# moving into red wine making



## jazzibear (Oct 12, 2014)

I've never made red wines before (only white wines and fruit wines), but I want to make some full bodied dry red wines. I recently ordered some red juices (Noiret and Vincent). I know it's better to make red wines with grapes or skins, but I don't have access to a press, so I ordered juice. I'm concerned about the wines being thin or weak without skins. I will be adding oak (bought Hungarian oak, medium toast chips for primary, is that oak ok for this?) I've never oaked before.

Does anyone have suggestions to make these wines fuller bodied? I've read about things like adding raisins or dried elderberries. Any thoughts on these ideas or other suggestions. Is it possible they might end up being full bodied without skins or other additions?


----------



## richmke (Oct 12, 2014)

You could get some dried grape skins
http://www.grapestompers.com/product_details.aspx?SubcatID=41&ProductID=795&internal_index=0


----------



## jazzibear (Oct 13, 2014)

Thank you for responding. I would love to get some dried grape skins. It almost looked like they were available on that website, but it shows that it's discontinued and when I tried adding it to my truck (that website uses truck instead of cart), it didn't show up. That is a great idea though. I've been looking online and through threads here and it seems as though no-one is selling dried grape skins anymore. Does anyone else know if anyone is selling them right now?


----------



## richmke (Oct 13, 2014)

Another idea is to get a lug (35 pounds?) of any wine grape you can find. Might be just a tad late.


----------



## DoctorCAD (Oct 13, 2014)

http://www.juicegrape.com/Mosti-Mondiale-All-Grape-Pack/

This place has grape packs, but at $30.04 with shipping, its really outrageous.


----------



## jazzibear (Oct 13, 2014)

Thank you for the ideas. Since I already picked up the Noiret on Saturday, I had to do something. I just added some Medium toast oak chips and Red Pasteur yeast. Maybe I'll also add grape tannins, I don't know. Yes, $30 to add on the packaged grapes does seem like a lot at this point. We'll see what happens with it as it is. I'm picking up the Vincent juice next weekend. Maybe next year I'll use grapes and get a wine press. Thanks again.


----------



## LoneStarLori (Oct 13, 2014)

I have used black Zante currants available from Amazon http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00514CAQW/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20

I always add them to the secondary along with some extra tannin, about a 1-2 TBL and it really bumps the body. You'd be surprised what they can do to a weak wine.


----------



## jazzibear (Oct 13, 2014)

Sounds good. I think I will give the currants a try. I just have a few questions about it, if you don't mind. Do they leave a raisiney or any other kind of unusual taste in the wine? How much would you add to a 5 gallon carboy? Would you chop them? Have you tried adding them to the primary in addition to or instead of the secondary? I know that's a lot of questions. Thank you.


----------



## LoneStarLori (Oct 13, 2014)

There are plenty of debates on here about "raisin taste". I personally don't pick it up. I like using the currants when possible because I think they are more like a dark fruit taste. 
I did add them to a couple of batches at both the end of primary. Then I added them again to the secondary. They turned out pretty nice. 
There are a couple of threads here that deal with tweaking kits. When good wines gone bad, and thinking outside the box. Both with pictures of the steps. I usually do my posts in Thinking outside the box. Joeswine does the ones in When good wines gone bad. He does a excellent job of documenting tweaks and is the tweakmaster. 
The last one I did using currants in was a higher end kit that also had grape skins. It's only 2 months old but is fantastic. The thread is located here: brunello. This shows you how I add the currants and tannin. If you look back on the thread, there are several different tweaks with raisins or currants. I'm happy to answer any questions you might have.


----------



## jazzibear (Oct 13, 2014)

I'll check out those threads. Thanks again.


----------



## JohnT (Oct 14, 2014)

Why not simply get whole grapes?? You can make a very simple press from 2 5 gal plastic buckets. Real cheap!


----------



## DoctorCAD (Oct 14, 2014)

JohnT said:


> Why not simply get whole grapes?? You can make a very simple press from 2 5 gal plastic buckets. Real cheap!


 

Its not "simple" for everybody. The only grapes available around here are muscidines, and I'd rather put gravel in my wines than those grapes.


----------



## jazzibear (Oct 14, 2014)

Actually, I could get fresh grapes. I live near the finger lakes wine region. The lack of a grape press was my main concern. How do you make a simple grape press with two 5 gallon buckets? Is there a place I could get detailed instructions on how to do this, or could you give me detailed instructions? If it truly is simple and it works well, I might try it also. Thank you.


----------



## jazzibear (Oct 14, 2014)

JohnT said:


> Why not simply get whole grapes?? You can make a very simple press from 2 5 gal plastic buckets. Real cheap!



Would it be a good idea to have part juice and part grapes, since I already have some juice going and have more on order? If I can make a simple wine press with two buckets, maybe I can macerate the crushed grapes in the existing juice, then there would be less to press, if a two bucket press is hard to use. How would I make such a press and how well does it work?


----------



## JohnT (Oct 14, 2014)

get two new 5 gal plastic buckets. They should be identical so that one cleanly inserts into the other. Also get a Shallow "washtub" size bucket.

Take One of the buckets, and drill a-ga-gillion 3/8" holes into the side and into the bottom. This is going to be your sieve. The bucket without holes will be the plunger.

Fill your sieve (bucket with holes) with your grapes to about 1/2 way up. Insert the plunger (bucket without holes) into the sieve. 

Set the two buckets into the washtub. Put a board across the plunger and sit on it. 

Ta-da- Instant Grape Press!


----------



## LoneStarLori (Oct 14, 2014)

You're not going to be using more than about 5 lbs, you can easily just smash them in a paint straining bag available at Lowes then plop the whole bag in the primary. Then squeeze the bag every day. That is how kits with skin packs are done.


----------



## jazzibear (Oct 14, 2014)

Sounds great! I can do kind of a combination of pressed grapes and juice. The bucket idea really does sound easy. I might do a combination of the strainer bag and squeeze with the buckets in the end. I still like the idea of tweaking with currants too, less messy. I noticed a reference to tweaking with elderflowers in one of the threads too, another interesting idea. I'm getting a little obsessed with this wine-making stuff. I will see if I still have time to order some grapes! I think I can still get some, looking at the winery websites. Thank you for all of your help.


----------



## nicklausjames (Oct 18, 2014)

For one lug in juice you do not need a press. Just sterilize a 5 gallon bucket or something similar. Than sterilize a pasta strainer colander whatever you call it. Place it over the bucket and pour the juice and grapes through. You can than take something sterile and press it on the grape filled collander if you wish or just discard the grapes. If you only add one lug it will take you 30 mins max. I have two presses and did it this way this year in my juice that only had one lug bc it's just easier. I use the presses for just grapes and larger volumes.


----------



## jazzibear (Oct 20, 2014)

The colander idea sounds good and easy to work with. I ended up getting 120 lbs. of grapes, which I'm hoping should be good for the bucket press. I figure I'll only need to cut and drill holes into one bucket, the plunger bucket will be undamaged and re-usable. I took 120 lbs. of crushed Chancellor grapes, 10 gallons Chamborcin juice, 5 gallons Noiret juice, 5 gallons Vincent juice, 1 1/4 lbs. med toast Hungarian oak chips and 6 packets Pasteur Red yeast and split it between three 20 gallon Brute cans. I thought about using strainer bags in each can for the grapes and squeezing them everyday, but I ended up putting it all together so I can do the traditional punching the cap thing, even though I'm using juice. I put bath towels over the Brute cans and snapped them into place with the lids, hopefully the yeast will get enough oxygen that way. I'm very concerned about fruit flies and the vinegar bacteria they carry around with them (I think they carry vinegar bacteria anyway, another reason I was originally hesitant about trying grapes for the first time), so hopefully I can keep them out this way. We'll see how it goes. I will also be doing malolactic fermentation for the first time on this one and I've been looking around for the easiest to work with malolactic bacteria. Hopefully it all works out. Thanks for all the great ideas.


----------



## nicklausjames (Oct 20, 2014)

Get the sticky fly strips at Home Depot for the fruit flies. Hang them around the area of your wine. You can't get rid of all of them but can get rid of most.


----------



## jazzibear (Oct 20, 2014)

Yes, I do have some fly paper hanging, it helps. As long as I can keep them out of the wine, it should be fine.


----------



## RedPlanetWinery (Oct 20, 2014)

Hyatt Hill Vineyard (fallbright) on Keuka lake sells juice and they also keep some of the skins when they press so they are available for those who want to use them. I just put some into a drawstring mesh bag. They are the only vineyard I've gone to but I assume the others around here who sell juice do the same thing.


----------



## jazzibear (Oct 21, 2014)

RedPlanetWinery said:


> Hyatt Hill Vineyard (fallbright) on Keuka lake sells juice and they also keep some of the skins when they press so they are available for those who want to use them. I just put some into a drawstring mesh bag. They are the only vineyard I've gone to but I assume the others around here who sell juice do the same thing.


I actually got the grapes and the Chambourcin juice from Fall Bright. I noticed, while I was waiting in line, that some people were getting skins to go with the juice. I also got some of my juice (white wine) from Fulkersons and the vast majority of my juices from Randall Standish. Randall Standish is a lot closer to where I live. I'm just checking out all the places. I got kind of a late start on this hobby, starting with cider in late November of last year. By February, I was starting to get hooked on it and I wanted to try grape juice. The only place nearby (that I could find) with juice in February was Walkers out by Buffalo, so I got juice there. That's about 2 1/2 hours away. Now that it's the season, I'm checking out all of the closer places. Do you know anything about the club called Rochester Area Home Winemakers? We were thinking about possibly finding out about going to a meeting and possibly joining, but don't really know much about it. The website shows the next meeting as being in November. You sound like you may be from my general area, although I could be wrong. If that's the case, I thought you may know something about them.


----------



## RedPlanetWinery (Oct 22, 2014)

I am in Groton. Guess I should modify my profile. My story sounds a lot like yours - made hard cider for the first time last fall, decided to try wine kits early this year (have kits 12-15 in progress right now), decided to try fresh grapes using the Concords in my back yard this fall, then picked up Foch and Chambourcin from Fall Bright this past Sunday. Would be very interested to see your pH and TA readings for the Chambourcin to compare with mine since Marcy hasn't posted any yet on their site.


----------



## jazzibear (Oct 22, 2014)

Well, we're getting juice out of the same Finger Lakes region, just originating from different ends of that region. 

I didn't test the acid level of the Chamborcin and I've already blended it with Chancellor grapes, Noiret juice and Vincent juice. Actually, I just got a PH meter in the mail yesterday, and I think the Sodium Hydroxide I've been using to test acidity may be expired. I'm really new at testing PH and acidity. I have some wines from last winters juices which tasted overly acidic to me, so I used acid reducing crystals and have them cold stabilizing in a spare refrigerator. Since the arrival of the PH meter, I've tested the acidity (with Sodium Hydroxide that might be expired from an old titration kit) and it seems they are not as overly acidic as I thought. One of them in particular (a peach) seems to have an acidity of .7% (which is fine) and a PH of 4.09, which is not fine. Now I'm worried about spoilage. Anyway, I don't mean to ramble, and you really just wanted to know the acidity of the Chamborcin I have here, but acidity is a topic that is currently driving me crazy. Are you testing your acidity with a PH meter and Sodium Hydroxide, or some other way? I will never judge acidity by taste again. From the wineries that do provide TA levels, a lot of levels around here do seem high. For the red wine that I'm making, I plan on doing malolactic fermentation, so that should help. I think some of the grapes were just picked before they were ripe.


----------



## jazzibear (Oct 22, 2014)

While I didn't check the acidity of the Chamborcin before combining it with the other red juices and grapes, I did check it on the blend. I got a PH of 3.14 and the TA is more than 1.0%. I don't know how to get TA amounts above 1.0%. Using my titration kit and new PH meter, I put 15 cc of juice in a container and got the PH. I used 10 cc of .2N sodium hydroxide solution and ended up putting the entire 10 ml of it and the PH only went up to 5.41. It never made it to 8.2. I'm not even close to being any kind of chemistry whiz, so I have no idea what that ends up being. Even at that, I don't know if my sodium hydroxide is still good. I bought it this past winter, but I'm not sure if I stored it or handled it correctly. I don't know if it's too late to reduce the acid with calcium carbonate since the fermentation is already started.


----------



## JohnT (Oct 22, 2014)

For fruit flies, you can also try a vacuum cleaner with a hose attachment. Seems like I can get a lot of them that way.


----------



## jazzibear (Oct 22, 2014)

JohnT said:


> For fruit flies, you can also try a vacuum cleaner with a hose attachment. Seems like I can get a lot of them that way.


Another great idea. Your bucket press suggestion convinced me to delve into fermenting with grapes. I might just do straight grapes without juice for the red wines next year. I'm even considering building a frame with a car jack for a bucket press at some point if all goes well, not this year though. Otherwise, I might just buy a press next year....we'll see how it all works out with this years grapes.


----------



## jazzibear (Oct 22, 2014)

Any thoughts on dealing with TA and PH levels? I guess if you get the right grapes, they will already be in balance. I think the calcium carbonate is supposed to be used before fermentation, not sure about now, which is just the early part of fermentation. I know my PH needs to be right before I can try malolactic fermentation. I'm just barely within range with the PH, not sure what will happen when I press these grapes, some of which might be under-ripe.


----------



## RedPlanetWinery (Oct 22, 2014)

I see you posted in my thread about acid levels so you can see what I had for pH and TA on the Chambourcin. I had to add 14ml of sodium hydroxide to get my pH meter to 8.2, which is how I got my 1.4TA number. I had the same situation as you with my home grown Concord grapes - added the first 10ml and that wasn't enough. I pulled another 10ml into the syringe and kept going. That ended up at 1.4 as well. I knew a fair amount of the Concord was under-ripe so I was surprised to see the Chambourcin come in that high. We have had a lot of cool and cloudy weather in the Fingerlakes region this year so I was told to expect things to be challenging when it came to acid levels.
I have read that you can add calcium carbonate to young wines. My thought was to get the juice to a pH of 3.1, get it through primary fermentation, adjust pH to 3.2 with calcium carbonate if needed, then do MLF, then cold stabilize. I am fermenting the Concord, Foch and Chambourcin seperately and then plan to experiment with blending and back-sweetening after the cold stabilization is complete.


----------



## jazzibear (Oct 22, 2014)

RedPlanetWinery said:


> I see you posted in my thread about acid levels so you can see what I had for pH and TA on the Chambourcin. I had to add 14ml of sodium hydroxide to get my pH meter to 8.2, which is how I got my 1.4TA number. I had the same situation as you with my home grown Concord grapes - added the first 10ml and that wasn't enough. I pulled another 10ml into the syringe and kept going. That ended up at 1.4 as well. I knew a fair amount of the Concord was under-ripe so I was surprised to see the Chambourcin come in that high. We have had a lot of cool and cloudy weather in the Fingerlakes region this year so I was told to expect things to be challenging when it came to acid levels.
> I have read that you can add calcium carbonate to young wines. My thought was to get the juice to a pH of 3.1, get it through primary fermentation, adjust pH to 3.2 with calcium carbonate if needed, then do MLF, then cold stabilize. I am fermenting the Concord, Foch and Chambourcin seperately and then plan to experiment with blending and back-sweetening after the cold stabilization is complete.


That makes sense regarding how you got 1.4 for the TA. It's so logical, I don't know why I didn't think of that. I will do it that way in the future. 

It does make sense to do the juices separately and blend them at the end. The reason I ended up blending them is so that everything gets contact with the skins; since I only got one kind of grapes and the rest were juices only, it works in my case. By the descriptions of the grapes I found online, they should blend well; the flavors do seem to be blending well so far. The way that you are doing it, by fermenting them separately, I think is generally considered the better way to do it. You will end up with a variety of different blends and some varietals, depending on how your bench tastings go. I will just have a big thing of my "house red", which is fine with me if it's good. I'm just looking for a full bodied, slightly oaky, dry red wine. For my white wines, on the other hand, I'm doing a variety of different juices and I'm trying for fruity, crisp, not as dry type white wines. They will be blended.

I'm glad to hear that calcium carbonate can be added after fermentation. I was looking all over the place for something saying that. I just found where it said to use it before fermentation, nothing against using it after, but also nothing for it. Did you notice anything specifically saying not to add it during fermentation, like right now? I've read MLF can be picky and want everything to go smoothly. I'm spending way too much time thinking about winemaking these days... anxiously waiting and worrying about it.


----------



## RedPlanetWinery (Oct 22, 2014)

Doing some more internet searching, I came across a post at a different forum site that noted that when adding calcium carbonate after fermentation, the fine particles that result will remain in suspension, creating a wine that is hard to clear. They suggest that you use potassium carbonate or bicarbonate if adding after fermentation, although they note that the resulting salts from that process are soluble. After that read, I think that if my pH after primary ferment is at least 3.1, I probably won't make any adjustment before MLF and hope for the best. If I do have to adjust, I'll use potassium bicarb. Personal note for next time is to be more patient and make multiple adjustments with calcium carb to get as close as I can to pH3.4 prior to ferment without exceeding the recommended max adjustment. If, after MLF and cold stabilization the wine is still too acidic, I'll consider bringing a higher pH commercial wine into the blend (unless I stumble across a better technique by then).


----------



## jazzibear (Oct 22, 2014)

I think with potassium bicarbonate, you are supposed to cold stabilize afterwards. I don't think I want to do that before MLF, I want to just go straight from fermentation to MLF. The malolactic bacteria that I ordered is this: http://morewinemaking.com/products/dry-malolactic-bacteria-enoferm-beta-25.html which, from the description, I thought should be a less finicky one... but even that requires a PH over 3.2 If it's just a matter of particles settling, I might be able to deal with that and just use the calcium carbonate now. There will be plenty of time for it to settle. Also, I have a wine filter (keep buying stuff for this hobby, it's not good), so I could just filter it in the end before bottling. Even a course filter would get rid of that I think.


----------



## jazzibear (Oct 22, 2014)

This chemistry aspect of winemaking is really driving me crazy. The instructions on the calcium carbonate, and everything I'm finding online, just say how much to add to reduce the TA. I think it's the same with potassium bicarbonate. I'm not concerned about the TA, I'm trying to increase the PH.


----------



## jazzibear (Oct 22, 2014)

I just added something to the "Yeast, Additive and Winemaking Science" forum: http://www.winemakingtalk.com/forum/f86/raising-ph-above-3-2-prior-mlf-47312/#post535739 (I don't know if that's how to reference another post), but we'll see if anyone else in that forum has something to say about it.


----------

