle. This helped the clay floated slowly through the wine rather than floating on top or sinking immediately. The slow stirring is important.

Now after six days the wine is all clear. This is a much better result than simply sprinkling the bentonite in the straight from the bottle. It also worked better than the Isinglass or the amylase, which did not work at all.

2009 Cherry Wine

2009-07-18T15:07:00.000-07:00

We had a few good bottles of Michigan Cherry wine over the winter from Traverse Bay Wnery, I decided to make a batch of my own.

I bought 23 pounds of Michigan Bing Cherries, and spent two hours cleaning them.

Cherry Wine Recipe

23 lbs Michigan Bing Cherries; stemmed, cut, crushed
3.5 gallon boiling water
6 bags of Lipton (regular black) tea

9 lbs of sugar
3/4 teaspoon metabisulfite
2 teaspoons yeast energizer
2 teaspoons pectin enzyme

Levlin 71B 1122 yeast

The tricky part is getting the cherry's crushed without breaking the pits. I tried for 30 minutes to get the pits out manually before giving up. In the end I sliced each cherry, usually twice on either side of the pit. I put the cherries into my "food mill" which is really a manual fruit press for making apple sauce. I mashed the cherries some, and extracted a bit of juice. Unlike grapes, cherries are not that juicy.

I collected a dozen recipes from the internet, and the amount of cherries per gallon varies from 2 lb-6 lb per gallon. I decided on 5.5 lb/gal. The sugar amount varies from 2 lb to 10 lb (on a four gallon batch). I started with 2 pounds, and kept adding sugar until I got to 9.

I boiled the water, and poured it over the cherries. Adjusted the sugar, added the chemicals, and allowed the cherries to cool overnight. In the morning I added the sugar, and put it in the primary fermentor.

My White Grenache is Hazy

2009-05-24T08:05:00.000-07:00

The top picture is the 2008 White Grenache after bottling it, and about 6 weeks of storage. The bottles all have a a white sediment. If I decant off the sediment, then the bottle develops more haziness, which gradually settles.

The lower picture is the wine as it came out of the demijohn - and it was nice and clear. It also had a phenolic taste that disappeared after bottling.

Anyway, I think there has been some oxidation or acidification that has altered the flavor and knocked something out of solution.

The wine books have several more or less practical ways to clarify wine, like gelatin or egg white.

I am tempted to dump up the bottles into a container, add sulfite, and let it settle by itself. After some length of time, I would filter it.

My problem is that I don't have a five gallon container that is suitable, and the wine may spontaneously start precipitating something.

Wine Flavors Introduced by Oak Aging

2009-05-17T17:19:00.000-07:00

I am thinking about whether to treat my 2008 Merlot with oak chips, and I was interested to see this article on what chemicals are found in oak chips. To my surprise most of them have some sort of desirable flavor, with the notable exception of the trichloroanisole. I am surprised that there are trichloro compounds in wood at all. This one does not seem to have severe safety issues, but I understand it has the Champagne producers concerned about adulteration via wine corks.

Fernández de Simón and others have published the work of GC/MS work on several species of wood that are commonly used to store food and impart flavor to them. They made a lengthy list in J Agric. Food Chem 57:8 (2009). I have extracted out the most important components from American Oak that has been "toasted." There are several other wood species in the work.

People should not be surprised to learn that wine scholars have been researching these extractives for years, and there is a lot published on them.

The graph at right shows the relative proportions of the top ten extractives. There are many more.

2,4,6-trichloroanisole (100 ppm)- This is the compound responsible for cork taint, and it ruins the flavor of wine even at nanogram/L levels. Smells like moldy newspaper

syringaldehyde(226 ppm), coniferaldehyde (96 ppm), sinapaldehyde (239 ppm) - vanilla related aldehydes

butyrovanillione (113 ppm) = zingerone = vanillyl acetone - also found in ginger; medicinal uses

Whiskey lactone (beta-methyl-gamma-octalactone) (32 ppm)- One of the main components of aroma in whiskey

Furfural (395 ppm) - almond-like, sometime describes as burnt; increases with the "toasting" of the oak wood

5-methyl furfural (34 ppm)- spicy, carmel-like, sweet

Racking the 2008 Merlot

2009-05-09T13:35:00.000-07:00

I racked the Merlot today, and I was pleased at how much it had matured. There was only a small amount of sediment, which I washed out.

Based on my brother, Glenn's advice I am going to wait until fall to bottle this. In the fall, I will need the bottle.

The Merlot now tastes like Merlot with fruitiness, but also with a stringency and hardiness. It is not as fruity as Shiraz. It is not a very complex flavor though, still relatively simple. It is nice, and quite drinkable especially with food.

Of course, I don't believe that good wine should be drunk with food, since the food wrecks the flavor of the wine. Good wine should be enjoyed alone.

As mentioned below, the fermentation carboy is a reducing environment, and by racking it we let is oxidize a bit. Unlike the 2008 White Grenache, there is no bitterness.

I have not added any oak chips, which I contend are unwelcome to my palate. I did put a three tea bags in during the winter to get the tannins up. I think tea tannins are nicer than oak tannins.

The Reducing Environment of the Wine Bottle

2009-04-26T15:43:00.000-07:00

I bottled out the 2008 Grenache, and have tasted a significant evolution in the flavor. Since I aged the wine in glass, and bottled it in glass, the wine has almost always been in a reductive environment. Reduction here being used in the chemical sense, meaning that chemicals are stable in the wine that would not be stable in the oxidizing environment of the atmosphere. It also means that chemicals tend have a lower oxidation state -- that is have more electrons.

I had been thinking that bitter alkaloids were being oxidized upon contact with air.

A good reference on this is riojalta.com, where I learned a lot. Riojalta says that the reducing flavor is desireable; but I am not so sure. Also I think that the process of racking and bottling improves flavor, by allowing the wine a chance to oxidize a little.

White Grenache Bottling

2009-04-12T15:32:00.000-07:00

I bottled off the white grenache wine today.

I purchased new corks and washed the bottles in the dishwasher first.

The wine is light and the bitter aftertaste that it had in the last rackng is gone. I think the last racking gave it a chance to oxidize a bit.

I wish that I could measure the redox potential of the wine, but I don't have any equipment at home. I suspect that my fermentation demijohn was a reducing environment.

Anyway, the finished wine has a great color, and better than drinkable. In fact, I need to keep myself from drinking it so it can age a little more.

Now I need a label that is unpretentious.

2008 Merlot Wine

2009-03-28T11:44:00.001-07:00

I racked the 2008 Merlot today. It had a great deal of sediment, and it continues to be a substantial drinkable wine. The wine is "simple" without a lot of tannin flavor, despite the treatment with tea leaves from last month.

It is free from off flavors, and should continue to develop. I am going to let it age until the end of the summer at this point. As you can see the color is dark and the clarity is limited.

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January 2011 Update
This wine was really good after a year, but at 2 years it developed an acidic favor that I found distracting. I don't know why this happened, because the bottles and corks looked OK.

There is not much of this batch left, but I intend to add 1g per 750 ml bottle of potassium carbonate to help it.

White Gernache Update

2009-03-28T09:25:00.000-07:00

Easter is coming up, and I wanted to get another racking in. The wine is much improved from January. It is drinkable, but it still has an off-flavor that could be yeast, but might be mold.

As in January, the off-flavor disappears if one aerates the wine. Of course I could be fooling myself, although my DW agreed.

The color and clarity are great. As pretty as you could want. It is a little golder than standard because I topped off with some cranberry/apple juice. The picture at right is the actual wine. I recently failed to place in a photo contest, so I am trying to come up with some entries for next year.

Trilobite Cookies

2009-02-22T05:32:00.001-08:00

This George Hart is a pretty funny guy. Here is a picture of trilobite cookies that he makes.

I can't possibly made an entry as clever so here is the link, and then the first paragraph of his entry:

Quoting from Prof Hart:

"Trilobites are extinct marine animals which lived gazillions of years ago. Real trilobites may or may not have tasted like chicken. (who knows?) These cookies are the result of my most recent research into what ancient trilobites would have tasted like if primitive biochemical processes were based on jam/chocolate/cookie molecules. Independent paleoconfectionary laboratories often ask for my formula, so I have placed it here for the world to enjoy."

Wine Update!

2009-02-21T11:32:00.000-08:00

Bet you all are interested in how the 2008 wine is doing.

I went and check on it, and I am proud to claim both are drinkable -- but not ready for prime-time.

The white, a California White Grenache, has improved since Christmas. It has a fruity flavor and the sweetness is gone. The wine has a harsh aroma that dissipates after aerating it. The clarity is good, although the color is a little reddish since I added a bit of cranberry juice. There is much less yeast flavor. The wine has some of-flavor bite to it, and I am not sure what it is. It does not seem plant-y. I am hoping it is a yeast flavor that will disappear. I will rack it again in another month.

The red, a California Merlot, does not have any off-flavors. Its flavor is simple and it has a little young-wine, bourgeois flavor. I am hoping this deepens into something more complex. Right now the flavor far less rich than the Woodbridge Shiraz (2006) that I got at the grocery last weekend.

Eggplant Rollatini

2009-01-25T15:45:00.000-08:00

This recipe owes a lot to Isa Moskowitz and Terry Romero's recipe in their cookbook Veganomicon, although my version is obviously not vegan because of all the cheese.

Ingredients
>One eggplant (peeled, and cut into 1/3 inch slices, lengthwise)
>Pasta sauce (I endorse Paul Newman Marinara sauce)
>1.5 cups Ricotta cheese
> 2 T pine nuts (more is better)
> salt, pepper, basil
> 1/2 cup mozzarella
> 2T parmesan cheese
> 1.25 cup water
>1T + 1t corn starch
> Bread crumbs or flour (season with salt and pepper or even garlic)
> 1 c fresh spinach

Take the eggplant slices and dewater them by salting them and letting them stand for one hour. Rinse off the salt and pat dry.

One of the Veganomicon ideas that I like is using corn starch to hold the breading on rather than egg. Make a sauce by heating the corn starch in water. This takes about 5 minutes in the microwave on high heat at first, and then low heat with occasional stirring.

Dip the eggplant slices in the corn starch solution, then cover with bread crumbs. Place on an oiled cookie sheet.

Bake the eggplant slices until brown, turning once. 350F for 30 minutes.

Make a mixture of the pine nuts, mozzarella, and ricotta. Add salt to taste. (if all you have is canned spinach mix it in here too.)

Allow the eggplant slices to cool. Place several spinach leaves and 2-3 T of cheese filling inside the eggplant slice. Roll it and place it into a baking pan. (Cover the bottom of the baking pan with tomato sauce.

When finished, spoon additional sauce on the top, and sprinkle on the parmesan cheese. Bake until the cheese filling is hot, about 35 minutes at 350 F.

Greg's Focaccia

2009-01-25T13:56:00.000-08:00

Focaccia is a flat bread. It differs from pizza in that it does not have tomato sauce and it has much less cheese. The basic flavor is olive oil and garlic. I use minimal vegetables, and then serve the Focaccia in slices with a flavored tomato sauce.

Ingredients:

>One recipe of dough, see next section
>Extra virgin olive oil
>Garlic to taste
>Grated romano cheese
>2 T Green olives (recommended, but optional)
>Other vegetables like black olives, sautéed peppers, or dried tomatoes (optional)
>Pepperoni or anchovies (optional)
>Pizza sauce

Take the dough after its first rise, punch it down and roll it into a 13 x 9 cake pan. Very important: put about 2 T of olive oil in the bottom of the pan. This makes the crust much browner and tastier. Allow to rise another hour.

Take your fingers and punch little wells in the top of the risen dough. Make a well every 1-2 inches. Not too deep, but enough to hold the oil. Apply olive oil with a spoon to the top of the dough.

Squish and dice the garlic and distribute on the dough. Apply salt and black pepper. The salt is part of the flavor, so don't skimp to be healthful.

Apply the green olives, other vegetables and toppings. Do not put too much topping on. This is primarily a bread top. One needs the top to get brown and crusty. Too many toppings prevent that. Never put tomato sauce on.

Finally sprinkle with grated romano cheese

Bake until the bread is well cooked and the toppings are warm in the center. I use a hot oven, 400 F for 20 minutes. A pizza stone can be used too.

When done remove the bread from the pan. Place it on a wire rack or directly on the hot pizza stone. Serve immediately. The best part is the fresh bread. If the bread cools without air, it will loose its texture too fast. Slice with a bread knife rather than a pizza cutter.

I always serve it with a flavored tomato sauce -- usually a simple store bought pizza sauce. One can serve it with more olive oil or with butter.

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Focaccia Dough

Water 1c + 1t (t= teaspoon)
Oil 2T (T = tablespoon)
Flour 2 and 3/4 c
Sugar 2T
Salt 1 and 1/2 t
Yeast 3T

This is a bread machine recipe, so add the ingredients to your bread machine and use the dough cycle. You can make this on a food processor or heavy blender with a dough hook.

Allow to rise one hour, then punch down and put in the 9" x 13" pan.

Wine Processing Table

2008-11-18T17:40:00.000-08:00

I have been wondering about whether I need to add more sugar to my Pinot Grigio to make it more robust; that is to say higher alcohol content. I want my wine to burn a bit and be a little astringent.

This table is lifted in whole cloth from beekmanwine.com . The original source is truthinwine.com .

Beekman rages about how the measured alcohol content is actually lower than the government standard, and that the additive levels are too high. I would want to know more about how the tests were run before I would say that. I am certain that the large mega-wineries know their wine content to the hundreth place, and that there is no bureaucrat there that wants to go to jail or wreck the reputation of the company by watering down the wine.

	Alcohol	Alcohol	Sugar	Sulfites	Polyphenols	Catechins	Resveratrol
	Actual %	Labeled	%	ppm.	mg/gram	mg/175g	mg/liter
RED WINES TESTED
Yellow Tail Merlot	11.1	13.5	0.5	103	3.26	102.4	2.00
Rosemount Shiraz	10.9	14	0.2	104	3.22	84.7	2.01
Columbia Crest Merlot/Cab	10.8	13	0	99	3.20	93.6	0.60
Clos du Bois Merlot	10.8	13	0	140	3.24	93.1	2.28
Blackstone Merlot	10.7	13	0.4	152	3.05	116.9	1.11
Beringer Founders Cab	10.5	13.3	0	198	3.62	83.6	0.39
BV Coastal Cab	10.5	13	0	122	3.40	69.5	0.43
Rodney Strong Cabernet	10.5	13.8	0	140	3.76	77.3	1.19
Concha y Toro Merlot	10.3	13	0.4	231	2.77	78.4	5.95

	Alcohol	Alcohol	Sugar	Sulfites	Polyphenols	Catechins	Resveratrol
	Actual %	Labeled	%	ppm.	mg/gram	mg/175g	mg/liter
WHITE WINES TESTED
Woodbridge Chardonnay	11.2	13.5	0	224	0.41	58.3	0.14
Fetzer Chard	11.1	13.5	0.4	184	0.39	39.8	0.11
Kendall Jackson VR Chard	11.0	13.5	0.6	201	0.48	26.4	0.22
Ch. St. Michelle Chard	10.8	13	0.1	208	0.40	39.5	0.09
Lindemans Bin 65 Chard	10.7	13.5	0.3	241	0.52	58.9	0.34
Vendange Chard	10.7	13	0.6	215	0.39	34.6	0.29
Corbett Canyon Chard	10.7	13	0.6	174	0.36	27.9	0.09
Glen Ellen Chard	10.6	13	0.5	154	0.30	27.9	0.09
E & J Gallo Chard	10.6	13.5	0.7	153	0.27	15.4	0.09
Duboueuf Francais Blanc	10.4	12	0	287	0.47	28.5	0.29
Sutter Home Chard	10.0	13	0.9	205	0.42	36.1	0.09
Bella Serra Pinot Grigio	9.7	12	0.3	308	0.34	13.5	1.66
Bolla Soave	9.7	12	0.2	199	0.30	9.8	0.16
Cavit Pinot Grigio	9.6	12	0.4	276	0.35	14.4	0.09
Almaden Mt. Chablis	9.4	11.5	0.8	233	0.33	7.3	0.09
Franzia Chablis (5L box)	8.8	11	1.1	212	0.35	10.2	0.09
Livingston Cellars Chablis	8.4	10.5	1.1	240	0.33	10.7	0.09
Carlo Rossi Chablis	8.2	10.5	1.6	172	0.32	15.2	0.09

My Pinot Grigio should turn out at about 9.5% which is almost on top of the Pinot Grigio in the table. This does not include any alcohol that is already in the grape juice, which must be measurable. Based on this I will probably leave it alone.

Having said that I would have expected Pinot Grigio at 11-12%. I am a little tempted to add some apple juice concentrate for some fruity flavor and a little extra uumph.

Racking the Wine

2008-11-15T12:42:00.000-08:00

I racked the wine today, both the Pinot Grigio and the Merlot. Racking means to decant the wine, clean out the sediment, and then pour the wine back in the demijohn for fermenting.

The good news is that the Merlot tasted great.

The bad news is that the Pinot Grigio did not. It had an off-flavor that I was hoping was yeast, but I am fearing that it was mold. I don't know where mold could have come from.

I had an incident with Pinot Grigio where the siphon hose came out of the receiver, and spilled on the floor, which unfortunately had a carpet fragment on it. I had to cut the carpet up, and through it out. (I am doing it in the basement; but I should have anticipated a spill.) This meant I had to buy extra wine to top off the demijohn. Since the wine tasted so bad, I bought cheaper wine. I put in almost four liters after racking, which is a lot on a 27 liter batch. Next time I am going to buy extra juice and ferment an extra gallon or so of each kind.

When I was done, I put the wine aside, and I am not going to touch it until January at least, when I rack it again.

Capellini Al Fresco

2008-11-02T15:29:00.000-08:00

Ingredients:

3 ounces of capellini (boiled 6 minutes: hold in cold water if you need to) I suggest breaking it in half.
1 small eggplant peeled and sliced (1.5 - 2 cups)
1.5 to 2 cans Hunts FireRoasted Diced Tomatoes -DRAINED WELL. I use a strainer. (a superior product worth shopping for)
4 cups fresh spinach
1/2 cup chopped black olives
8 ounces of chopped mushrooms (sauted)
1/2 cup grated Asigo cheese (1/4 cup after grating)
1/2 avocado, mashed (cook it, if its not ripe enough to mash)
1/4 cup red wine (A good excuse to open a bottle...)
salt, MSG, garlic, pepper
[most people would add an onion, but my DW does not like onion, so I sneak some onion flakes in.]

1. Bake the eggplant at 350 until soft. Lightly coat with oil before baking.
2. Saute the mushrooms.
3. When done add the tomatoes, olives, tomatoes, eggplant and red wine. Heat through.
4. Add the capellini and spinach. Cook until the spinach is wilted
5. Add the seasoning
6. Sprinkle on the Asigo cheese.

Serve before the capellini gets mushy.

Tilapia Cacciatore

2008-10-19T16:00:00.000-07:00

Tilapia Cacciatore is a variation of Chicken Cacciatore with the same flavors including tomatoes, red wine, olives, peppers. Variations include white fish poached in wine & apple juice.

Ingredients

4 fillets of Tilapia or other white fish, cut into 2 inch pieces (thawed)

1.5 cans of diced tomatoes (Hunt's Roasted are best.)

2 servings of capellini (fine pasta), about 1 cup cooked

1/2 cup black olives

3/4 sweet orange pepper

1.5 cup red wine (I use $3 wine from Walmart.)

1/2 cup of apple juice

3/4 cup of sliced, peeled zucchini - if you have it

3/4 cup of fresh mushrooms

2 cloves garlic

1/2 teaspoon MSG

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon capers

Directions

Saute the pepper, olives, garlic and zucchini - note the pepper will take longer to cook so begin with it. (Onion if you want, but my wife does not like onion.) Remove from the pan.
Chop the other vegetables. Drain the tomatoes using a stainer, and save the juice.
Start the water for the capellini.

Mix the wine, apple juice, and tomato juice from above. Heat it to boiling, and place the fish in. Let it cook on four minutes. Not longer.
When you put the fish in, also start the pasta.
When the fish is done, remove the fish and most of the liquid. Take the capellini out now too. (If you used fatter pasta, you will need to adjust.)
Place the vegetables and pasta in the pan and heat them in a modest amount of the wine mixture. Don't use too much liquid because this is not soup. When warm add the fish, and ensure it is all heated. See the picture below.
Add seasoning.