WineXpert Started my LE Super Tuscan

[sour_grapes]

The other issue (related to mess, but slightly different) is the difficulty of racking. I did the first few kits with the skins directly in the must. When I went to rack the first time, I had a devil of a time getting all of the must racked into "secondary." I wound up having to use a strainer to create a "hole" in the skins detritus, and rack the juice from that hole.

 

[joeswine]

in the mix

if your using a open fermenter then there should be no problem moving product in or out ,remembering wine making is a process of time and rushing doesn't cut it ,but patients does. Not all wines will accommodate the raisins taste you need to understand your wines profile that's the key.

here's my plan, every item that goes into the primary according to the mfg. is in que,here's were I change the venue add a cup of raisins, capitalize the wine to and abv of 1.10 at the top of the alcohol level,13%,do as directed until secondary, add wine tannins 1 tablespoon to the secondary, I want to finish out tops at 4.0 not to woody but balanced with the fruit. I will use a belly band to keep the fermentation temperature up during the entire process .this kit was to expensive to do to much with but what I can deal with and modify I will .
here's what I expect the out come to be, a deep robust red wine with intense fruit and great balance of tannins a wine to coat your palate from front to back and leave you wanting more.

 

[SouthernChemist]

The CC directions said to put the grape pack in the mesh bag and put it in the primary fermenter. Does it matter if I put it in the mesh bag or just put it directly in the bucket with the juice? What are the pros and cons?

Short of a potential problem when transferring the wine, you can certainly do this. You will not get anything more out of the grapes, though, versus putting them in a bag.

 

[Busabill]

o.kay thanks so the mesh bag just makes sense to lessen the mess and make it easier. Another mystery then is stirring, the directions say to stir so the skins stay submerged. But they just seem to lay on the bottom of the fermenter. Do I still need to stir it while it is fermenting in this case? Will it help with the fermentation process or the taste of the wine if I stir daily or should I just let it sit if the skins are not floating in the primary fermenter and not stir it? thanks for the information everyone here is so great for the novice.

 

[sour_grapes]

o.kay thanks so the mesh bag just makes sense to lessen the mess and make it easier. Another mystery then is stirring, the directions say to stir so the skins stay submerged. But they just seem to lay on the bottom of the fermenter. Do I still need to stir it while it is fermenting in this case? Will it help with the fermentation process or the taste of the wine if I stir daily or should I just let it sit if the skins are not floating in the primary fermenter and not stir it? thanks for the information everyone here is so great for the novice.

The bag will float once fermentation gets underway. The CO2 lifts them up to the top. I now put a weight in my bag to keep it submerged, and it STILL floats quite a bit.

Personally, I stir the must and squeeze the bag every day during primary.

 

[Busabill]

Huh...thanks Paul.

 

[SouthernChemist]

o.kay thanks so the mesh bag just makes sense to lessen the mess and make it easier. Another mystery then is stirring, the directions say to stir so the skins stay submerged. But they just seem to lay on the bottom of the fermenter. Do I still need to stir it while it is fermenting in this case? Will it help with the fermentation process or the taste of the wine if I stir daily or should I just let it sit if the skins are not floating in the primary fermenter and not stir it? thanks for the information everyone here is so great for the novice.

One thing to keep in mind is that fermentation itself will generally keep things moving around in the wine pretty well, and there are yeast suspended throughout the wine, too. They'll even be in the grape skins. I personally squeeze the grape bag every day, but that's more of a peace of mind sort of thing. If you choose not to, though, your wine will not be inferior. Just make sure you maintain sanitary practices.

 

[Busabill]

wow so you just stick your hands in the must and grab and squeeze the bag daily? doesn't that get messy?? And isn't it hard to keep things sanitary that way? Just wash your hands well? don't get me wrong it sounds like fun! And better to be safe than sorry!

 

[Boatboy24]

wow so you just stick your hands in the must and grab and squeeze the bag daily? doesn't that get messy?? And isn't it hard to keep things sanitary that way? Just wash your hands well? don't get me wrong it sounds like fun! And better to be safe than sorry!

I just stick my stir spoon in there and press the bag against the side of the fermenter.

 

[sour_grapes]

wow so you just stick your hands in the must and grab and squeeze the bag daily? doesn't that get messy?? And isn't it hard to keep things sanitary that way? Just wash your hands well? don't get me wrong it sounds like fun! And better to be safe than sorry!

I usually wash my hands and then spritz them with a k-meta sanitizing solution.

 

[ehammonds]

Hands squeezing a mesh bag is more sanitary than stomping grapes with your feet I suppose. Also, the wine is protected pretty well during primary fermentation. At this stage, fruit flies are your concern.

 

[Busabill]

So I will be racking my CC Red Mountain cab from primary today. I'm a little torn....what do you guys think? Rack it to a 6 gal carboy and risk not having enough and having to top up or put in a 5 gal carboy and the rest in a 1 gal contains er? With the grape pack and the extra water added because of that I think I can come close to filling the 6 gal but I certainly don't want to top up much with water or even foreign wine. What would you do? Also I'm struggling with decision to put it in glass or plastic. I know that has been discussed here at length but I'm concerned about the safety of glass and I also have some arthritis in my wrist and am not crazy about the weight that comes with a glass carboy. What are your thoughts?
Thanks all. Cheers!

 

[Kraffty]

I recently did the Rosso Fortissimo and left the skins loose. I topped the primary up per instructions but between the grapes and oak dust sediments I came up short in my 6 gal secondary then topped with a super tuscan. A 5 gal carboy plus a couple of bottles might be a good way to go. You'll again need to top up quite a bit when you rack the carboy and you can use the bottles for that.
Should be a good one!
Mike

 

[jsiddall]

I just did a CC Showcase Cab/Shiraz kit and can also confirm that it does not fill a carboy. This is primarily because most carboys (at least my Italian ones) are actually not 6 gal (22.7 l) but rather 23 l plus some. In my case "some" is an additional 0.5-0.75 l. So even if you got your full 6 gal back out of primary after racking you would still be 800-1000 ml short in the carboy.

Whether you rack to a smaller carboy or not is up to you. The way I see it is that even the best kit wine is not going to be excellent (90+ points on a 100 point scale) nor highly varietally accurate so topping up with another wine is really not going to make a difference to the final product. This is especially true considering the required top-up is just 3-5% of the volume.

Regarding the weight, my 23 l glass carboys run about 6 kg or about 20% of the total weight of a full carboy. You can certainly reduce that with a plastic carboy, but the difference is going to be less than 20% of the total, perhaps a 15% reduction. Again, up to you but I would guess your wrist will complain either way. A ~6 gal carboy holds over 50 lb of wine no matter how much the carboy weighs.

 

[steve85]

I started my first ever LE Super Tuscan over the weekend, and was disappointed to measure its SG as only 1075 (1070 discounting suspended matter in the must), and its total titratable acid (TTA) as only 0.35%. pH of the must was 3.4. I'm used to making full juice wines and generally aim for a starting SG of 1085-1095 and TTA of 0.60-0.70% for full-bodied reds. I did what I usually do in similar situations, and corrected the SG to 1085 with 900g of sugar, and TTA to 0.65% with tartaric acid.

Unfortunately, the pH of the must went down from 3.4 to 3.0, but I've made very good red wines at that range of starting pH in the past, so I'm optimistic that this LE will turn out well too.

Anyone else tinker with their LE reds?

Steve

 

[sour_grapes]

I started my first ever LE Super Tuscan over the weekend, and was disappointed to measure its SG as only 1075 (1070 discounting suspended matter in the must), and its total titratable acid (TTA) as only 0.35%.

I believe that the Super Tuscan is the LE kit this year that has skins. Did you test the SG before or after adding the skins? I have gotten a bump in SG ranging from 0.016 to 0.021 from the sugars in the grape pack.

 

[jsiddall]

I started my first ever LE Super Tuscan over the weekend, and was disappointed to measure its SG as only 1075 (1070 discounting suspended matter in the must), and its total titratable acid (TTA) as only 0.35%. pH of the must was 3.4. I'm used to making full juice wines and generally aim for a starting SG of 1085-1095 and TTA of 0.60-0.70% for full-bodied reds. I did what I usually do in similar situations, and corrected the SG to 1085 with 900g of sugar, and TTA to 0.65% with tartaric acid.

Unfortunately, the pH of the must went down from 3.4 to 3.0, but I've made very good red wines at that range of starting pH in the past, so I'm optimistic that this LE will turn out well too.

Anyone else tinker with their LE reds?

Steve

Steve,

If this is the same kit as the OP then it sounds like you took SG before adding the skin pack. The OP's skin pack added another 20 points SG so after chaptalization you may end up with over 15% ABV.

Also, kits are not acid balanced the same as wine from grapes and without MLF you may find that the extra acid added makes the wine too acidic.

Hopefully it all works out.

 

[steve85]

I believe that the Super Tuscan is the LE kit this year that has skins. Did you test the SG before or after adding the skins? I have gotten a bump in SG ranging from 0.016 to 0.021 from the sugars in the grape pack.

Steve,

If this is the same kit as the OP then it sounds like you took SG before adding the skin pack. The OP's skin pack added another 20 points SG so after chaptalization you may end up with over 15% ABV.

Also, kits are not acid balanced the same as wine from grapes and without MLF you may find that the extra acid added makes the wine too acidic.

Hopefully it all works out.

Thanks, Paul and jsiddall. I did indeed take the SG and chaptalize before adding the skins (in the mesh bag provided). While I recognize in hindsight that the skins could add more fermentable sugars, I suspect that a good chunk of the observed rise in SG is due to unfermentable solids coming off the skins. If I'm wrong, it could be a pretty hot wine...

For jsiddall, do you have any more info on how kits are acid balanced? Is there buffering going on to lower the observed TTA while keeping the pH in a reasonable range? Are you aware of good TTA ranges for kit wines? I usually shoot for 0.60-0.70% for reds and 0.75-0.85% for whites (I like whites dry and tart).

Steve

 

[jsiddall]

For jsiddall, do you have any more info on how kits are acid balanced? Is there buffering going on to lower the observed TTA while keeping the pH in a reasonable range? Are you aware of good TTA ranges for kit wines? I usually shoot for 0.60-0.70% for reds and 0.75-0.85% for whites (I like whites dry and tart).

Steve

Steve,

Unfortunately I don't know what the kit makers do to balance the wine. Ultimately they are supposed to be balanced from the factory but if you like more tartness you should be fine with adding more tartaric.

Maybe someone else can chime in about their experience testing and/or balancing acid on kits.

 

[SouthernChemist]

For jsiddall, do you have any more info on how kits are acid balanced? Is there buffering going on to lower the observed TTA while keeping the pH in a reasonable range? Are you aware of good TTA ranges for kit wines? I usually shoot for 0.60-0.70% for reds and 0.75-0.85% for whites (I like whites dry and tart).

The general line from the manufacturers (and those who have worked for them) is that you should not need to make any acid adjustments. They are not the same as fresh grape must and should not be treated the same. The exact process that they use for the adjustment is likely proprietary, so I doubt you would find specific information for a particularly kit. It would also depend on where they source the grapes, which can be from multiple locations. The manufacturers have also consistently warned against performing MLF on kit wines.