Pumpkinman
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- Oct 20, 2012
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This weekend I went to visit a buddy who in his own words "has been making wine for 22 years".
He is the type that gets fresh pressed juice or juice pails and pours them into demijohns, puts an airlock on it and leaves it in his garage for a year or two, allowing the wine to be at the mercy of the temps, it goes from hot, to cold in the fall and winter, then hot again, which is fine if that is what you enjoy.
He laughs at me for testing and stabilizing the wine, yeast isn't even a consideration, he told me that he doesn't think that all of the "scientific" stuff is necessary.
He asked me if I wanted to go see where he makes wine and sample his wine(s) in progress....Well OF COURSE!!!!
He brought me over to his garage, when he opened the door there were 7 - 15 gallon Demijohns, 4 -5 gallon Carboys, and 6- 1 Gallon bottles with airlocks on them.
The first thing that I notice is that just about all of the airlocks have juice/wine in them, caked up and spilled over onto the airlocks and bungs, none of the airlocks have caps on them, and the bungs are starting to get moldy, and all of the bottles are covered in a light dirt/dust from the garage.
I take a closer look and I notice that this wine/juice sludge that has passed through the airlocks has also gone back into the demijohns (at least 2 of them) and has run down the neck inside the demijohn, leaving a sludge on the inner neck.....
Then to my horror....I see mouse droppings on the bungs and even on the airlocks....
I couldn't contain myself any longer, I told him that the resident mice were climbing up and dipping their tails in the wine sludge caked airlocks and eating the sludge, I insisted that he change the bungs and airlocks, clean and sanitize them with meta and add meta to the new, cleaned airlocks.
He tried to tell me that it didn't matter and that it would only over flow again (well Duh...just as soon as the temps come back up in the spring, fermentation will restart...)...I insisted and found a bag full of brand new still sealed airlocks and a jar of K-Meta...score!
I cleaned the bungs, I wanted to puke just thinking of the mouse turds on them (where they crap, they also pee...tons of potential diseases), I soaked them in a meta solution, sanitized the new airlocks and filled will a meta solution. In the mean time, I had him clean the sludge from the inside of the neck of the demijohns with a paper towel soaked in the meta solution and squeezed out to dry.
I tried to get him to stabilize the wine with meta...no dice.
he has over 100 gallon jugs filled with wine from past years, most of which were sealed with screw caps, and a few 750 ml bottles with corks that are dried out, in the garage.
He grabbed 4 or 5 bottles to sample, but at this point I was mortified and trying to find a polite way to tell him that I just couldn't taste his wine after what I had just experienced, too late..he was real excited to open them.
Every bottle that he opened that was over a year old tasted like sherry, it had been oxidized due to the caps getting rusty and not doing their job, or bottles that were corked and stored improperly, the corks had dried out and oxygen got in.
Just when I thought I had seen it all...we go into his house where he was making a Pinot Noir Kit that given to him, I had to basically yell at him 2 weeks ago when he first got it, he was going to just dump the juice in a carboy and walk away...I had to keep telling him just how important it is to follow the Kit directions to the letter, he tells me that he didn't add the water to it as the directions stated, but after a brief lecture from me on following the instructions, he was going to add the water to the carboy remember, he does everything in demijohns and carboys, no fermenting buckets, I tell him that he will probably need to siphon it into a bigger container so he can mix it up real well, he looks at me an grabs a long metal measuring stick wipes it off and sticks it in the carboy and starts to stir the snot out of it.....
It is a shame to see that much wine go to waste, but to be honest, he will drink it, this is what he is use to.
Moral of the story....NEVER DRINK WINE AT THIS DUDES HOUSE...LMAO!
So there you have it, my horror story.
Tom
He is the type that gets fresh pressed juice or juice pails and pours them into demijohns, puts an airlock on it and leaves it in his garage for a year or two, allowing the wine to be at the mercy of the temps, it goes from hot, to cold in the fall and winter, then hot again, which is fine if that is what you enjoy.
He laughs at me for testing and stabilizing the wine, yeast isn't even a consideration, he told me that he doesn't think that all of the "scientific" stuff is necessary.
He asked me if I wanted to go see where he makes wine and sample his wine(s) in progress....Well OF COURSE!!!!
He brought me over to his garage, when he opened the door there were 7 - 15 gallon Demijohns, 4 -5 gallon Carboys, and 6- 1 Gallon bottles with airlocks on them.
The first thing that I notice is that just about all of the airlocks have juice/wine in them, caked up and spilled over onto the airlocks and bungs, none of the airlocks have caps on them, and the bungs are starting to get moldy, and all of the bottles are covered in a light dirt/dust from the garage.
I take a closer look and I notice that this wine/juice sludge that has passed through the airlocks has also gone back into the demijohns (at least 2 of them) and has run down the neck inside the demijohn, leaving a sludge on the inner neck.....
Then to my horror....I see mouse droppings on the bungs and even on the airlocks....
I couldn't contain myself any longer, I told him that the resident mice were climbing up and dipping their tails in the wine sludge caked airlocks and eating the sludge, I insisted that he change the bungs and airlocks, clean and sanitize them with meta and add meta to the new, cleaned airlocks.
He tried to tell me that it didn't matter and that it would only over flow again (well Duh...just as soon as the temps come back up in the spring, fermentation will restart...)...I insisted and found a bag full of brand new still sealed airlocks and a jar of K-Meta...score!
I cleaned the bungs, I wanted to puke just thinking of the mouse turds on them (where they crap, they also pee...tons of potential diseases), I soaked them in a meta solution, sanitized the new airlocks and filled will a meta solution. In the mean time, I had him clean the sludge from the inside of the neck of the demijohns with a paper towel soaked in the meta solution and squeezed out to dry.
I tried to get him to stabilize the wine with meta...no dice.
he has over 100 gallon jugs filled with wine from past years, most of which were sealed with screw caps, and a few 750 ml bottles with corks that are dried out, in the garage.
He grabbed 4 or 5 bottles to sample, but at this point I was mortified and trying to find a polite way to tell him that I just couldn't taste his wine after what I had just experienced, too late..he was real excited to open them.
Every bottle that he opened that was over a year old tasted like sherry, it had been oxidized due to the caps getting rusty and not doing their job, or bottles that were corked and stored improperly, the corks had dried out and oxygen got in.
Just when I thought I had seen it all...we go into his house where he was making a Pinot Noir Kit that given to him, I had to basically yell at him 2 weeks ago when he first got it, he was going to just dump the juice in a carboy and walk away...I had to keep telling him just how important it is to follow the Kit directions to the letter, he tells me that he didn't add the water to it as the directions stated, but after a brief lecture from me on following the instructions, he was going to add the water to the carboy remember, he does everything in demijohns and carboys, no fermenting buckets, I tell him that he will probably need to siphon it into a bigger container so he can mix it up real well, he looks at me an grabs a long metal measuring stick wipes it off and sticks it in the carboy and starts to stir the snot out of it.....
It is a shame to see that much wine go to waste, but to be honest, he will drink it, this is what he is use to.
Moral of the story....NEVER DRINK WINE AT THIS DUDES HOUSE...LMAO!
So there you have it, my horror story.
Tom
