2012 Cherry Wine

Look how artistic!  Last year's wine is
featured in this photo. 

Cherry wine has been consistently one of my favorites, and so was looking forward to making another batch. As always, I have been watching the prices at the store for the lowest prices. There was a bad cherry crop in Michigan due to the warm weather in March followed by the hard freeze in April killing all the blossoms. I bought cherries from elsewhere, probably California.

2012 Cherry Wine Recipe

45 lb of black cherries

8 gal (31L) water (with the pulp I had 10.8 gal, 41L)

18 lb sugar

6 g pectic enzyme

3 g yeast energizer

1 packet of Red Star Premier Curvee

This made approximately 41 L of must with a Brix of 32 and a density of 1.14. I am trying to make a sweet, strong dessert wine. I often blend it with a white wine like my muscato to make a cocktail wine. 

The juice was exceptionally sweet, and the fermentation started immediately. By five days, it was more alcoholic than sweet.


==============================================
4 July 2013 Update
This wine has a strong off-flavor that I attribute to the cherry pits. Even with blending, I am not sure what I can do with it. It was a bad idea to leave the pits in. Boiling the juice with the pits might have been dumb too.  The 2009 cherry wine from all fresh fruit was the best. 

2012 Strawberry Wine

I made Cherry Wine this year, and I wasn't paying attention, and made up an extra gallon of strong sugar syrup. It sat on the counter for two days because I could not think of what to do with it. Maybe,  I could just ferment it? It'd make sugar wine, but then I thought why not put herbs in it, like basil, mint or even hops. Then I thought why not fruit: like blueberries, but I had tried that before without grand success.

Then I remembered this old song, Summer Wine, which is about wine made from strawberries, cherries and well, angel kisses. Actually the song is not really about wine, it is really about sex. It is a pop song after all. Suitably inspired, I went to the store to get supplies.

 

Sadly, they did not have any angel kisses at the store, so I used this recipe.

2012 Strawberry Wine

16 pounds of frozen strawberries**

1.25 (4.7 L) gal water
1 large orange (including the peel)****

4000g (8.8 lb) sugar*

1.5 g Camden tablets (potassium bisulfite)

4 g pectic enzyme

1.5 g wine tannin***

5 g yeast energizer

1 packet Cote Des Blances from Red Star

This made 3.6 gallons (13.6 L) of must. 

I melted the strawberries in the water, and then I ground them up in a kitchen blender. That went very quickly.  Strawberries have a lot of water in them, but don't have much sugar.  

My refractometer

Since the pulp was suspended in the juice, I could not measure the density to adjust the sugar level. I used my refractometer to measure the refractive index or the degrees Brix, as called in the wine jargon. As mentioned, I started with syrup, but the juice and not very sweet strawberries reduced the sugar content to 15 degrees Brix, too low: I wanted 24 degrees. 

So I pulled out my reference book, converted the Brix to density, calculated the sugar add to increase the density, added made more sugar syrup, added the syrup, and cleaned up. Then I measured it at 20 degrees Brix -- it moved ONLY half as far as I expected. I thought, I should add the same amount again to get it to where I need it to be. Also I was tired of messing with it. I made more syrup, and added that. Now it was 30 degrees more than the targeted 24 degrees, and likely to make an overly potent wine or probably a sweet dessert wine. Oh well. 

This strawberry juice tasted great.  It would be really good on short-cake.  Hope the wine measures up. 

*If you are trying this for yourself, you may want to use less sugar to get a drier wine. I'd try 3500 g if I were doing this again. 

**I used frozen strawberries because the fresh ones at the store had too many under-ripe ones. The frozen ones were all perfectly ripe, plus I did not have to cut the tops off all the strawberries 

***I checked out several recipes and one had wine tannin. This is a good idea because otherwise it may be too cloying. I think it is a gamble, and that is why I used to little. Upon further reflection, I might have left this out, and tried oak chips during aging.

****The orange is to add acidity. Someday I am going to buy a home acid titration kit and control it exactly, but since I don't have one, I added an orange. I like adding the orange peel since I like getting the limonene in the wine. This works nicely in my mead. 

2011 Cherry Second Wine

Last July after I finished the main cherry wine, I made another seven liters of a Second Wine. (Some say Seconds Wine.) I made 32 liters of the main cherry wine from 45 lb of cherries. When I was done, I had a lot of pulp that was still pretty flavorful. So I decided to make another wine -- just like my very cheap Grandfather used to do with his grapes.

2011 Cherry Second Wine Recipe 

7 L water
1.4 kg = 3.3 lb Sugar (dissolved in the above water)
Pulp from 45 lb cherry wine (already fermented a week and then pressed dry in a grape press)
1.5 g yeast energizer
2 g pectic enzyme
1 pack Champagne yeast

A problem was that the batch was so short that I had to blend it to fill the carboy. I blended it with some blue berry wine and 2010 cherry wine that I had.

After fermentation, it was pretty good, but not as fruity as the first wine.

2012 Mead

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. [GT 2017 -- not sure what this meant, 1.35 g/ml is way too dense to make sense, and it makes far more than 20%] 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. 

May 13, 2012 Update
This is a big winner. The flavor is honey-like, but a little complex. Sweet and potent. It is a real winner. 

2011 Pinot Grigio

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

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

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.