Grape Wine is .... GO!

Yes, the grape wine has taken off and is fermenting busily now. It's always a bit of a relief with a new brew; that spell of time from pitching the yeast to a vigorous ferment starting is crucial. Such a nutritious broth is heaven for so many things and it's a nervy time waiting for the yeast to dominate.

White Grape (Muscat) Wine - Recipe

OK, so its 48 hours since I plucked the grapes from their stems and put them in my primary fermenting vessel with campden. Today I got the brew going for real and here comes the recipe, method and some piccies!

Recipe (2 gallons)

7.8 Kg Muscat Grapes (white)
2 Campden Tablets
1 Kg sugar
1 Teaspoon Citric Acid
1 Teaspoon Tartaric Acid
1 Teaspoon Nutrivin (Nutrient)
2 Teaspoons Pectolase
Yeast, GV5
OG 1075

Method

1. See previous post for piccies. Pick the grapes from your friendly neighbour's vine, with their permission of course, and pledge some wine in return. Take them off their stems, wash them, and drop into the fermenting bin. Dissolve 2 crushed campden tablets in water, add to fermenting bin, add water to cover the grapes (took 1 gallon). Snap on the lid and leave for 48 hours.

2. Two days have now passed. Remove about 1 litres worth of grapes, place in a nylon bag and squeeze the juice out, measure the gravity of the juice. Was 1047. This is low, ideally you want something significantly higher, but you can expect to have to add sugar to grapes grown in the UK. This is especially true of a vine that has been left to its own devices. There's way too many grapes on it really. The juice tasted delicious by the way, very fruity, quite sharp, even pineapple like flavours. A shop bought grape juice is usually around 1070 with no added sugar.

3. Continue pressing all the grapes in this way. Keep the pressed skins. Meanwhile dissolve 1kg of sugar in some of the water that the grapes have been soaking in.

4. When you're done with that put the grape skins into a couple of muslin bags, dissolve the nutrient, acids and enzyme in some grape juice, throw all the ingredients (except the yeast) into the fermenting bin. Give it a good sloshy stir, add the bagged skins, pitch the yeast, cover and leave it. Stir daily, sloshily, for the next week. Then treat it as any other wine, probably removing the skins after about a week (easy job cos they're in bags!).

Other Thoughts

I've used GV5 yeast because it ferments down to 8'C, and is very happy at cool temperatures which is what you want for a good bouquet in white wines. My brewing area is unheated and is currently at 17'C. It's also low foaming.

I've heard it said that the flavour of the wine mainly comes from the skins. Of course also tannins. With those thoughts in mind I'm leaving the skins in for a week, they do taste good! I want this wine to be quite astringent and flavourful.

It's quite amazing how fast those bright green grapes turn brown while you press them. Likewise the juice. Don't be alarmed tho, there is little you can do about it, perhaps try adding an anti-oxidant like vitamin C if you want.

Making Wine from Grapes ... what!

Well its only taken me 20 something years but I've finally done it, started a batch of wine made from grapes! One of our wonderful neighbours has a vine and way too many grapes for their own purposes. So they said we could raid it whenever. This evening we went raiding and picked ourselves 7.8 kg (net weight) of grapes.

Here's some piccies

The first of two carrier bags, round about 4 kg, complete with stems at the mo.

The second carrier bag full after removing stems and washing

The whole lot in the fermenting bin, comes up to around the 3 gallon mark. 1 gallon of water (with 2 campden tablets in it) just covered them. So now the natural yeasts and other things we don't want, are being taken care of. Soon the crushing begins!

not sure how much wine this will make yet, gotta look up some recipes, I guess around 2 gallons tho. Stay tuned for the recipe and method I choose.

What's that Noise?

It's all quiet here at Critter Wines. A few days ago we heard the sound of continuously running water, switched off the mains supply, called out a plumber and since then have been without water except for about half an hour a day. Not ideal for brewing.

So you say why not get it sorted .... well it's not like we're not trying. Our major stumbling block is the insurance company who strongly advised us to get specialist insurance. They are called Homeserve and you might want to remember that name. When they were contacted their response was to start trouble shooting .... for a way out of their liability. Never mind their commitment to aim to get a plumber out within 2 hours, oh and the promise of up to £500 for accommodation should they be unable to fix the problem that day. They didn't even call back when they said they would! They have now cancelled the policy and sent a refund, and that's their last word on the matter.

Or so they think 'cos luckily there's a cool bunch of folks called the FSA, and we already have a complaint form from them to fill in so that they can take on our case. Stay tuned, 'cos brewing will resume.

Critter Wines Goes Mobile

I had a great day yesterday. Went to pick up the better half from the airport and took the opportunity to drop in on a nearby friend who wants to brew. So I raided my supplies draw for yeast, nutrient, enzyme, acids etc and set off. We got 4 gallons started and passed a very enjoyable couple of hours. Best fun I have had brewing for a while, and a delight to get someone into this great hobby.

The picture shows the result of a couple of hours of effort (that's 24 bottles worth of wine)

Still Shuffling

Yup, just shuffling 5 gallon batches around again. This time the 2nd batch of Cranberry & Blueberry from the primary to the secondary fermentation vessel

More Shuffling About

I'm having great fun trying to operate my little winery at full capacity. Today I moved 5 gallons of Blueberry & Cranberry wine to DJ's (from a 5 gallon fermenting vessel). Well I thought it was 5 gallons but actually turned out to be 4 and a bit. It looked like it was about 2 litres short of a full 5 gallons.

So I have made one gallon into a "special". As its a light wine anyway I decided not to top up with a sugar solution alone as this would risk making the wine too thin. So I used a litre of white grape juice (gravity 1070) and a litre of sugar solution (gravity 1090). The result is that the wine will retain it's OG of 1080 ish. I thought any little adjustment after that could be made with water alone ... but it turned out that exactly 2 litres of liquid was needed!

So next time you see "special" or "limited edition" on a bottle you might wonder a little more than you did before  ;-)

I'll be playing with next 5 gallon batch of the same wine tomorrow.

Juggling 10 gallons

So the Blueberry & Cranberry wine was ready to move to secondary fermentation (under airlock). Which meant that I had a 5 gallon fermenting bin empty. No time like the present eh .... immediately started the next 5 gallon batch of the same wine.

AND I took pictures!

 

Funny perspective in this piccie. This is siphoning from the primary FV (on the stool) to the secondary FV (on the floor). The latter actually holds more.

And this is the new 5 gallon batch (not quite topped up to the 5 gallon mark yet), the picture taken seconds after pitching the yeast (that's it floating on the top).

Time Lag ....

I did get around to bottling a couple of nights ago. 2 Gallons of Elderflower Wine. Both quickies. And a gallon of the Cranberry & Blueberry Rosé. So now I have 6 empty DJ's, perfect for dealing with the 5 gallons of Blueberry & Cranberry rosé that I started a few days ago ... and having one spare for racking.

I didn't take any piccies tho ... sorry. so here is one I took in our garden last year