Making wine from a kit

[mvscal]

You'll be sorry....

[Trampis]

They mix alfalfa with water and BENTONITE to make hay cubes you know. So, when...excuse me... IF ...your wine tastes like shit you can let your horse drink it.

[Mikey]

Grape juice concentrate?
Oak chips?
$12 - $15 bottle?

Yeah, it should come out tasting like a fine California varietal.


You'd better be happy if it comes out as good a two buck Chuck.

[R-Jack]

Not wine, but my brother has made homebrew beer a major hobby in the last year.

He is now officially insufferable at parties.

[R-Jack]

Did I say brother in law?

Dins is not my brother. Men in my family keep their hair past 30.

[LTS TRN 2]

'Well, you've obviously been drinking quite a bit of it lately, cuz you are one drunk a-hole. Time to go home and sleep it off!

[Goober McTuber]

At least my wife isn't fucking the mailman.

Yet.

[indyfrisco]

I've done a ton of homebrew. See my keg-o-rator.



Well, that fridge shit the bed this winter. I took all my tap equipment off the fucker and am saving it for when I pick back up the hobby.

Anyhow, I got into homebrew in college. I have a shit-ton of equipment still that has gathered dust over the past 6 years. I was homebrewing a lot when I lived in Texas. Since moving to Indiana and having kids, not so much. I am dying to get back into the hobby though. As for wine, I never made a grape wine, but I did make quite a few batches of mead. I made a peach mead (didn’t turn out too good) and I made about 5 batches of strawberry mead.

The strawberry mead turned out very good. The alcohol content was around 16%. I thought it would have had more of a strawberry flavor. If you didn’t know I put strawberries in it, you would not have been able to guess what I used probably. It was a very good sipping wine…err…mead though and tasted great chilled. At the time, I thought it was worth it. Looking back on it, I agree with Jsc’s take that wine is too readily available at a good price to mess with making your own.

Now, if I were able to mass produce it and “keep it going”, I think it would be worth it. I just don’t think spending a year making 2 cases is worth it.

Beer…on the other hand…is worth every bit of effort to homebrew simply because of the turnaround time. As you see in my pic above, I always had 3 kegs of beer and 1 keg of root beer on tap (once you put root beer in a keg, that keg is useless for anything else ever again). While I would drink the beer out of those 3 kegs, I would have 3 carboys going with the next batch. I scored a big CO2 tank off a buddy who was throwing it away. Just had to go to the fire station to get it filled. So, I could brew 3 batches of beer in 3-4 weeks, siphon the beer into the cleaned kegs, carbonate the beer in 20 minutes with the CO2 tank and be drinking it the next day. 15 gallons of beer would last the 3-4 weeks until the next batch was ready.

[Dinsdale]

Thanks for the love, everyone.

Since I am actually the "Assistant Winemaker" of a small U&L winery (OK, it's an unpaid position, save for a shitload of high-end wine, and I'm rarely involved with production decisions -- just gruntwork... we'll call it an "apprenticeship").


To make something to get drunk on -- you should be fine.

If you want to make good wine, there's quite a bit more to it than that.

I see no mention of any sort of monitoring of the pH, or starting ML (malolactic fermentation). These things are pretty freaking crucial.

And IMO, any kit that has you adding the oak (there's nothing wrong with using oak chips in place of barrel-aging on a small scale, and we often/usually add oak chips to supplement the oaking æffect, since buying new barrels every year or two is cost-prohibitive). But adding oak during the ferment is probably not the best idea -- the oak comes into play after the ferment is racked.


As a general rule, you want to make sure both the Brix (essentailly the % of sugar in the juice solution, almost interchangeable with percentage) and pH are where they need to be. It varies with different varietals grown in different places, but as a general rule, reds go about pH around 3.6, give or take (whites are lower). Depending on the fruit/juice (which is a whole nother ball of wax, which I'll go all Dinsdale on), it often takes the addition of acid to drop the pH (tartaric acid is added). If the sugars are too low (for a big red like cab, 25-28% is ideal, probably get away with just a hair less in merlot), then our friend at C&H have the answer.


We won't even get into VA (volatile acidity).


While you can certainly make a red from concentrate, it's never going to be the same as what comes from a winery. The fundamental difference between a red and a white (besides the Marcus Allenesque obvious one), is that white wine is made from grape juice, red is made from grapes. While I assume they did a nice job concentrating the grapes, much of what makes red red, is from fermenting whole berries, which leads to a much, much deeper extraction. Just about all of the red pigment is in the skins (red juice is almost clear), and the extraction comes from the actual fermentation of the skins -- without that, mouthfeel will probably be lacking, and the tannins might not balance the alcohol and residuals, which is a huge factor in the difference between "good" wine and "bad" wine.


Also, ML is important.

Malic acid in wine = bad. Lactic acid = not so bad. I'm not sure if your kit addresses this. Generally, ML is a secondary reaction after the initial ferment, and usually requires inoculation of lactic acid bacteria, which is best done just as the ferment finishes (since the goo is still somewhat warm from the yeast's biological reaction, which gets it going good).

And also, very important -- make sure the area you're fermenting in starts out clean. Contrary to popular belief, wine can sit around for a thousand years and not "turn to vinegar." Vinegar comes from acetobacter eating ethanol, and shitting out acetic acid. If there's no acetobacter present, there's no acetic acid. The problem being, that like yeast, acetobacter is everywhere in the environment. Cleanliness at the onset usually prevents a problem. Show me a bottle of wine with acetic acid, and I'll show you a dirty winery that it came from -- keep that crush pad and floor clean.


But, all that said, in your case... why the fuck not?


Have fun with it, and enjoy.


And maybe this fall, Dinsdale Vineyards might actually get a decent crop. Should have at least 10 vines producing this year, although they're terribly inappropriate for the local climate (although it's small enough we can "cheat" and manipulate some factors). This past fall, the first with any fruit, was a joke -- but it was the worst year for grape growing in the interior vallies maybe ever.


88, feel free to ask any questions, and if I can't rattle them off, I can defer to someone with a fancy-schmancy college degree... who just plunked down a 91 in Wine Spectator*, which has resulted in HUUUUUUGE cred, and a subsequent boost in sales (which will expedite my full-time position opening up).


* - Wine Spectator is pretty good -- Wine Enthusiast is good for use as backup toilet paper (but not as bad as Wine Advocate).

[Goober McTuber]

after the ferment is racked.

Jim Rome would be so proud.

[Dinsdale]

after the ferment is racked.

Jim Rome would be so proud.

There are similarities with barrel racking and the modern Jim Rome Show -- both involve large amounts of sucking.

[Dinsdale]

Do that, 88.

Maybe one of these days, I'll join the Modern Age and get a digital camera, and haul it out to the winery.

But in your pursuit, remember the Golden Rule of Winemaking -- it takes a lot of cheap beer to make expensive wine.

And in the shared facility my almost-employer (and old, close buddy) occupies, a quick check of the fridge verifies this (although none of the other outfits producing in the facility are putting up a 91, motherfuckers... and the next vintage is better... could cheat, and submit vintages a year behind, but since that's not what's out there for sale, it's frowned upon, but would get us a couple of extra points... someday, production will get doubled-up for a year, allowing to get another year in the bottle before release, but for now, if a storeponies up the cayshe, they can buy whatever is there... profitability leads to better wine over time). A building of our own is coming soon (have most of the equipment, but Oregon requires 14,000 permits and the associated processing fees, so it's easier to rent space for now, although also cost-prohibitive -- makes it tough to put out a cheap white swiller-wine).


And with a private building, it probably wouldn't be too tough to make beer by the kegload (which becomes a much better product in an industrial alcohol producing facility -- what with a lab and whatnot). Beer is child's play compared to wine... way less variables.


Again, have fun. People have been doing the shit for 4000 years. Although with the advent of modern microbiology, things have come a loooooong way in the last 100 years. Can't be any worse than Chuck (although someone (probably the POS Chuck) has some new Double Dog Dare label, or some shit like that... which makes Chuck look high-end).

[Goober McTuber]

Making wine from a kit

Isn’t “kit” a slang term for female genitalia? Good luck with your Vagina Sauvignon.

(The word "Sauvignon" is believed to be derived from the French sauvage meaning "wild").

Or maybe you're going for a Pussy Fuisse.

[Dinsdale]

Dins-

You would probably enjoy this flick:

http://www.bloodintowine.com/

It is a documentary about the winery that Maynard James Keenan (the band: Tool) started in Arizona a few years back.

I'll keep an eye out for it -- love that sort of shit.

I wonder if he's in cahoot with Erath? They're a big Oregon winery (in the primo Dundee appelation), and a few years ago, they bought some land and planted about 300-400 acres of grapes in AZ -- which at the time quadrupled the total vineyard area of the state.

While growing appropriate grapes in any area is aces in my book, Arizona is probably going to end up a non-factor -- way too hot, and way too little water... although careful placement and a water supply might work miracles. Kinda like folks in Texas think they can produce swill wine. West of the Rockies is The Place (although New York seems to crank out cold weather varietals fairly nicely).

His vineyard is Merkin. Google that word and have a laugh.

I did, and I did.

[Dinsdale]

My father-in-law owns some acreage (~3) on an island in Lake Erie that has a federal viticultural designation, which is apparently hot shit to some people.

An AVA appelation means one of two things -- either a region has produced quality grapes for some time, or, as often as not, spent the right money and kissed the right ass.

People have been growing grapes on the island for more than 200 years.

The oldest vines on earth are in the USA, with very few exceptions (I could go into a very Dinsdalian explanation why, if anyone cares).

The best grapes that come off the island are pinot grigio.

First... piss off [/Oregon homer]. In Oregon, we use the French names almost exclusively (where applicable), and leave the Italian names for the swill they grow in the Central Valley, CA.

It's Pinot Gris -- which grows like a mofo around here -- maybe being in the middle of the lake might be a little Burgundy-esque, but seems like it would be too humid, and wouldn't get enough cooling at night (then again, I have no idea what the average humidity is in summer/fall there, nor do I know the average overnight low -- I do know winter comes awfully early there, and Gris likes to hang as much as the next grape).

Gris is the only white offering from the winery I associate with-BTW. More of an opportunity thing than anything else, since "we" make gris for a small vineyard owner (which is right in the hills of Portland, on a quite booyah spread -- 2 acres of gris makes a fine landscaping job) -- if we're making some, might as well make a bunch and sell some (and some tools will pay $12 for a fine gris).

Gris is an interesting grape -- it has two different sets of DNA... and there's a word for that... that I can't think of.

And I do not know how good they are. Post-prohibition, the grapes were mostly used by Paramount Distillers to make syrupy-sweet high alcohol swill.

Only way to get really high alcohol out of gris is to let them raisin up on the vine... although I've recently seen some gris pushing 15%, which is pretty high. But there's very few grapes that are going to get near the "kill zone," which yields about 17% -- zinfandel probably being the best bet to yeast-kill (yeast dies at about 17%, any sugars beyond that remain as residual sugar)... unless said zinfandel comes from the Dinsdale Estate (and if I mentioned where the cuttings for the zin came from, you'd be quite familiar with the name, and probably chuckle -- possibly the most famous vineyard in Napa).

We have been kicking around the idea of putting in an acre or so. That will be a big project. Maybe some day when my kids are grown.

Planting the vines is easy -- building the trellis/hanging the wire, and keeping the vines pruned, then keeping the birds off is where the pain-in-the-ass kicks in. I'm guessing Trampis probably knows some grape growers, since that's a massive industry in his redneck-of-the-woods. Plus, doesn't it rain quite a bit in summer in the Lake Erie area? Rains during the late part of ripening will fuck the fruit to all hell, which is rarely a problem on the Left Coast.

And speaking of Dinsdale Vineyards at the Dinsdale Estate -- by this time last year, buds were swelling right the hell up, and they broke within a couple of weeks (very early, and friends in Cali said even their zin hadn't budbroke yet). This year, that warmass February didn't come, and the buds look no different from a month ago... little more in line with "normal." Got some Cab, and that was "normal" last year, hopefully stays that way.


I guess I don't talk about it that much on here, since it's "real life," rather than Internet Fantasyland, but if you hadn't noticed -- I'm pretty into this shit. And I live in a cool place for it, too.

[Derron]

Planting the vines is easy -- building the trellis/hanging the wire, and keeping the vines pruned, then keeping the birds off is where the pain-in-the-ass kicks in.

You have the definite upper hand in the wine side of it, and you know the relationship of the soil/weather to the variety..it is some pretty cool shit. Growing grape seems like it would be fun. I have been around the fringes over the years, it is different growth strategy versus a monoculture agriculture crop.

And speaking of Dinsdale Vineyards at the Dinsdale Estate -- by this time last year, buds were swelling right the hell up, and they broke within a couple of weeks (very early, and friends in Cali said even their zin hadn't budbroke yet). This year, that warmass February didn't come, and the buds look no different from a month ago... little more in line with "normal." Got some Cab, and that was "normal" last year, hopefully stays that way.

Wine honks..take careful note of this observation. If the fall weather holds for harvest, this will make the 2011 crush pretty damn good. The lack of that warm February week, has always helped the wine that year.(sup 08)

I guess I don't talk about it that much on here, since it's "real life," rather than Internet Fantasyland, but if you hadn't noticed -- I'm pretty into this shit. And I live in a cool place for it, too.

[/quote]

Your post above on wine making was very interesting...for a growing type guy like me, who feels we did the job if we got the grapes grown and from the field to the crush..and then really does not know much else after that..it help me understand a bit more of the growing side. Even with probably 500 acres within 2 miles of the crib too..live down the road from one of the largest organic wineries in the country--Montinore Vineyards.

[Mikey]

We actually made wine as a project in my AP Chemistry class as a HS senior. This was the Bay Area in the early 70s, remember.

Our teacher, who wanted to be called "Ron", had long hair and a tendency toward leather fringe jackets and "granny" glasses. He came to school the first day of class with a VW van full of grapes, and an old wooden wine press. We put up about 4 or 5 of those five gallon Sparklets water bottles (they were glass back then) of California Zinfandel. It was actually a pretty good project as we had to daily monitor the ph and specific gravity. On the last day of class we each brought an empty wine bottle and got to take a full one home. Well, mine didn't actually make it home.

We also set up a glass distillation system (also known as a "still") in the lab to see if we could make some brandy. We took about a quart of wine and distilled it multiple times to get a small amount of about 190 proof alcohol.

Good times.

[Dinsdale]

No doubt. But here is what I'm talking about:

http://www.samcooks.com/america%E2%80%9 ... pellation/

Cool and informative.

And I agree with his take on Cabernet franc. That is huge in New York. But I don't like it.

Oh dude -- a big fat Franc will rip your face off. But it's pretty touchy about where it grows.

BTW- Cab Sauv is a cross of Cab Franc (deep red) and Cab Blanc (white) -- the red usually dominates. But Pinot Gris stays white, and gets "tinted" (kinda has red streaks)... ponderous. And for a more humid climate, Cab ain't a bad choice, since the berries are small and it makes them less mildew-prone with more airflow.

That is the biggest problem at North Bass. It is a motherfucker to get there. You either have to have good weather and take a boat or fly in a puddle jumper. Both are a pain in the ass. But I love it over there. If you had a dollar and all day to find a place to spend it over there, at the end of the day, you'd still have your dollar. Very primitive.

Sounds like some ridiculously expensive grapes (to the point of humorous by Left Coast standards), but if it's the nicest appellation for many-a-mile, then fuck it -- grow grapes and enjoy your time there. Some places just grow good grapes, despite the odds -- this sounds like such a place. Although the Brix they touted (although 27 or whatever in a great year ain't messing around, and 22-23'll work) was a little short, sometime the terroir makes up for some lacking/excessive heat/humidity.

BTWBTW - the stretch between the coasts of the Northeastern US to your area in Ohio have(had) the most varietals and most dense growth of native grapes in the world. Was no small factor in people wanting to move to the New World, when they were told "grapes grow like weeds there," or some such shit... mankind has always wanted to get his drink on. Most of them make shitty wine, but the USA rules for growing grapes. And the oldest harvested grape vine in the world is American.

[Dinsdale]

It is a documentary about the winery that Maynard James Keenan (the band: Tool) started in Arizona a few years back.

Made it about halfway through last night.

It's cool that he sees himself as some sort of pioneer/visionary.

And I don't think it will work. Too damned hot, and too damned cold.

I have advice for someone who has replanted the same vineyard 4 times in ~10 years... stop planting there.

I think they're trying to work at much too high an elevation to pull it off. But any failures don't seem to be for lack of throwing huge money at the problem. They cited a cost of $35,000 per acre, which is over double most other places. And if he's getting frost kill on a regular basis, he better be getting a million bucks a bottle, and therein lies the rub -- if the name Maynard wasn't associated with it, I doubt people would pay that high a premium, when you can get 90+ scoring wines for <$25 (unless they say "Napa Valley" on them).

But what the heck -- maybe he'll do OK, and a high tide raises all the boats.

[Dinsdale]

The second half of the flick, if I remember correctly, identifies a problem in the vineyard had nothing to do with frost. I won't blow it for you. But it is funny, in a way.

I got to the part where they bitched about the losses to the pigs.

Lots of animals problems here, but pigs aren't one of them.

Deer and elk can do up a vineyard in a bug hurry, and you can't swing a dead cat around here without hitting one.

Agricultural enterprises can get a permit pretty easily that allows them to shoot just about anything that comes into the fields, but it becomes a pain in the ass in and of itself -- you have to get rid of the dead ones (although I guess you're supposed to turn them in to the state (to feed prisoners, I guess), but no one seems to do that.


I may or may not have seen some deer get tossed into a gully before.

Saw a really cool redtail hawk get tangled in the bird-netting -- Audibon Society came and got him, fixed him up, and brought him back -- hawks are a vineyard manager's friend -- other birds tend to stay away from them, and hawks don't eat the berries.

Saw a massive cow elk get annoyed that it was being shooed from a vineyard, and after a drawn-out cat-and-mouse game between man-on-ATV and 1200 pound beast, fucker just started ripping down trellis. One heard of elk can tale out acres a day. They just strip the vines down to nothing.

I suppose if you're in the right area, a person could leave a deer/elk carcass in the field, and make sure the coyotes stay fed, which should keep some of the other critters away... except the birds.

[Dinsdale]

So join me in raising a glass: To Pete, it was wicked while it lasted

I'll wait until I can raise my penis to piss on his fucking grave.

Like a few big-name U&L pioneers, he really didn't give a fuck, and sold out at the first chance he got, furthering the Corporatist agenda in this country, which really can't take much more corporatism.


Fuck him and the horse he rode in on.


I won't ever buy any cottage industry product that's been sold to a large corporation.

[smackaholic]

So join me in raising a glass: To Pete, it was wicked while it lasted

I'll wait until I can raise my penis to piss on his fucking grave.

Like a few big-name U&L pioneers, he really didn't give a fuck, and sold out at the first chance he got, furthering the Corporatist agenda in this country, which really can't take much more corporatism.


Fuck him and the horse he rode in on.


I won't ever buy any cottage industry product that's been sold to a large corporation.

why do you hate freedom and capitalism. dude sold some of his private property of his own free will. you might do the same in his shoes. his fukking job is not to keep you in pete's wicked.

i do agree with about the not supporting small companies that get eaten by big ones, simply because, as a rule, they immediately fukk it up with their bean counters and "industry experts".

our local micro, thomas hooker is owned by a friend of my sister and bro-in-laws. it's been getting pretty good run these last few years as "connecticut's beer" and they have just added onto their brewery. if AB comes along and jams a few million dollars up his ass for it, i will be happy for him. prolly never drink it again though, which would be a shame as the few munich style lagers i had on tap at an overpriced yuppie bar in west hartford about a year ago was, without a doubt, the best fukking beer i have ever tasted. i think i may have to give the home beer thing a shot. i have the perfect beer cellar in my basement. it is basically a concrete walled closet that is bumped off the basement. the roof of it is my front stoop. i think the dude that built the house meant it as a fallout shelter as it was built in '58.

[smackaholic]

I'll just leave this here. Obama as beer-brewer-in-chief

my guess is this is as fake as everything else he does. dude broke out the bud light at the "beer summit". this pretty much proves that he doesn't even like beer, much less brew it himself.

[ADAM]

I'm not much of a wine drinker but my cousin in prison...

..
Perhaps the "Pre-Sun" red ?

I'm sure I can get you the specs for it....


I'll stick with Jim Beam.

[Goober McTuber]

Too much carbon dioxide? You might want to call Al Gore.

[mvscal]

Dins, my go-to wine expert, I have a small problem. I went to bottle my cabernet/merlot kit wine tonight and, before doing so, made a taste test just to be sure I wasn't wasting time bottling vinegar. The wine had a better than expected nose. But when I tasted it, it had a hint of carbonation. You could tell that there was carbon dioxide in the wine if you let it sit on your palate. It wasn't fizzy. But you could tell there was something there. We let a glass of it swirl around for a few seconds and then tried it later and there was less hint of it. Actually, it doesn't suck nearly as bad as I was assuming it would. I read where you can stir the shit out of the wine to get it degass. We stirred it up and put the airlock back on. But my gut tells me that isn't really going to get the job done. What would you do to get a hint of carbon dioxide out of 23 liters of otherwise fairly acceptable table wine?

Are you sure your fermentation is complete?

[mvscal]

On the other hand, you could just go with it.

[BSmack]

The idea that makes the most sense to me is to pull a slight vacuum on the carboy.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Reeks of the gay.

[Imus]

mechanical whips

~ swoon ~

sig

AP

[Dinsdale]

CO2 in solution isn't a problem in winery-made wines, since reds sit in barrels for about 18 months, by which point the CO2 is all but gone, then by the time it goes through a bunch of pumps and filters and bottling lines, it's never a factor.

But that's not what you're doing. I'd say pulling a vacuum should get it done. And since you're familiar with chemistry, you're well-aware that the warmer the liquid, the less CO2 can be held in solution. In fact, you might try moving the carboy to awarmer place for a couple of days and see what happens, and maybe rack it off while it's a little warmer.

Having the CO2 in there in the first place was a good thing. If the airspace is occupied by CO2, then it's not occupied by oxygen, which promotes the growth of funky things. But getting it out of there becomes the tricky part. Use the vacuum after trying the other methods, since a vacuum will also pull the sulpher compounds out as well (although probably noit as readily), and the sulphites keep the wine stable in the bottle, and prevent oxidization.

So yeah -- try warming it up a little, then stirring it. You're always going to get a little tiny bit of carbonation, but you shouldn't see any foam after pouring a glass or racking it or whatever.

[smackaholic]

The idea that makes the most sense to me is to pull a slight vacuum on the carboy.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Reeks of the gay.

my gaydar must be on the blink. not sure how i read that without noticing it.

[smackaholic]

We bottled the cab/merlot tonight. The CO2 dissipated during the past week. Barely noticeable now. We got 30 bottles. The stuff looks great. I'm still expecting it to taste like shit. But so far, so good. I opted for plastic screw-on caps rather than corks. Seemed easier.

We racked the chard from the primary fermenter into the carboy. That will sit for 10 days or so before the next racking.

Rack wine making and getting to say "racking" without the word "trolls" once in a while.

So, did you ever hook the carboy up with that slight vacuum pull you were promising him?

[Dinsdale]

Well, now that you're done, I got some expert consultation (and drunken idiot old buddy is truly an expert amongst experts).

He seemed to think the CO2 buildup was because ML (see my post from way back) wasn't complete, and gussed that it wasdue to a low temp -- said the ML ferment (which occurs after primary ferment, and the kit setup doesn't allow nearly enough time for a proper secondary) wasn't compelte -- and the advice was, to move it to a warmer sordid clambake and let it go (Dins ain't as dumb as he come across). ML like 60+ degrees to kick in, and doesn't start until the primary is cotomplete.

Sounds like it worked itself out.


Welcome to the club, 88 -- enjoy your new lifelong obsession... and no, it won't go away -- you're one of us now.


We'll get into sparging you bottles, sulphuring stuff up, and all sorts of crazy shit soon.

[Trampis]

Rack 88!

Funny post, thanks for the laugh and good luck with your next? batch.