Making Muscat from our backyard grapes

[GreenEnvy22]

Hi all,
We have about 20 muscat vines in our backyard (Niagara region, Ontario). They grow up some 10ft high trellises and then go another 10ft or so over our heads. We don't prune them for best production as we also use them for shade.

I've grafted another 15 vines from these muscat which are in our garden and will be pruned for maximum production. They are still 2-3 years from producing. I also planted 8 Riesling vines in the garden as well, also a few years away from production.

In 2012 we collected enough grapes to make 30 bottles. A friend of mine and I pressed them and then he made the wine for us. It turned out very well.

2013 and 2014 there weren't enough grapes to make it worthwhile. There were less to start with, and my netting job wasn't as good at keeping the robins out. Wasps were also a big problem later in the season.

This year we had a great harvest. We picked yesterday and got 280lbs of grapes. We pressed that and got about 85 L of juice. 75 of this we're using for wine, 10 we are canning for later use (maybe for a Beer/wine hybrid). We got much more than 2012, so I don't want to screw this up!

The juice was a 1065 specific gravity, so I added some sugar to get it up to about 1080. We put in some EC1118 yeast, and it's all fermenting now in 4 plastic pails. Also put 1g of k meta into each pail. The lid is just sitting on them loosely so air can get in, but fruit flies kept away. This is in our fruit cellar which is around 20 C.

In a few days I'll rack it into glass carboys.

I do have a few questions, I don't want to pester my friend too much, and while I've read many discussions online, I see a great variance in how to proceed.
If anyone can give me some tips I'd be grateful.

Some discussions mention checking the acidity now already and adjusting. Some say to to do it later. Thoughts?

Some sites say to add bentonite, others don't.

Anything else anyone can suggest I do or check?

Thanks for any input people can offer.

 

[Julie]

You need to check your acid prior just to make sure it isn't too high. A high acid will mess with your fermentation. Adding bentonite prior to fermentation will help ensure a clear wine. To be honest I rarely add bentonite, I age for at least a year before bottling and haven't had a clearing issue yet.

And welcome to WineMakingTalk

 

[JohnT]

+ 1 on what Julie said...

Now that fermentation is active, I would wait until after fermentation is complete before making any acid adjustments.

 

[GreenEnvy22]

Thanks for the info folks.

Things appear to be going well. Lots of foam on top and lots of bubbles in the water. To get accurate readings on the hydrometer I have to keep tapping the wine thief or the bubbles push it up.

On Sunday the SG had done down to about 1060, now it's down to 1020-1022 depending on the bucket.

Air temp in the cellar was 18 C this morning, temp in the must was 22 C.

I'll adjust acidity later as suggested.

Some pics attached from the process so far. Also I got all the carboys and other equipment pictures in the car for $100, not bad! Also a couple larger demijohns that you can't see in the pic were included too.

One other question. we have 8L of juice we kept separate, boiled, and canned it in mason jars. If we need to sweeten the wine at the end, would this still be good to use, instead of sugar? I know it's preferred to use the juice but most people freeze it. I didn't think of it at the time so boiled it. Not sure if that ruined it for sweetening or if it will be ok.

 

[GreenEnvy22]

SG was down to right at 1000 today, so I racked them all. I think I probably should have waited another day or two since it turned out they were still quite fizzy. When I topped up the 3 5-gallon carboys with juice from the 4th, I kept getting foam into the air lock. I removed a bit of juice and now it's ok. The airlock is bubbling about once every 2 seconds.
I tasted some, and it seems pretty acidic, which jives with the total acidity test I did yesterday which said I was at 0.9%. I'll check it again in a few days.

So far I've just put in about 1g of KMS per 5 gallons. Should I add a bit more yet?

 

[Arne]

Wait til it is done fermenting before adding any more k-meta. Arne. guess I should of said wait til it has fermented dry before adding any more k-meta.

 

[GreenEnvy22]

Checked PH today by combining a sample from each carboy, got 3.2, so that looks good.

 

[GreenEnvy22]

Got this wine mostly finished up today.
It's been aging in our cellar since my last post, being racked twice in the time between.
It fermented down to .995 or .996 back in the fall.

We did some sampling a couple weeks ago, and liked it with 3g sugar added to 250ml, plus a bit of the grape juice we canned in the fall as well.
So if my math is correct, that worked out to about 276g per 23L of wine, plus the 4L of canned juice we had.
I used the canned juice rather than water to disolve the sugar. Boiled that and cooled it,then added that to the wine (which had sorbate added already).

Checked the SG and it's about 1006. It tastes sweeter than that, but thats what it reads.
I then filtered it with 1, 2, and then #3 pads. I ended up with 63L of finished product. Bottled 6 bottles tonight (had two 30L pails full to 29L each, so did the 5L leftover tonight.

I'm happy with how it turned out, and we'll see how it improves over the summer.