Tag Archives: Wine
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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Make Your Own Wine at Home
Your Supplies
The easy way to make your own wine would be to simply buy a kit to make your own wine. The prices are pretty steep but putting together your own supplies and totally doing it on your own can be a lot of fun. You will need: A few five gallon buckets to make and store the wine (some should have air locks for the fermentation process); a winepress (optional); a hydrometer to take readings of sugar and alcohol; a destemmer; a siphoning hose and some bottles, corks and a corker. Sterilize everything before you begin to make your wine.
Grapes (of course!)
I normally make roughly 5-6 gallons per batch when I make wine at home. This should give you about 24 bottles of wine. You are going to need quite a lot of grapes. You will need about 45 pounds of grapes. If you want, winemaking supply stores also sell bottled grape juice just for making wine at home.
Juice Those Grapes
You can obviously skip the step of making grape juice if you’ve bought the bottled juice. If not get that winepress working if you have one or start squishing grapes! Please note that red wine grapes must be fermented with the skins for several days before juicing.
Prep Your Juice
So you have you juice, now take out your hydrometer and take a reading of your sugar content. Check to see if the alcohol scale reads between 9% and 13%. If you are below that level add some sugar until your hydrometer gives you the green light to continue.
Ferment
Pour the juice into an open container about halfway. Next add yeast nutrient, pectic enzyme and potassium bisulfite. Wait a day and then gently sprinkle yeast (one package every 5 gallons) into your container. Let the fermentation process begin! Bubbling will occur in about 12 hours. Make sure you stir daily and have your containers lightly covered with a clean cloth.
And Again
You are almost there after five or six days. Move your fermenting juice into a clean bucket with an air lock. The sediment from the first bucket should stay there! Be carefull. Take another hydrometer reading to let you know if you are done fermenting. Almost there. Your wine will start to separate from the sediment at this point and needs to be taken out. This can take quite a while; several weeks to maybe even months.
Bottle Your Batch
After your liquid has cleared prepare for bottling. I usually strain my wine before bottling to remove any left over sediment. This is not necessary but a good habit to have I feel. Siphon the wine into your bottles, cork them and store them in a nice cool, dry place until you want to drink. Age it as you see fit. Enjoy!!
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How to Conduct a Wine Tasting
Wine tasting is a fine art that has been perfected over time. While professional wine tastings are conducted by wine merchants and buyers, it is easy to have your own informal wine tasting at home with friends. Here are some tips to properly taste wine.
First, pick 3 to 6 wines. If you aren’t very familiar with wine yet and are just looking to explore some wines, pick some that you have been eying at the store, anything from red to white. If you want to conduct a more sophisticated wine tasting, limit your wine selection to one type of wine, such as Merlot or Chardonnay, or even to one vineyard. If you want each taste to be a surprise, put the bottles in brown bags so that you and your friends can’t see what wines have been chosen.
For each wine, pour a small amount of wine (2 ounces or less) into stemmed glasses. Smell the wine first to get an impression of the aroma. Taste the wine, then spit it out discreetly, or if you prefer to make your wine tasting more lively, feel free to consume the wine!
Between each sampling, have some small snack foods available to cleanse your palate. Bread with cheese and mild fresh fruit usually work well. Don’t get anything too strong that will interfere with the taste of the wine. Have water available and rinse the wine glasses by swirling some water inside and dumping it out. Continue with each wine until you and your friends have had a chance to taste them all. To make it more interesting, you could set up a contest to see who can correctly guess the type of wine for each bottle.
Wine tasting is a great way to try several wines and learn about the large diversity of wines available. While wine tasting can be as sophisticated and formal as you desire, it can also be as fun and unique an experience as you and your friends want. Think of your own fun personal touches to add to your wine tasting, such as a theme, blindfolded tasting, making special snacks, and more.
For more information on foods to pair with your wine and recipes to try, please visit the informative, interactive food website CD Kitchen here.
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Sulfites in Homemade Wine
Sulfites are a source of much discussion in wine making. Let’s start our discussion by finding out exactly what sulfites are and why they’re important to winemakers.
Sulfites occur naturally on all sorts of foods, including grapes, garlic, onions and lots of other plants. This is nature’s way of preventing the growth of microbes.
In wine making, sulfites are used by wineries as a preservative and sterilization agent. They also use sulfites during the initial grape crush to kill off the native yeasts that occur on all wine grapes. When the wild yeasts have been eliminated the winemaker can introduce his own yeast to better control the fermentation and also the end product.
Are sulfites dangerous? The answer is yes, they can be. A person who is sensitive to sulfites can have asthmatic reactions and also headaches that range from mild to severe and even life threatening. If you’ve ever had a bad headache from one glass of wine, you may be allergic to sulfites.
There are laws that regulate the use of sulfites, and manufacturers are required to label all products that exceed 10 parts per million. Wine containing less than 10 PPM sulfites don’t have to be labeled. In fact, the use of sulfites has been banned for use in fresh fruits and vegetables by the FDA.
You can find wines produced by some wineries that contain no sulfites, although some folks will argue that grapes naturally contain sulfites and so therefore can never be sulfite free. However, the levels of sulfite can be so low as to be undetectable, and the winemaker will add no sulfites at any time during the process. Wine purists are able to appreciate the bouquet and fruit flavors of a wine without sulfites.
So, should you use sulfites in your homemade wine? My answer is yes, as recommended by the kit or recipe that you’re following. But it’s really a personal decision, and there’s lots of room for argument and experimentation.
I believe sulfites make up for less than sanitary conditions that are present during homemade wine making, and can extend the shelf life of your wines. I would, however, encourage experimentation on your part if you think you’d like to try making wines without adding sulfites.
Just ensure your cleaning and sanitizing are impeccable and give it a try!
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.