Wine diary and question time!

[user 31015]

So, got a second-hand carboy, racked my pear wine into it, picked it up and....



Five liters of wine all over the garage floor. Arg! The bottom clean sheared off. So annoying!

 

[user 31015]

Tasted the pear before I lost it all and it was ok, bit flabby and in need of acid, I reckon. Another nod to needing to test at primary ferment.

I also racked the feijoa-grape tonight and found it quite sharp. I think I added too much tartaric acid. Hope it calms down in a bit.

I also ended up with 15 liters of wine, far more than I expected. I had 9lt of liquid (6 water, 3 grape juice), 2.5kg of sugar (probably counting as 2lt of liquid) and then I suppose the remaining 4 liters were sucked out of the 3kg of grape skins and 5kg of feijoa. That is far more than I expected and so I was sad to not be able to have more concentrated flavour.

 

[sour_grapes]

Arggh, sorry to hear that TinyPirate. That really smarts.

 

[user 31015]

Yeah! So frustrating!

I am feeling kinda like trying a wine kit because I want to know I will get a good result. I am really unsure if any of my current concoctions will be drinkable. The pear definitely needed acid before it was trashed, wonder what the others will need and if I can pull it off...

 

[Turock]

Well, don't get discouraged. You learn a lot by making wine from fruit and grapes and not relying on a kit to have it all done for you. I know it seems like a high hill to climb, but one day all the things you learned and mistakes you made start making sense to you as you get stronger in the science part. Then it all begins to "click" in your head. It took me a number of years--and alot of study--to start making sense of it all.

 

[user 31015]

What are the science parts I need to work on? It looks like pH is pretty important as well as cramming in as much fruit as I can!

 

[Turock]

It's important to understand nutrient use. When to pitch tannin, bentonite,etc. as these additions can inactivate enzymes. Sorbate use is something many people don't understand. It's important to know HOW these things work--not just blindly throwing them in and not knowing the science of how it works. It's important to know WHY you're doing WHAT you're doing.

 

[user 31015]

Haven't posted in a bit because I am waiting for a 23lt carboy to turn up at the local. Meanwhile, my grape/feijoa and my straight feijoa sit and wait for racking space.

 

[user 31015]

Right! Got my 23lt jar today and racked my feijoa and my feijoa and grape.

Both smell great but... I think (please confirm!!)... taste young. There is the alcohol up front and the fruit behind (but there is nice fruit there, that is for sure). A little sweetening of my sample glasses and it tasted nice, except for (what I hope) is the taste of young wine.

Photos: the reason the right one is darker is due to the oaking in the primary. Or oxidization, I guess! Hopefully the former.

 

[user 31015]

One month on! Gave the blackcurrant a go! I like it, fruity and nice. Not complex, just nice, easy drinking. Next time I think I will chuck some oak in to give it some nice body. Quite pleased!

View attachment 16222

 

[user 31015]

Not sure I reported further on my blackcurrant DB. To recap: it was made with about twice the fruit and half the lemon of the normal recipe. I tried it after 1 month in the bottle and whole it isn't bad tasting but on reflection, it is fairly sour. I think this is a function of blackcurrant (I would be curious how "proper" blackcurrant wines handle this). I am hoping the acid will soften with some more time in the bottle.

In good news I have found a local wine makers club and they have some very experienced makers (including a guy who judges competitions) an they have promised honest feedback! So, next meeting, a 2 month old bottle of mine will make a showing.

At the last meeting I was also treated to a very nice blueberry wine one of the members made. The recipe is similar to the DB approach and so I am definitely considering another batch made to that approach.

 

[user 31015]

In other news, racked my plum today with an eye on bottling it soon as I want to use the carboy and the wine level is getting worryingly low.

A taste suggested a really drinkable wine coming along! I don't think I will back-sweeten - I will just add some Kmeta and bottle.

 

[user 31015]

Bottled the plum last week. I am really pleased with it and I'm looking forward to seeing how it develops.

I would say that the flavour pack definitely added taste and body. I am wondering if people f-pack in wines with even a good, strong dose of fruit? I only added an f-pack as I felt the fruit taste and content was far too low/weak after fermentation. But maybe an f-pack is always helpful with fruit wines.

In other news, started a boysenberry wine (2kg of fruit in 4lt of sugar/water so it should be tasty) and I am talking to a distiller friend (it is legal here in NZ) about making plum brandy next year and then a plum port. Yummy!

 

[user 31015]

The boysenberry after the first rack. It dropped a LOT of sediment! And there's more to go. I think I will lose one liter of the five-and-a-bit I started with.

In other news I tried some of the feijoa sweetened with honey and it is really, really nice that way. Currently planning to sweeten all 30lt with honey after doing some taste testing and comparisons with a mate.

 

[user 31015]

Been reading the reddit for Mead and I have noticed many of them recommend adding fruit to the secondary. Is that common? I would have thought you would chuck it in the primary as you would with normal wine to extract maximum flavor and to help feed the yeast.

 

[user 31015]

Hello! Long time no write.. because.. well, wine making takes time and I had nothing new to share.

So I took my plum, blackcurrant and my honey'd feijoa (backsweetened to nearly 1.020 - 1.9kg of honey in 28lt of wine) to the wine club and made them all taste it. The verdicts:

Plum: Has taste of fusel alcohols in there - probably due to too warm a ferment. Boo, shame!

Feijoa: The honey may be adding an odd taste. It's best to brew with honey if you plan to sweeten with honey was the suggestion. And better than backsweetening is to stop a ferment early at the sugar level you want so you can produce a more integrated flavor. They also thought it had oxidized - probably due to the stupid way the 23lt jar is capped (I let the water "moat" evaporate down too far) and how much I had to mix the wine to get the honey in.

Blackcurrant: This surprised me, they really liked it! "Good balance, fruit, mouth feel" "good one!". I was surprised because when I bottled it I thought it was far too tart, but now that the brew is 6 months old it has mellowed and 'evened' out a lot.

So, there you go.

 

[Floandgary]

I've found that Dried Black Currant is a great "go-to" for smoothing those sharp edges on the heavy reds.

 

[sour_grapes]

Hello! Long time no write.. because.. well, wine making takes time and I had nothing new to share.

That doesn't stop most of us!!

Thanks for the update, and good luck with the interesting batches.

 

[Deezil]

Bottled the plum last week. I am really pleased with it and I'm looking forward to seeing how it develops.

I would say that the flavour pack definitely added taste and body. I am wondering if people f-pack in wines with even a good, strong dose of fruit? I only added an f-pack as I felt the fruit taste and content was far too low/weak after fermentation. But maybe an f-pack is always helpful with fruit wines.

I haven't tried plum yet; apparently I need to..

Flavor packs are only useful until you start getting your feet wet in 'all-fruit'/no water methods; it's kind of hard to 'add more flavor' to something that's already fruit juice lol

But yes, it's possible to f-pack with fruit - and that's basically what you stumbled on in the Mead reddit that you mention below:

Been reading the reddit for Mead and I have noticed many of them recommend adding fruit to the secondary. Is that common? I would have thought you would chuck it in the primary as you would with normal wine to extract maximum flavor and to help feed the yeast.

They do this to avoid the heat build up and yeast activity levels that happen during the beginning stages of fermentation. With some of the red grapes, too hot of a fermentation can lead to 'cooked fruit'-type flavors; the same, in essence, it true for other fruits, in that the fermentation process alters the original flavor of the fruit into something, most times, more complex; like blueberry wine to me comes off very Merlot-ish, doesnt taste very much like popping a fresh blueberry in my mouth.

When you add the fruit later, there's not as many yeast to chew on the tidbits of that fruit, so its more of a fruit-flavor addition than it is a fermentation-sugar/feed the yeast addition..

It's something usually done more often in the meadmakers/mazers circuits, but when 90-95% of the wine you've made all tastes like honey, I'd probably wanna change things up a bit here and there as well.. It's a decent technique though, and has its place in particular applications.

 

[user 31015]

Ta for the feedback. Wouldn't too hot a ferment also be a problem fruit wine makers come across? We don't seek to separate the sugar water ferment from the fruit flavor addition?

After making the blackcurrant and feijoa wines my concern about an all-fruit wine is that many fruits don't have balanced acidity. Those two fruits mentioned, in juice form, would be quite a bit too tart of brewed as-is. Do all-juice brewers spend time adding calc carb to reduce acidity? If would seem required.

Another question for all: the best winemaker at the club prefers to step-add the sugar to the primary so as to not over stress the yeast. He also claims you can, using this technique (and... magic??) stop a ferment at the SG you want and then bulk age it safely as needed. In this way you get a more integrated taste and less of a "this tastes sweetened" sensation.

Thing is, how does one do this without simply cranking the %vol up to 16ish percent? The only time I figure the ferment would stop is when the yeast runs out of sugar or the percent is too high.

I might have misunderstood some piece - there was the implication of racking in there to reduce the amount of yeast cells kicking around, but he explicitly stated he doesn't use sorbate in this process... Does anyone here use a similar process and can explain it? I plan to ask further, of course, but am looking for more thoughts.