Do you remember this post? And the one preceding it?
Well, this evening Super Thin Man and I bottled our very first ever home vintage. It's actually not bad, either! (Of course we had to taste it. How else can you tell whether it's ready to bottle?)
We racked it twice over the course of the past 5 weeks, used a potassium metabisulfate solution to stabilize and sterilize it, clarified it last weekend using SuperKleer, and today as a study break we bottled it.
As we were tasting over the last couple of weeks, we discovered that the merlot from the kit we bought was, like, really high in alcohol, to the point where it was more like weak, young brandy. The fruit wine on the other hand (equal parts organic '365' brand concord grape, cherry, and blueberry fruit juice) was very weak in strength and was overwhelmingly fruity. We tried 75/25, 60/30, and 50/50 blends of the two wines, and discovered that providentially a 50/50 blend of the two balanced the fruit and alcohol very nicely. Odd, but a pleasant surprise. The original merlot kit was meant to make four bottles. With the blend it came out to seven bottles plus one glass (I'm sipping it now-ahhhh! Young, but with potential! :D ).
All in all, including equipment, chemicals, and juice, we ended up with seven plus bottles of eminently drinkable wine for about...$50? And several of the pieces of equipment (wine thief, brix/alcohol meter, racking pump, corker) are reusable.
Nice.
So you all...well, all of you over 21...now know what you'll be receiving for Christmas and birthdays for the rest of your lives.
Cheers!
P.S. We may get into beer and mead at some point, given the opportunity. And don't worry, we'll get you to taste it before we start giving it as gifts :D
P.P.S. The picture is from the tour we took at Ingleside Winery not far from Westmoreland State Park, where I spent Spring Break.
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5 comments:
See, now beer is as easy to make and is more of an instant gratification, since primary fermentation is generally wrapped up (for ales, anyway, and lagers are sort of a pain) in about a week, and two weeks of bottle conditioning is generally sufficient. As opposed to typically months with wines. You're fruit wine might not have had enough natural sugar, or did you add to it? Otherwise unless you're using one of the new super yeasts that can ferment to about 20% or so (I'd call that more like a weak schnapps than brandy, but closer in flavor to brandy I suppose.) the yeast typically starts to die off around 12-15%. Of course, most commercial wines aren't fermented to that level, but fortified, the cheating bastards. :)
Umm. No I don't have a drinking problem, I can hit my mouth everytime. . .
Since the fruit wine was 1/3 grape juice it had enough of the natural sugars to jumpstart the process, but we used a different yeast at first. We bought a brix meter to get the sugar/est. alcohol yield, but the amount of wine we made was so small that the bugger is longer then the carboy was deep, so we couldn't use it. We plan to do at least 5 gallon batches in the future, though, so it will come in handy then.
I made a mini beer kit once, lots of fun! It took just about 5 weeks from start to finish. And it was gone in a day. I get the whole instant gratification idea, but I like wine so much more than beer that it's worth the wait.
Besides, if you do like a friend of mine (mead maker) and make up a batch once a month, soon you'll be up to your elbows in the stuff even though it takes a year ;D
A lot of the winemakers around here are getting those alcohol levels (11-14%) with the yeast. (we ask this kind of stuff when we go to wineries. Half the time they look at us like we're aliens, and the other half the time they think it's cool we know enough to ask :D It really changes the flavor of the wine to fortify it, so decent winemakers don't usually do it.
Oh, well la ti da for those how don't drink out of the bottle wrapped in a paper bag. :)
Kidding of, course. But I've seen even supposedly decent (depend on definition and wallet) wines that were fortified and/or contained sulfites (also cheating).
I may do mead this year, although it takes a hell of a lot of honey. I'm very (very, very) low tech. I've done plenty of brewing in a garbage bag inside a bucket.
Hey-the sulfutes are usually added to stabilize and sterilize. We added some sulfites, but just a little. That doesn't affect the flavor the way that filtering or fortifying will...
Yeah, a five gallon batch takes what, 15-18lbs of honey? Sheesh. Wine's cheaper. Of course, beer's even cheaper...
Well. . . You can always just keep bees. :)
And yes, beer is much cheaper, especially if you go all dinky and do all grains and make you're own malt. (barley approx. 4.15 a bushel or so. I think. . .)
And aren't sulfites also added to give the wine a better viscosity so it does the little cling to glass thingy when swirled? (personally, I think one can look at wine too much, but I suppose if I ever bought a $100 bottle, I'd want to do something to make it take longer to drink it. . .)
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