Montmorency Cherry

[aryoung1980]

Last year was our first summer at the house we rent and I discovered that one of our trees happened to be a cherry varietal. My best guess was it is a Montmorency. It made great pies last summer.

This year I picked up wine making. After a vacation I came home and the tree was bearing ripe fruit. So, here I am.

My original plan was thwarted by not having open fermentors. Time to use my pretzel barrels.


Inside each fermentor is 5 pounds of crushed, pitted fruit. The fruit is inside muslin bags and each has roughly 5 1/2 cups of pure juice. I'm letting k-meta do its thing for 24 hours before adding the rest of my ingredients.

Here's my new plan:

1 gallon of cherry wine:
5lbs montmorency cherries
1/2tsp Pectic enzyme
White sugar to 1.088
Water to 1 gallon
Montrachet yeast

And

1 gallon of cherry grape wine:
5lbs montmorency cherries
1/2tsp Pectic enzyme
1 can (11.5 oz) Welch's Concord grape frozen concentrate
White sugar to 1.088
Water to 1 gallon
Montrachet yeast

Any and all comments/thoughts are welcome.



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[cintipam]

Sounds good but your pectic enzyme should be there right now along with the Kmeta. Once fermentation starts pectic enzyme is neutralized. I learned that the hard way when doing a whole bunch of batches at once.

Also I'm pretty sure Montrachet is a needy yeast. You should probably step feed your nutrient to help it along.

I love tart cherries!!

Pam in cinit

 

[aryoung1980]

Completely forgot about using yeast nutrient. Thanks!

My bottle of pectic enzyme says to add it one hour before fermentation. Jack Keller's website said 8-10 hours after adding the k-meta. I figured I'd do it like Jack.


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[aryoung1980]

Well, a couple of mistakes have been made already. I read that white sugar was 20 points per pound per gallon. That was incorrect. It's more like 45 points per pound per gallon. So, my cherry wine is at 1.120 and my cherry-grape is at 1.132. There goes my plan to finish dry and back sweeten.

Second mistake: I didn't account for the volume the sugar would add to my batch. I'm well over my one gallon mark.

Oh well. Time to ride it out and hope for some delicious semi-sweet wines.




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[cintipam]

A trick I've recently learned is after your yeast of choice has fermented all it can handle you can then add Lalvin EC1118 in a starter form and it will process a few more percentage points (up to 18%) before dying out. You don't need to settle for semi sweet. But in the future don't believe sugar amounts in recipes. Best to add some, check SG, add more till you reach your desired SG. I know there is a tutorial out there on how to figure how much sugar to add to raise how many points per gallon. I had been using a more complex one from Mary's Recipes that states that 4 oz of sugar will raise SG of one gallon by 10 pts. So to get from 1.070 to 1.090 you'd need 8 oz per gallon to get there.

Hope this helps.

Pam in cinti

 

[aryoung1980]

I'll definitely take your advice on adding the champagne yeast.

Just to clarify, I didn't follow a recipe for the sugar addition. My mistake was having incorrect information on how many points sugar would add (and not fact checking it). My second mistake was dumping that calculated amount in at once for both batches.

Live and learn.


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[the_rayway]

There are several wine calculators out there, this one is my favourite so far: http://web2.airmail.net/sgross/fermcalc/FermCalcJS.html

I love tart cherries! I did a one gallon test batch in one of our Wine of the Month threads. Yum! Good luck!

 

[aryoung1980]

I combined my two batches. Since I made the mistake with the amount of sugar, I actually had 3 gallons instead of the original 2 gallons I wanted.

I crushed another 5lbs. of cherries and added that to my 3 gallons of fermenting wine.

Using an equation I found on MoreBeer.com, I was able to estimate how much water I needed to dilute my wine to 1.090, which was 1.25 gallons.

The new 4 gallons of wine is happily fermenting away in a less hostile environment for the yeast.



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[spaniel]

I hope it works out well, but I would guess you may find that you were light on the cherries. I would have started around 10lbs/gal.

 

[Arne]

Don't worry about the amount of cherries. 5 lb. per gal. should give you a good cherry flavor. More cherries will give you a more intense flavor, but it should be strong enough that you will enjoy it. Arne.

 

[aryoung1980]

15 bottles corked tonight. I chose to keep it dry instead of back sweetening. Since it's my first year, I thought it'd be good to try it as is and alter it next season if needed. I'm planning on letting it age 6-months in the bottle before sampling.


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