2010 Cherry Wine

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

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

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.

May 13, 2012 Update

The wine fermentation was slow and the wine was not that flavorful. I added a lot of oak chips, some acid-x, to reduce sourness. In the end I blended it with the Muscat from juice, and the result was much fruiter, and pretty good. Currently my favorite summer wine. 

2010 Mead

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

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

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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. 

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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

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

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.