Tag Archives: Making
Wine Making and Tasting
In your search for wine making recipes online, you will encounter a variety of interesting recipes from which to choose; there are standard ones for beginners, variations from the classics, innovative ones that are exciting to make, and there are the organic recipes to keep you fit and healthy.
With a jug of water, some yeast and pectic enzyme, some sugar, and other flavorings, there are many homemade wine making recipes you can experiment with. You can make wine from your favorite fruits like your all-time favorite grapes and strawberries as well as apples, apricots, peaches, bananas, pineapples, and all sorts of berries. You can also make them from nuts like almonds and hazelnuts. You can try roses, lilac, and dandelions, too. There is a world of wine making recipes out there, and they’re just a click away.
To say a wine is sound and round or well-rounded, means it is well-balanced. Smooth means that the wine is just right, while sharp and rough mean that the wine is imbalanced a bit strong and falling between sour and tart in terms of acidity. Silky means that the wine is fine and balanced. In essence, wine has three basic components: Fruit, acidity, and tannin. To make a good wine, these three components must be in balance, not overwhelming.
There are variations in taste, such as soft in contrast to hard and light in contrast to heavy referring to tannins. Based on its flavor, a wine might be described as nutty or earthy. It would be unfavorable and faulty if it were said to be mousy, musty, moldy, or faded. As the names imply, Yuck!
A wine’s dosage means the amount of sugar added to wine, especially to sparkling wine. Thus, derive the terms sweet and dry and the semi’s in between. Cloying, on the other hand, suggests that the wine is too sweet for comfort.
As a whole, a wine should have a finish that is pleasant just as you swallow, and an aftertaste that is likewise pleasant after you swallow the wine and it lingers inside your mouth.
Aroma is how a young wine smells. Green is what it tastes like. Clean is when you have no complaints, and herbaceous is as grassy and organic as they get. Thin is when the wine is bland, and hot is when wine really burns. It’s for fire-breathing dragons and not for you.
But the most important ingredients of all, you find inside yourself. Wine making involves a passionate desire to learn. It entails patience and discipline. It takes time. You ferment, blend, and age along with it, with grace. It takes a real love for wine, be it white or red, sweet or dry, crackling or sparkling, local or foreign.
They say the best way to know wine is to drink some and enjoy some. Get to know the experience of it. Appreciate the nuances of each unique kind and brand. Wine can be very much a part of every dining experience and many celebrations in our lifetime.
There are many good wine recipes and every recipe can be extraordinary.
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Wine Making Yeast Bits
What separates wine from simple juice is the fermentation process in wine making. Fermentation involves wine making yeast, not any other type of yeast like your bread yeast.
Importance
Wine yeast is the most important ingredient in wine making. Not only as an ingredient but the process of mixing it with the must will make or break the whole batch of wine. It is said that the real winemaker is not the person making the wine but the yeast itself. The yeast works to absorb the sugar from the fruit and creating alcohol and carbon dioxide in equal portions.
Timing
The timing of mixing in the yeast is crucial as well. One can neither put the yeast too early nor too late, in the whole wine process. At best, wine making yeast is mixed in at least twenty four hours after the fruit is crushed. And it is left to stand interacting with the must for at least five to seven days, with only a few stirring twice to thrice a day.
Activation
For better results, wine making yeast must be activated first before mixing it into the fruit must. How? Mix the yeast into a cup of juice squeezed from the must and set aside for at least twelve hours before mixing it into the must. Or a cup of warm water will suffice. Do not use hot water as the temperature will kill the yeast rather than activating it. You know the yeast is active when the mixture looks like it is boiling.
Buying
Buying yeast is extremely easy. Just make sure that the label reads wine making yeast or something to that fashion. Any generic brand will make do for the amateurs. But if you are the brave type or already an aficionado, those specialty types are great choices. The amount you buy is also noteworthy, a ten milligram packet of yeast is sufficient to work on ten gallons of grape must.
So you see, even the hardest part of the wine process, which is the part involving wine yeast, is relatively easy once you know why it is crucial, what to buy and how and when to use it.
Wine Making Hydrometer Basics
A hydrometer is an indispensable tool in the winemaker’s arsenal. Hydrometers are used at different stages in the wine making process, and by learning what your hydrometer is saying you’ll be able to refine your wine making techniques.
Basically, the heavier, or denser a liquid is, the higher the hydrometer will float. When just starting a batch of wine, the juice is “thick” with sugars. When fermentation occurs the juice goes from the thicker, syrupy consistency to a thinner liquid containing more alcohol. Thus, a hydrometer will float at different levels all throughout a fermentation as the liquid goes from “thicker” to “thinner”.
Specific Gravity is one scale on your hydrometer. This scale is based on the weight of water. A hydrometer floating in water will have a specific gravity of 1.000 When you start a batch of wine a typical specific gravity reading will be around 1.080. At that point the juice is 8 percent thicker than water. When fermentation is complete, the reading will be around 0.995, meaning that the sugar has been turned into alcohol and the juice is now thinner than water.
Another scale on your hydrometer is potential alcohol (PA). To arrive at potential alcohol readings you must measure the PA at the beginning of fermentation and also again at the end. An example might help here. Suppose you measure the PA of your juice at 14 % when beginning fermentation. This reading means that “potentially” you can get 14% alcohol from your juice. But not all fermentation use up every bit of sugar. If you take a reading when fermentation is complete and the PA is 1%, then your wine has 13% alcohol, the difference between the two readings.
Another scale on most hydrometers is Brix, also known as Balling. This is usually used by advanced wine makers and also commercial wineries. The Brix scale shows the percentage of sugar in the juice by weight. For instance, if you have a reading of 22 on the Brix scale, that means the juice is made up of 22% sugar by weight. Wineries will use this scale to determine that their juice can produce the percentage of alcohol they desire.
A hydrometer is a very useful tool for the homemade winemaker. The more you use one the more familiar you’ll become with the various scales and how powerful their information they provide can be.
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Yeast in Homemade Wine Making
Yeast kicks off the fermentation process in wine making. After adding it to your must, it begins to consume the sugar, producing equal amounts of ethanol and carbon dioxide.
There are wild yeasts everywhere around us, including on the skins of grapes if you’re making wine from fresh fruits. Generally, winemakers discourage these yeasts from fermenting by adding sulfites to kill them off before they can get started. This is done so the winemaker has more control over the fermentation and can produce a consistent wine from batch to batch.
There are basically two types of wine available to home winemakers; liquid and dry.
Most homemade winemakers prefer to use dry yeast. It’s easier to store and to work with.
A subject of debate among homemade winemakers is whether or not to re-hydrate the dry yeast you’re working with. I’ve found that re-hydrating is really not necessary and in fact can lead to problems if the process is not done exactly right.
Two things that can adversely affect the performance of your yeast are the temperature and also the oxygen level. In order to achieve a proper, vigorous fermentation the temperature needs to be maintained between 70 -75 degrees. There are exceptions and variations to this. Some white wines are fermented at lower temperatures to enhance certain flavors, but special yeast is used to do this.
Oxygen is needed during primary fermentation because the yeast are multiplying rapidly during this stage and without air this multiplying can be severely restricted. During primary fermentation the use of an airlock is discouraged so the wine can get all the oxygen it needs. Primary fermentation lasts approximately 7 days and 70 percent of the fermentation is complete at this point.
During secondary fermentation the wine is usually placed in another vessel with an airlock attached. The airlock is to allow carbon dioxide to escape while preventing bacteria and other micro-organisms. The reduced exposure to air also gets the yeast to stop multiplying and put its energy into making alcohol.
Yeast is a crucial part of homemade wine making. The more you learn about yeast and the fermentation process, the more you’ll be rewarded wine batch after batch of consistent, delicious homemade wine.
Making Wine at Home
People’s love for wine has extremely grown today. Not just in some countries but all over
the world. This is reason enough that the need to know how to make homemade wine is
tremendously increasing for personal consumption. Wine making equipment and supplies
today are readily available in stores anywhere. It allows wine lovers to make it possible
for themselves to stack their wine racks with their own homemade wines. The best thing
you get in making wine by yourself is fulfillment and contentment for the efforts spent.
For many years people have tried making their wines especially red and white wines at
home and have failed. As more people have tried to make this a hobby the materials,
supplies and recipes are being improved. The wine making kits help a lot and more
people learn to love and make home wine making their leisure and gratification. There
could even be times when some group of wine lovers exchange recipes to improve the
flavor of their own batches. How one person appreciates his/her homemade wine would
not be the same as how others would also value theirs. However, the kits available for
making homemade wine help make unswerving and dependable results so that more
people would enjoy the same wine.
For special family occasions like Christmas, birthdays, anniversaries, reunions and other
more wine makers and lovers may make special wines in preparation for these occasions.
This would make the special day enjoyable. As you look forward to the gathering, you
can time the preparation of your vintage as you know when to bottle and how long the
aging period is in time for the occasion. You also will reap financial benefits by making
your own wine at home. Wine connoisseurs will only tell you that the more expensive
the wine the better it tastes, but this is not true all the time. The more you keep on
making your own home made wine soon you will be able to produce an excellent and
exceptional tasting wine.
Normally, the more you learn about something the more you learn to appreciate its
complexities. The more you would love to do it. The same thing goes with wine
making at home, the more you learn to make it, the more you will love to do it.
As you keep doing this, in just a short period of time you’ll find yourself into that hobby
and wine making at home will be your passion then. You will absolutely enjoy it, even
your family and friends will get into your passion. Dare yourself…Homemade wine
making is really a grand and exciting learning experience. Make it a hobby, be satisfied
and enjoy.
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