thots on natural wine

[susieqz]

i read with great interest your beliefs on natural wines.
it seems clear that there are many problems involved with leaving the well trodden path.
in fact, if one spends a great deal of time n money on a home vintage, taking a chance on natural wines seems silly.
that may be because your additives n procedures are the only way to do things, but, only maybe.
it is also possible that we have simply lost the knowledge needed to make great natural wines.
i have some anecdotal evidence that favors the latter.
my gramma made a batch of elderberry wine every year.
it was quite dry n very beautiful , never cloudy or tainted with off tastes.
i would pair it with any meal that called for a nice young wine.
it wasn't served with food, tho.
gram considered it medicinal, so i had small servings even as a preteen,
unfortunately, there is no recipe for this wine. gram was doing what she had been taught by her gram, who learned it from her gram.
no one alive knows how it was made.
all i remember is picking elderberries n them fermenting in a towel covered 5 gallon clay pot in her kitchen.
since this method was so old, there was no wine yeast or other additive involved.
she was a home canner, so anything that needed to be sterile was sterile.

there is lots of evidence here that modern methods work, i'll be forced to use some of them.
but, guys, heresy or not, should i find some ancient wine maker who is using an ancestral methods, that's what i'll do .

 

[BernardSmith]

I think that there are horses for courses. If what you are looking for is a less controlled, less predictable, more "natural" wine then using lab controlled yeasts and other "engineered" and "cultured" products may not be what you want. If , on the other hand, you want a very predictable, very managed outcome no matter the quality of the fruit you have harvested then leaving the outcome as much to chance as your own skill may not be the best route you want to take. In my opinion, neither approach is inherently bad or good.

 

[pillswoj]

If no one knows your Grams recipe, then can you be sure it was "natural"? likely she used bread yeast, much like my grandfather did back in 50s and 60s. There is nothing inherently unnatural about the various wine yeasts we use, many of them were cultured from the natural wine yeasts from successful vineyards.

 

[susieqz]

yeah. pills. she might have used bread yeast.
do you happen to know grandfather's method?
since i'll be doing small batches, i can experiment.

 

[Scooter68]

The only trick with using natural/wild yeast or bread yeast is their alcohol tolerance. If you have too much sugar (Natural or added) in the wine must at the start, the yeast will do it's thing but it may leave you with either an overly sweet wine, or set up your wine for a bacteria attack. I'm not sure about acidity of Elderberries but I would guess it's pretty high, a good thing in helping preserve a natural wine making effort.

In keeping with a low investment effort I would suggest maybe just investing in two things to start with (For your grape wine or elderberry wine) 1) A hydrometer - so you can be sure that your final potential alcohol level will be adequate to prevent premature spoilage of the wine. 2) A package of wine yeast - so that you know that with enough sugar present, the wine should be able to ferment to a safer (10% or higher 9% ABV) (One package dry wine yeast should be good enough for 5 gallons of wine - so more than enough for you first batch or two hopefully)

Other than, that sterilizing everything is a good thing but if the acidity and ABV are correct, then the wine should keep decently in the small amounts you talked about on your other posts. Also by using a cultured wine yeast, you can rinse your fruit well to help reduce the wild critters on your fruit. (Bacteria and wild yeast.)
Hope that helps.

 

[sour_grapes]

unfortunately, there is no recipe for this wine. gram was doing what she had been taught by her gram, who learned it from her gram.

Curious that the intervening generations (i.e., your mom, your great-grandmother, your great-great-great-grandmother) weren't given a chance to learn to make this brew. A pity, as that may have made transmission of this cultural knowledge more reliable.

 

[Slappy]

I think one aspect thats easy to forget when talking natural wines is when you plan to drink it. Historically speaking I'm pretty sure most home winemakers would have been making wine to be consumed by the family over the following year or so rather than cellaring for years and that goes for grape and fruit wines. My wines I've made without sulfites etc have been fine but I haven't stored any longer than 12 months or so. Agree with the comments on yeast. I never chance it and use cultured yeast for predictable results.
Picking your own fruit and making your own wine by hand is about as traditional and natural as you can get in my opinion, as you have a direct part in every process.

 

[susieqz]

thanks, guys.
so, sulfites are needed mostly for long aging?
that's very good to know, as i'm only trying to make a young wine, to be consumed before the next batch.

scooter, i followed your advice n now have some wine yeast.
i may allow natural yeast to work for a while before adding it.
it may be that what works for elderberries won't work for grapes.
anyway, i have no need for sweet wine.

bread yeast is pretty good at producing alcohol , but i don't know how much.
when i want sour bread, i let dough rise for days in the fridge. you can really smell the alcohol.
i'm really glad you told me that all yeasts won't live when alcohol content rises. i'd have assumed otherwise.

 

[Scooter68]

I am expecting that if you only make a couple of bottles of grape wine from your vine or even a gallon, it won't last a year and that's what I keep hearing as the reasonable lifespan of an untreated wine.

Yup, amazing isn't it that we enjoy the waste products of a number organisms that convert one thing into something we like. Yeast produces alcohol and vinegar eels produce vinegar. I'll never forget when our 7th grade science professor had us look at unpasteurized vinegar and we saw all the little eel wiggling around. Needless to same some in the class vowed never to eat/use any vinegar again.

By the way one of my favorite parts of making wine is walking in the room and smelling that yeast smell along with the fruit smells.

 

[susieqz]

is it not yeast that makes vinegar?
i love working with yeast.
it occurs to me that i've made wine before.
i made sima, a fizzy finnish soft drink. to the last bottle, i added sugar for the yeast to eat n stuck that in the back of the fridge.
i used champagne yeast n it produced lots of alcohol.
shelf life is good, stored in the fridge.

 

[Scooter68]

I believe it's vinegar eels that turn apple juice (wine?) into vinegar. Here's a Wikipedia link.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbatrix_aceti

Apparently yeast creates the wine and the vinegar eels finish the next step. I guess they are HAPPY HAPPY critters living in that alcoholic environment.

So Sima is made with honey and lemon?

 

[susieqz]

eels are cool. i object to having them removed from my vinegar. that might be why i buy raw vinegar.
the health benefits must come from live eels.
i used a friend's family recipe for sima. brown sugar, white sugar, honey , lemon n raisins.
it's very nice, but i generally make ginger ale.
i should try making wine from that.
i'm fond of ginger.
carbonated drinks made with yeast are fun.

 

[sour_grapes]

I believe it's vinegar eels that turn apple juice (wine?) into vinegar. Here's a Wikipedia link.

Not quite, as your own link reveals. It is a bacterium (or perhaps several related bacteria) that convert alcohol to acetic acid (i.e., vinegar). The "eels" do not create the vinegar, but rather they eat the bacteria that create the vinegar.

This discussion made me realize, once again, that I am not at all bothered by critters too small to see (yeast, bacteria), but am disgusted by those just a bit bigger (vinegar eels).

 

[balatonwine]

This discussion made me realize, once again, that I am not at all bothered by critters too small to see (yeast, bacteria), but am disgusted by those just a bit bigger (vinegar eels).

As a biologist by education, such psychology interest me.

Bacteria is okay. But not "just a bit bigger" nematode. Yet, then, as some size, things are again okay to eat (what size would that be: shrimp size for example ?).

And, interestingly, this type of source or size biased food psychology is mostly a cultural issue from north Americans (such as requiring the harmless Turbatrix aceti to be eliminated in vinegar, which is mostly a US, and not a global, requirement). Which, I find also interesting, as north Americans tend to be the most uneducated and detached, as a majority of the population, from and about their their food sources. Not just physically due to a very long tradition now of corporate agriculture, processed food, and supermarkets rather than small businesses as sources of food, but also as lacking in basic knowledge where a lot of their food comes from or what it actually is (I was the only person in my biology class in high school who actually knew what meat was), or how it is processed. For example, what the FDA actually allows in food would probably turn most people green, only because they were till then probably ignorant of what is actually in their food, if they bothered to look at the so called "Defect Levels Handbook".

 

[Johnd]

As a biologist by education, such psychology interest me.

Bacteria is okay. But not "just a bit bigger" nematode. Yet, then, as some size, things are again okay to eat (what size would that be: shrimp size for example ?).

And, interestingly, this type of source or size biased food psychology is mostly a cultural issue from north Americans (such as requiring the harmless Turbatrix aceti to be eliminated in vinegar, which is mostly a US, and not a global, requirement). Which, I find also interesting, as north Americans tend to be the most uneducated and detached, as a majority of the population, from and about their their food sources. Not just physically due to a very long tradition now of corporate agriculture, processed food, and supermarkets rather than small businesses as sources of food, but also as lacking in basic knowledge where a lot of their food comes from or what it actually is (I was the only person in my biology class in high school who actually knew what meat was), or how it is processed. For example, what the FDA actually allows in food would probably turn most people green, only because they were till then probably ignorant of what is actually in their food, if they bothered to look at the so called "Defect Levels Handbook".

You say such nice things. Most us Americans have social skills and class to prevent us from embarking on those Masengill moments. You, kind sir, do not.

 

[Scooter68]

Yikes! Did I start an argument?

Naw but.... but fun.

 

[Stressbaby]

You say such nice things. Most us Americans have social skills and class to prevent us from embarking on those Masengill moments. You, kind sir, do not.

Ouch.