Thinking outside the box

[GaDawg]

Lori, "They remained suspended throughout the liquid. Not on top and not on bottom. Strange. This caused a problem when racking. I kept getting raisins stuck in my auto syphon causing it to draw lots of air, I added a piece of cheesecloth to pre-filter it."
*******************************
I have used Knee Highs from the dollar store to fit over my auto syphon to pre filter. Three pair for a $1.50 so $.25 per filter. Just sanitize and use

 

[joeswine]

raisins

YES in a bottle there a little more work, there efforts are worth their trouble............wine making sometimes takes work?

 

[LoneStarLori]

YES in a bottle there a little more work, there efforts are worth their trouble............wine making sometimes takes work?

Although I had some trouble, I would do it again (and have). This is a hobby. which for me means a great way to occupy myself. Even if that means scratching my head to come up to a solution of renegade raisins.

 

[LoneStarLori]

recap on the tweaked SANGIOVESE

It's been six weeks since I started the WE Sangiovese kit and bottling time is near. Before I post the bottling I thought I would bump a recap on what has transpired to date.


I started a World Vineyard Sangiovese kit and wanted to follow Joeswine raisin tweak again. When I'm done, I will send him a bottle so he can compare to his. I started the kit on Sept 13. here are a few pictures of the process of staring the kit. I did not top it all the way to 6 gals with water, I stopped at 5 1/2 gallons. I use only spring water in my kits because I have read the minerals help the yeast with fermentation.

(9-14-13): Added the bentonite, grape juice, 2 packages of oak. Stirred well and covered the fermenter with a cotton cloth. Starting SG 1.104 with temp correction. Yikes!
(9-19-13): SG .102, Added raisins and 3 TBL of wine tannin. Now for some reason, i decided to do this without racking. Thinking I could finish it up in the bucket. Then age in the carboy. (turned out to be a mistake)
(9-24-13: SG .994 Had to leave town for a few days so I snapped the lid and an airlock on the primary.
(9-27-13): SG .994 Since the SG is holding I decided to rack to a carboy. While tasting during the rack, I wasn't getting the fullness of the raisins that I had in the Mezza Luna White. So I decided it was time to message Joe and he reminded me that this is not a 4 week kit. The raisins needed more time to work. So, I added a fresh batch of raisins. I did not add anymore tannin. It's still in there doing it's thing. But I did add a handful of Hungarian oak cubes.
(10-3-13) The raisins are very, very slowly rising to the top. Even thought the SG is holding steady, I am not going to start the clearing process until I am sure the raisins have given there all. As Joe put it, "ALL WILL BE GOOD IN THE END,IF IT'S NOT GOOD RIGHT NOW THAT MEANS IT'S NOT THE END YET!"[/QUOTE]

 

[RCGoodin]

Lori,

A couple questions.

In your thread you stated:

(9-19-13): SG .102, Added raisins and 3 TBL of wine tannin. Now for some reason, i decided to do this without racking. Thinking I could finish it up in the bucket. Then age in the carboy. (turned out to be a mistake)

I see you stated you added 3 tbl of wine tannins, and your picture you stated 4 tbl. Please comment. Also you said it was a mistake. How come?

I followed Joe with the Amarone. We added the raisins in primary and let them work during that process. I don't think we added the tannins until after degassing and we only added 1 tbl. All kits could be a little different.

Thank you for your posts. I really appreciate your sharing. I know it takes a lot of time.

I have to start 4 kits of whites. I'm assuming I can add white raisins and tannins to them. What are your thoughts?

 

[LoneStarLori]

RC, I didn't realize I had contradicted myself. AGAIN. lol
I went back and checked my notes and it was 4 Tbl's of Tannin. Not 3.

As for the mistake, that is questionable in hindsight. It may have been a blessing. When I originally started this kit, I was following Joes thread on his Sangiovese. On that thread he put the raisins in the secondary. Which is what I did with my Mezza Luna White and it turned out great. Then somewhere in this process I started following his Amarone thread which he added the raisins to the open primary. So I thought he had found a better way to do it.
Where I thought I had made a mistake was when I transferred from the primary and realized I wasn't in love with the wine. I thought maybe it was because the raisins were getting too much air and so that is where I thought I messed up. So I decided to add about 12 oz. raisins again while in the secondary. Those are the ones that never really floated to the top.
Now it's kind of hard to say where this wine would be if I had just put the raisins in the secondary like I did the Mezza Luna White. Or whether it would have gotten better on it's own without adding the second batch of raisins. However, this final product is just divine to me. I can honestly say it is ready to drink and is easily as good as any bottle I would have spent $20 on. (thats about the top of my budget) My gut feeling is that it would have been fine without the second dose of raisins.

As far as your white kits go. I don't see any reason not to add white/golden raisins. It worked very well for me. If you want something with less body like a Pino Gris, I don't know if I would add a full pound. On my next white kit, I will probably back off a bit on the tannin. Maybe 1 TBL at most. In my opinion, it does tend to deepen the color of the white and make it almost too yellow. That may also have been the grape variety.

What kits are you going to do? I am in the market for another an am having a hard time deciding. I think I want a lighter body this time with citrus on the front end.

 

[RCGoodin]

RC, I didn't realize I had contradicted myself. AGAIN. lol
I went back and checked my notes and it was 4 Tbl's of Tannin. Not 3.

As for the mistake, that is questionable in hindsight. It may have been a blessing. When I originally started this kit, I was following Joes thread on his Sangiovese. On that thread he put the raisins in the secondary. Which is what I did with my Mezza Luna White and it turned out great. Then somewhere in this process I started following his Amarone thread which he added the raisins to the open primary. So I thought he had found a better way to do it.
Where I thought I had made a mistake was when I transferred from the primary and realized I wasn't in love with the wine. I thought maybe it was because the raisins were getting too much air and so that is where I thought I messed up. So I decided to add about 12 oz. raisins again while in the secondary. Those are the ones that never really floated to the top.
Now it's kind of hard to say where this wine would be if I had just put the raisins in the secondary like I did the Mezza Luna White. Or whether it would have gotten better on it's own without adding the second batch of raisins. However, this final product is just divine to me. I can honestly say it is ready to drink and is easily as good as any bottle I would have spent $20 on. (thats about the top of my budget) My gut feeling is that it would have been fine without the second dose of raisins.

As far as your white kits go. I don't see any reason not to add white/golden raisins. It worked very well for me. If you want something with less body like a Pino Gris, I don't know if I would add a full pound. On my next white kit, I will probably back off a bit on the tannin. Maybe 1 TBL at most. In my opinion, it does tend to deepen the color of the white and make it almost too yellow. That may also have been the grape variety.

What kits are you going to do? I am in the market for another an am having a hard time deciding. I think I want a lighter body this time with citrus on the front end.

I do the cheap route once in awhile, so my 4 kits are from Amazon. They are the 6 gallon kits for around $75. I have 2 California Chardonnays, 1 Gawurztraminier, and 1 Semillion Chardonnay. I thought the raisins, from Joe's suggestions, would work would enhance them. He did say to not use as much. I'm also going to research different tannins. There may be a better one for whites. I did read somewhere that referenced liquid tannins.

As far as more citrus on the front end, I saw where Joe mentioned adding the zest from 2 oranges, 2 grapefruits and 2 lemons. It was for a summer breeze drink, but may work for your next adventure, more thinking outside the box.

The Amarone turned out great. It will not make it through the holidays. That kit also had a Chapitalation process, which was nothing more than adding simple syrup. I thought it would make it more sweet, but it did not. I was also a little confused about the oak tannins. We added 3 packages of powder in primary. That was a lot.

I feel I learned a lot and look forward to more out of the box techniques. I'm glad we have Joe.

Thanks for your response.

 

[LoneStarLori]

I do the cheap route once in awhile, so my 4 kits are from Amazon. They are the 6 gallon kits for around $75. I have 2 California Chardonnays, 1 Gawurztraminier, and 1 Semillion Chardonnay. I thought the raisins, from Joe's suggestions, would work would enhance them. He did say to not use as much. I'm also going to research different tannins. There may be a better one for whites. I did read somewhere that referenced liquid tannins.

As far as more citrus on the front end, I saw where Joe mentioned adding the zest from 2 oranges, 2 grapefruits and 2 lemons. It was for a summer breeze drink, but may work for your next adventure, more thinking outside the box.

The Amarone turned out great. It will not make it through the holidays. That kit also had a Chapitalation process, which was nothing more than adding simple syrup. I thought it would make it more sweet, but it did not. I was also a little confused about the oak tannins. We added 3 packages of powder in primary. That was a lot.

I feel I learned a lot and look forward to more out of the box techniques. I'm glad we have Joe.

Thanks for your response.

I'm glad we have Joe too. lol. Just think of all the years we have saved by reading and following his lead.

I am certainly not opposed to cheap kits. If we can kick them up a notch using Joe's tricks, why not?

 

[LoneStarLori]

Sangiovese wrap up.

This weekend was the final journey on my Wine Expert World Vineyard Sangiovese project. Bottling time.
This kit was started on Sept 14, 2013 . The idea was to make a tweak following Joeswine’s method of adding extra tannin and raisins to the secondary to see if we could bump up the body a bit. In the end, I was very surprised at what a wonderful wine I created in a short period of time. Here is a recap on the process.

(9-14-13): Added the bentonite, grape juice, 2 packages of oak. Stirred well and covered the fermenter with a cotton cloth. Starting SG 1.104 with temp correction. Yikes!

(9-19-13): SG 1.020, Added raisins and 4 TBL of wine tannin.

(9-24-13: SG .994 I had to leave town for a few days so I snapped the lid and an airlock on the primary.

(9-27-13): SG .994 Since the SG is holding I decided to rack to a carboy. While tasting during the rack, I wasn't getting the fullness of the raisins that I had in the Mezza Luna White. So I decided it was time to message Joe and he reminded me that this is not a 4 week kit. The raisins needed more time to work. Since I had already dumped the raisins, I added a fresh batch of raisins to the secondary. I did not add any more tannin but did add a handful of Hungarian oak cubes.

(10-3-13) The raisins are very, very slowly rising to the top of the carboy. Even thought the SG is holding steady, I am not going to start the clearing process until I am sure the raisins have given there all. As Joe put it, "ALL WILL BE GOOD IN THE END,IF IT'S NOT GOOD RIGHT NOW THAT MEANS IT'S NOT THE END YET!"

(10-14-13) I am seeing no more action from the raisins. They are kind of floating at different levels in the carboy. Not at the top like they did in the primary. The taste is really coming along. I don’t detect and young tang. It is really surprisingly smooth. However, I have noticed the SG came up from .994 to 1.002. I guess the second addition of raisins did add something, And it is for the better.

Now it’s time to clear the wine. Because the raisins were not on top and not on bottom, they caused a bit of a syphoning problem. The raisins kept getting caught in the syphon end. No big problem, just need a little cheesecloth and patience. After cleaning the carboy I racked back into it and started adding the stabilizing and clearing agents that were supplied with the kit. The Chitosan worked very quickly.

(11-2-13) The wine has been clearing for a little over two weeks. It’s time to bottle. I was out of carboys and wanted to rack one more time before bottling so I put it in a clean primary then back into the carboy after I washed it. it took a little extra time but it's good to mix the wine a little before bottling. And.... it gives me a chance to try my new All in One pump. Going from floor to counter? Priceless

If you're going to get in my way, you gotta help:

Capping:

In conclusion; I have stolen a few tastes of the wine over the last two weeks and am very pleased with the end result. Especially at such a young age. I can easily drink this now and fully intend to do so.
It is surprisingly smooth and very fruit forward. I can taste Cherry and maybe some plum. There is no ‘raisin’ taste. Just a well balanced mix of dark fruits with a bit of spice on the finish. This is a wine I will to go to often for pasta dishes and steaks. I can tell right now I will need to start another batch in the next month. I don’t recall ever having a Sangiovese but if this is what I have been missing, I have to broaden my horizons.

Thank you to Joe and Kate (Joeswine) for educating me and holding my hand through another successful adventure of “Thinking outside the box”.

 

[GaDawg]

Using a hand corker is much easier if you put the bottle on the floor

 

[LoneStarLori]

Using a hand corker is much easier if you put the bottle on the floor

I have never made life easier for him. Why shake things up now? lol

 

[RCGoodin]

I have never made life easier for him. Why shake things up now? lol

Santa needs to get him a floor corker.....you'll never go back. It's as necessary as the All In One pump....

 

[joeswine]

Almond Wine Finished Bottle

 

[geek]

how does it taste joe being young?

 

[LoneStarLori]

It's lovely. I was lucky enough to get a sample.

It's just sweet enough, but not too much. The almond aroma hits you first, then it has a buttery mouthfeel and finishes with a bit of citrus. I think Joe got it just right.

 

[geek]

I've been thinking about an almond wine...
What page should I start reading? There are 28 pages in this thread...
I need a summary...

 

[LoneStarLori]

I read the first 15 or so and never saw a recipe. I think he's keeping it a secret. lol

 

[geek]

I will start reading, did you start with any white kit and then added the almond extract? Which one?

 

[joeswine]

Almond wine

I WILL LET YOU KNOW AFTER THE NEXT CONTEST AT CELLARMASTERS TO SEE HOW IT FARES.............​

 

[LoneStarLori]

Here's a recap on the Sangiovese.
I shared a bottle with my wine snob daughter last week and got great compliments. That made me a very happy winemaker. Now I have to get another red to try and duplicate my success with these tweaks.

This kit was started on Sept 14, 2013 . The idea was to make a tweak following Joeswine’s method of adding extra tannin and raisins to the secondary to see if we could bump up the body a bit. In the end, I was very surprised at what a wonderful wine I created in a short period of time. Here is a recap on the process.