Wine Finishing

Usually I've already bottled the grape wine by this time of year, but since I was 9 months pregnant when the wine should have been bottled, I put it off till now.

Thankfully, the extra time in the fermenter didn't seem to have affected it.  Unfortunately the strawberry wine didn't turn out, but I suspect that was more due to the fact that the fruit was over ripe when I mixed it than the delayed bottling period.

This year I didn't have any red wine.  I can't remember why I didn't make any.  Pregnancy brain perhaps?  Oh well, at least I was able to bottle a very tasty 36 bottles of white grape!

Bottling the wine takes me about two hours, because I have to ensure the jars are sanitized (if I'm using donated bottles from a restaurant, there are labels to scrub off and some times metal rings to remove), then I have to fill the jars, add the corks, put on the heat shrink tops, and then affix the labels.  The latter two things are time consuming, but I like the bit of pizzaz they add to the finished look.

 At least once I've finished I have something tasty to look forward to!

 

(If you're interested in how I make home made wine, I have a tutorial which you can view here)

Home-Made Wine (Part 2)

(If you missed Part 1 of my scintillating tutorial of making wine at home, click here.)

Hello! We are now in the month of May or June, and ready to bottle our wine that has been sitting and patiently brewing in the basement for the past several months.

(Yes, I realize that it's really only October and I have the entire onslaught of winter in the Frigid North to reckon with, but I'm ignoring that and pretending that winter is already over. It's the Power of Positive Thinking. Or delusion. You pick.)

Have your Handyman or Resident Serf drag the bucket of wine up from the depths of the basement where it's been slumbering gently in blissful repose. Open the lid, and get a nice whiff, enjoying the heady moment of anticipation, knowing that either your months of hard work are going to result in a delicious, satisfying beverage, or a mouthful of sour vinegar that will make you hate the world in general. Gird up the loins of your courage, and taste.

Don't panic, it usually tastes a bit bitter on first sip. (It will still taste bitter on second sip, so don't try sipping more in hopes that it will taste better. It won't, although after about 20 sips you will no longer care much.) Add about 2-4 cups of Wine Conditioner. This is a type of sweetener that won't reactivate the yeast.
I'd start with only a cup or two, taste, and then add more if necessary. You might prefer your wine very sweet, so you'd add more, or a bit dry, so you'd add less. Regardless, you can always add more, but you can't take it out, so go slowly. (Besides, if you only add a bit at a time, that means you have to sip more to taste. Consider it a bonus.)

At this point I'd like to wax eloquent on the interesting effect of wine sweetener. Even if you only add a small amount, it changes the brew from something that tastes cheap into a wonderful heady bouquet. It's definitely worth the $7 investment.

Now you need your bottles. Five gallons of wine will require anywhere from 15 - 18 regular sized bottles. You can, of course, purchase new bottles from several online sites or a brewery supply store, but I'm frugal (*cough cough* cheap) so I get mine free from a local restaurant. Just call any restaurant that serves wine and ask them to save their empty bottles for you and give you a call when they've got a box full. Drop hints like "recycling" and "hobby project" and they'll likely be more than willing to oblige. Most restaurants don't recycle their bottles anyway, so you can feel like you're doing the environment some good and your pocket book some good at the same time.Wash the bottles very well in a solution of vinegar and water or bleach and water. It's important to ensure the bottles are free from bacteria or mold, so purchasing a bottle brush specifically for wine bottles is a good idea. They're not that expensive, and you'd hate for all your hard work to be spoiled at the end.
Scrub off any labels with a good scrubby pad or use a razor blade to scrape them off first. I usually just use the razor blade, since that's faster and easier. Definitely use a razor blade holder, because water + razor + slippery bottles = not good.

Okay, time to bottle!
My primary fermenter comes with a wonderful spigot which makes bottling a cinch, but if yours doesn't you'll need to use a siphon. (Click here for siphoning instructions). Don't be disheartened. Think of siphoning as an interesting science experiment in which you get to bathe in wine. As of yet I've never quite managed to work a siphon without it making a rather unsightly mess, but you're no doubt cleverer and more adept than I. I'll stick to my spigot.

Bottle up all the wine from the primary, except the last inch or so which you'll need to discard since it most likely is cloudy and has bits of dead yeast floating in it. (Note, if you're using a siphon tube, don't siphon the wine from the bottom of the bucket or you'll end up siphoning all that icky stuff straight into your bottles.) You'll notice that my spigot is located about 2 inches above the bottom of the bucket, so I don't have to worry about that (said with smug look).

Cork the bottles however you wish. You can purchase a wine corker, which is just corky (pardon the pun), or use these nice little capped corks that I personally prefer for their ease of use and dependability. I've tried the plastic corks, but those don't seem to fit as snugly as these do. An added bonus is that you don't need to use a corkscrew to get them off later (meaning you don't have to beg your Handyman or Resident Serf to help you, hence tipping him off that you're drinking wine. Again.)
I wouldn't recommend re-using any corks except the (not recommended) plastic types, since bacteria or mold might have lodged into the crevices of the corks and reemerge later into your wine causing it to spoil. Whichever corks you end up choosing, make sure that they fit snugly, since any air that gets into the wine will cause the wine to sour.

At this point you can be done with the bottling process, but I figure that I've gone to all those months of work, why not make your bottles look suitably impressive? Wine likes to get dressed up, after all!

I buy wine bottle capsules for all my wines. If you used a wide or thick cork that overhangs the bottle, the bottle capsules won't fit over the top, so keep that in mind when you make your cork choices. Capsules come in all different colors, but I prefer the rose.
Boil water on the stove, making sure it's at least 4 inches deep. (Make sure you're wearing rubber gloves, since the boiling water might splash your wrists.) Using a rubber band to hold the capsule onto the bottle end (usually included with the capsules, but any ol' rubber band will do), tip the bottle top into the boiling water. Make sure you have some suitably appropriate swear words handy if the rubber band should slip off, splashing you in the face. I would suggest my favorites of "Oh Botheration" (from Winnie the Pooh) or "Dag Nab-it".
The heat will cause the capsule to automatically shrink to fit the bottle in a nice snug sexy black dress sort of way.
Looks rather professional, doesn't it?!

Finally affix your labels to the now dried bottles. You can purchase pre-made labels from wine supply stores, but so far I've never really seen any that I thought looked original or interesting. I don't live in France (something I'm painfully aware of in the Frigid North), so I don't care for fluffy frou-frou labels. It's up to you. (Yes, I realize this is not Grape. I just finished bottling up a batch of Rhubarb Wine and this is what I had handy. Use your imagination.)

My labels I cobble together with my 2001 Printshop and Microsoft Word. Then, I take my copy to the local copy store and have them color copy the labels onto card stock paper. I don't like to print out all the labels on my own printer, because residential use printers use ink that runs when wet, and let's face it, your labels will probably come into some contact with wet liquid somewhere along the way. You can have the copier print onto real label paper, but my local Staples is weird about using label paper in their machines, so I just print it out onto a nice card stock and tape them to the bottles with double sided tape. It's a bit of work, but I find it really adds to the showmanship of the bottle (plus it's cheaper, and I like cheap.)

Don't forget to add the year the wine was bottled onto your label, in the extremely rare off-chance that it might last more than one year and you might have more than one year of wine down in your cellar!
Now you're done! There's not really any need to store the bottles sideways, and I wouldn't recommend it since they're more prone to breaking that way unless you've got a real wine rack.

One thing I'd like to mention here is that one benefit of making home made wine is not only the delicious taste, smug superiority, and cost effective nature, but also the health benefits. Home made wine doesn't have any sulphates added into it, something that can cause migraines in a lot of people. Wines sold commercially in the United States are required to have sulphates added to it for "safety reasons", which I think is ridiculous since European wines don't have this additive. I've noticed on the rare occasions when I've had commercial store-bought wine that the wine tasted slightly salty to me, a result of the sulphates being added.

(Of course, if you get a headache from drinking too much wine, that's your own fault and you deserve your headache.)

Home-Made Wine (Part 1)

I've written in the past a little bit about my home made wines, but I realized that I've never written up a tutorial, and since I have a friend who is embarking on her own journey of grapes and fermentation, I figured it was about time.

- and no, my process does not involve feet and stomping. Sorry to disappoint you.

(If you make wine yourself and have any tips you'd like to share, I'd love to hear them!)

Let's break out the brew, shall we?

First of all, you need your grapes/fruit/juice. For purposes of this tutorial I'm going to stick with my personal recipe for Concord Grape wine, but a lot of the steps are the same for any other brew. I've made Apple, Rhubarb, and even Lilac wines, and there's nothing really that's much different except for perhaps the ingredients needed. Also, my amounts are enough to make 5 gallons of wine, so make sure your bucket has that capacity if you're using my exact recipe.

Get a nice sturdy mesh laundry bag, and fill it with enough plucked/washed grapes to almost fill your primary fermenter. This should be approximately 30 pounds.

Did I mention what a primary fermenter was? Whoops, sorry! This is what mine looks like, which I purchased several years ago from E. C. Kraus. I really like their website for their fast and free shipping.
Notice that my handy-dandy little 6 gallon bucket has a spigot on the bottom and an opening on top for the air release valve. Sometimes if you purchase a kit, yours might come with a plain bucket (still called the primary fermenter) and a pretty glass carboy called a secondary fermenter. I like mine because it functions as both primary and secondary fermenters (which equals less storage space used up, which equals more room for more wine, hee hee!).

Into your empty primary fermenter, dump 16 1/4 cups of sugar.
Let me assure you that the sugar is necessary, not for sweetening the wine, but for giving the yeast something with which to party. Sugar is an essential component in the process of alcoholic fermentation, in which yeast metabolizes sugar into ethanol (alcohol) and carbon dioxide. Basically that's a nice way of stating that the yeast eats the sugar, and then (ahem) poops out the alcohol and carbon dioxide.

I'll give you a moment for the shock to wear off.

Shall we continue?

Next add 2 1/2 teaspoons of pectic enzyme. Please note that this must be kept refrigerated, so as soon as you purchase this stuff, put it in the refrigerator right away, or your purchase will be useless. You probably won't need the whole bottle, but it stores for a long time anyway, so hang on to it.
Then you'll need 5 Campden tablets. Just take out the necessary amount and chuck 'em into the primary with careless and wild abandon.
At this point you will also add 5 teaspoons of yeast nutrient, for which I embarrasingly forgot to take a photo, so I'm just stealing a stock photo from E. C. Kraus. I don't feel too badly about that, because I've plunked down enough money in the past to justify my photo stealing and I just gave them free advertisement. (Just don't tell them, okay? It'll be our little secret.)

Okay, so now that you have your sugar, pectic enzyme, campden tablets, and yeast nutrient in the primary, add about a gallon of water and stir it all up. Get your hips moving as you stir to make this more exciting. Something along the lines of the Nessun Dorma might help. My wine prefers opera, but yours might be less discerning, so I might suggest the Beegees.

Place your laundry bag of grapes into the primary, and then fill the bucket to about two inches from the top with water. Cover with your handy-dandy lid, and let it sit for a day.

(A day passes).

Good morning! Here we are again with our friend Wine-to-Be. Wine-to-Be is lonely and needs a friend named Yeast. Now, you can just go ahead and add five teaspoons of bread yeast, but I'd recommend spending the $5 and getting real wine yeast. Bread yeast is like inviting over the football squad, while wine yeast is more like having over the chess team. Brawn versus Brains.

Remember what I said earlier about the sugar partying with the yeast? Keep that in mind when you choose your yeasts. If you were on vacation and had a basement full of alcohol (in this case, the sugar), who would you rather have over to your house, the football squad yeast or the chess team yeast?

I thought so.

Add your yeast (just one package of wine yeast is enough for 5 gallons), mix it in well with the sugar/water solution, and give the bag of grapes a mighty and affectionate squeeze. Place the entire primary into a black plastic trash bag, and stand back until the next morning.

(If you rather unwisely chose to ignore my warnings about Football Squad Yeast, you had better make VERY sure your primary is in a good plastic trash bag, because no matter how tightly your lid is screwed on, the party going on in the primary will seep out all. over. the. place. for. several. days.)

Again mix the sugar/water solution and squeeze the grapes. Don't worry, grapes are gregarious fruits and don't mind close contact.

Keep up the mixing and squeezing for 5 -6 days. At this point, your huge bag of grapes should have shrunken to about the size of a basketball, since the juices have been extracted. If your grapes still have a lot of juice in them, you have a few options. Option 1: lift weights so that you don't have puny biceps or Option 2: just keep squeezing every day until they're completely smooshed. Yes, that's a real word. Trust me.

(Said with smug look) Handyman does the smooshing for me, so it only takes a few days. What can I say, he's Handy!
Once the grapes are completely smooshed, remove the bag and fill the primary the rest of the way with water so that you have a nearly full 5 gallon bucket. Firmly place the lid back on, and double check that your air lock valve is correctly placed. Put your primary into a nice dark location (not too cold because yeast isn't happy if it's too cold) and let it sit for about two months.

(If you have little kids as I do, hide the air lock under something, or they'll be tempted to pull off the air lock valve, reducing your wonderful Wine-to Be into Vinegar-of-Tears).

In two months, siphon the wine into a clean container. (I use my stock or soup pots). On the bottom of your primary will be lots of crusty purple stuff. This is dead yeast, which is not so yummy to drink. Clean all that stuff out of the primary, hold a short funeral, and pour your wine back into the primary. Cover and let it sit for another two months.

Continue doing this two-month stage of siphoning, cleaning, and pouring back into the primary until the wine is nice and clear, and there's no more dead yeast on the bottom of the primary. This can take up to 7 months, depending on your yeast and the sweetness of the grapes. Don't be impatient, because if you bottle your wine too soon, you'll have active yeast in the bottles, which will create mini explosions when you open the wine and dead yeast floating on the bottom. This is not appealing.

Again, the time it takes for the wine to "clear" really depends on the personality of the yeast and grapes along with the temperature of the room the wine is stored in. My wine prefers opera, so it's in no hurry to finish up. Warmer temps make the yeast more active, making the yeast eat the sugar faster, which means that the sugar is eaten up faster, which means that the yeast will soon starve to death and die at the bottom of the primary, leading to the clearing process going faster.

Once your wine is clear, it's time to bottle!
(You will have to wait in horrible suspense to learn what comes next! Meanwhile, grab a bottle of your favorite wine to console you. Then you'll feel much better about life and less impatient in general.)

Apealing

Around this time of year, I find that I'm very thankful for all the hard work I put in the previous Fall. Being able to enjoy affordable organic fruit and vegetables is definitely a blessing.

See this? A definite blessing. It's called "Liquid Blessing", otherwise known as Apple Wine.
This is the second time I've tried to make Apple Wine. The first time, Peter took the cork off the primary fermenter a week before it was done, and instead of Apple Wine, I had Apple Vinegar. Not appealing.
This stuff? Very appealing.

Excuse me while I go get appealed to. *Hiccup*

Sleeping Late

I got a bit of a late start this morning, because I was lazy and slept in till 9:00. Of course, whenever I indulge in such acts, afterwards I wonder at the wisdom of my decision. Not only am I behind on my already busy enough day, but the kids have been even busier . . . .

Let's just say that I had no idea there was that much junk under my bed. Now, I know exactly how much junk was under my bed, because thanks to the kids, it's no longer there. It's now spread all over the floor.

Ah well! On a happier note, I have some knitting pictures! One of the 57 of my New Year's resolutions is to knit less this year. I really am trying to keep to that. I am. Please believe me?

These are socks (Trekking XXL) that I knit when I was in the Sunny South. See, they don't count towards my resolution list, because they were finished before New Years. Ha! (I shoulda been a lawyer . . .)

This is another pair of Trekking XXL in a very funky colorway. I have no idea what it's called, so don't ask. I've heard before from other wise knitters that's it's impossible to get Trekking's colors to match up for two socks, but being the diligent (i.e. stubborn) person that I am, I had to at least try to get them to match. After unwinding nearly the entire skein, I sadly realized that it wasn't going to work. Alas, truly funky mis-matched socks a la Dobby!

Hmmm, this is a very disjointed post, isn't it? Well, I guess it suits my day, because the bad thing about waking up late is that the rest of the day feels like catch-up (hee hee, and ketchup! Get it? Get it? Sigh . . . . onward).

I finally got around to bottling the wine from last year's grape harvest. For some odd reason, the urge to bottle it hit me at 10:30 at night, most likely due to the can of Coke that I drank for dinner. May I just say that caffeine has dangerous affects on me? Finally, at 2:00 in the morning, I finished bottling the wine.

"What?" you gasp? "Why did it take so long?".

90 bottles of wine takes awhile.

And no, that has nothing to do with why I slept in this morning.

Like the labels? Every year I try to design a new label. I don't know why I bother, because theoretically it's to keep the different years separate, but we never seem to have any leftover wine by the time the next year rolls around. I have my suspicions that this is due to a certain member of my family who visits occasionally and depletes my wine stores by the gallon . . . . but I won't name names. Nope. The guilty party will know who they are . . . .

Canning Season

This fall, like the past previous autumns, I've been kept quite busy canning and taking care of garden produce. I've canned salsa, tomato soup, relish, and LOTS of grape juice.

Our grapes are producing like mad, and we've also been given a lot of grapes from friends and neighbors. I suppose we don't really need the extra grapes, but the kids drink so much grape juice, I figured I couldn't really have too much canned.

Andy picks and plucks the grapes (usually while watching football - an arrangement suitable to us both, lol) and I take care of the canning part. I'm especially glad that he takes care of the picking part, because usually there are about 50 earwigs at the bottom of the buckets. Earwigs seem to love grapes as much as my kids, and I have to say that they (the earwigs, not the kids) are the most disgusting bugs God ever created. I know God is all-wise, but I have to wonder what He had in mind when he designed these awful things! (Lynn, I told you they're worse than cockroaches any day!)

After a good washing, I put the grapes in a large pot of water and boil them for about 30 minutes. Then I strain the pulp and seeds out, and put the juice back in the big pot and add a little bit of sugar. (Our grapes are usually quite sweet, but sometimes the sugar takes some of the tartness away).

Once the sugar has fully dissolved, the juice goes into quart jars, and then I can them in a water bath and add labels. Then they're done! I make the juice concentrated, so a quart of juice will actually make a half-gallon of drinkable juice.

Sometimes I make wine with the grapes. Since this is a bumper crop year, I'm planning to make four batches of wine, which should yield quite a few bottles! I believe each batch makes about 25 bottles of wine, so that makes close to 100 liters of wine! (No, we're not "winos", but I end up giving a lot away and using quite a bit in cooking.)

I just finished making a batch of Lilac Wine. This is my first time making this, and it came out fairly well, although it didn't clarify as well as I'd like. It's really the oddest wine - it's a dessert wine, so it's white, but the aftertaste of lilacs is quite strong! Rather interesting, to say the least.

I'm rather pleased with the labels, too. Designing the labels for the bottles every year is one of the fun parts, I think (well, that, and drinking the wine, lol!).

Viva la Vino!

Knitting and Wining

First of all, let me start off by saying a HUGE thank you to everyone who left comments on my last posting. I was astonished how many people stop by my blog! I don't expect everyone who reads my blog to leave a comment, but curiosity demanded I send out a one-time feeler. Thanks again to everyone!

What interesting weather we've been having! I think most of the country has been having bad weather, and it hasn't been any different here. I think there's about six inches of snow on the ground right now, and there is supposed to be a few more inches tonight.

So, continuing my theme of knitting for myself (Rohan Cardi is for me me me!), I finally got around to knitting myself a hat. The cold weather gave me the impetus to get it done quickly, too! The pattern is Coronet Hat from Knitty, and it's one of my favorites. I've made at least four hats, now. I used that delicious yarn that I've been ranting about, Patons SWS. I still have one more skein left, so I think I'm going to try knitting mittens to match my hat. Stephanie Asche gave me a copy of her pattern (thanks, stephanie!)

I also got around to bottling the wine. Hopefully I did it right this year!

Last year, I forgot to add stabilizer when I was bottling, and the fermenting process kept going. Usually wine is about done fermenting by bottling time anyway, but my wine had a bit more "get-up". After seven months, the wine corks tended to pop out like champagne corks do!

See, the yeast in the wine feeds off the sugar, and then releases a gas. The gas is good, because that's what makes the wine alchoholic, but if it continues after bottling . . . . POP!

I think I have around 50 bottles of Concord Grape wine, now, but that'll go quickly. I usually give away quite a few bottles to family and friends.

I redesigned my label, too. I kept the sketch of my house that I used last year, and added color. My brother Josh kept nagging at me to add color to the labels, so here is the finished result:

I also finished a few dishcloths with Sugar 'n Cream cotton yarn. I needed a few extras for the kitchen, especially after the mess from bottling the wine!