Wednesday, November 29, 2006
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Picking out the fruit and deciding on a recipe is only the beginning.
Homemade wine making is a wonderful experience. Picking out the fruit and deciding on a recipe is only the beginning. Cleaning and cutting up the fruit can be tedious at times, but I get a surreal feeling as I go through the fruit. Selecting only the best specimens and discarding the bruised and battered pieces. Then comes preparing the must for the primary. Measuring the fruit, doing this I never use a scale or measuring cup. I just make sure I come close to the recipe I've decided on.
If I used my feet none of my friends would drink it.
With some recipes I get to sanitize my hands and smash the fruit to smithereens. If I used my feet none of my friends would drink it. Getting your hands dirty is a blast, and makes it more of "hands-on" experience. Carefully measuring the chemicals, sugar, and water makes it feel like you are preparing your next masterpiece. You start to imagine how the wine is going to turn out, picturing the final color in your mind, relishing how the body will turn out, and already starting to design a label in your head.
There are many breweries with free tours and of course Free Beer!
The anticipation while your at work the next day is always exciting. When you finally arrive home you rush over to the primary bucket and check for the tell tale signs of an active fermentation. You see the bubbles and do a little happy fermentation dance. Next I always put my nose up close and smell the yeast working. It reminds me of driving through Milwaukee. For you beer lovers out there a trip to Milwaukee is a must (pun intended). There are many breweries with free tours and of course Free Beer!
Sometimes I ease the pain of waiting by printing the labels.
Each day as you punch down the must your excitement grows. Your next little baby is taking shape. As you move into the secondary stage you start to feel like a protector, making sure the bung is nice and tight and the air lock is set. Gotta protect the wine from all that pesky oxygen. Once the batch has been racked a few times and we get to the aging process, patience is the key. I go a little crazy during this stage. Every few days I go and peek at it. I check the color and make sure nothing weird has happened, or started to grow in there. Sometimes I ease the pain of waiting by printing the labels. I also make sure I have enough bottles and corks ready to go.
As the corked bottles start to pile up, I feel a huge sense of accomplishment.
Then finally the day of bottling comes. I usually invite someone over to help. Having a friend over for this can double the excitement. They can also help to determine the amount of sweetening the batch needs. Once we get the sweetening worked out, we pull off a bottle (or two) for us to enjoy during the bottling. As the corked bottles start to pile up, I feel a huge sense of accomplishment. I start to think how my loyal fans are going to like this latest batch. After the entire batch is bottled and labeled, I like to sit and look at all the bottles as I reflect on the joy I had in creating them. Then I uncork another one and start thinking about what I'm going to make next
If you've never made homemade wine before, I highly recommend starting. It's not as difficult as it may seem and I promise you'll love it when that first batch is done.
Great article on two guys in london who decided to make their own wine.
"Ideas that you come up with in the pub usually stay right there. There is a reason for this but, just this once, the idea of buying a couple of tons of grapes stuck."
Read the whole story
The Wine Making Journal is an easy to use journal to record all of your homemade wine batches.
The journal has sections for recording
- the primary fermentation
- the secondary fermentation
- bottling
- and tasting of each batch
There is also a space to attach your label for posterity. The Wine Making Journal has handy reference charts included to help make your wine production easier and quicker. For less than the cost of yeast, you can keep track of 50 of your wine batches in one convenient location. No longer do you need to keep track of countless loose pages of notes, or a notebook full of scribbled hieroglyphics. A definite must have for the home wine maker.
A great gift for the wine maker in your life
Here's a simple diagram of how to make home made wine.
Please share your funny or helpfull home made wine making stories.
They can be funny, embarrassing or helpful.
Simply add them to the comments, and check back to read everyone elses.
The most common way to stabilize a batch of wine is to add the following ingredients per gallon:
- 1/2 tsp Potassium Sorbate
- 1 Crushed Campden Tablet
I've been using this formula since the begining. However, I did have one batch start to referment after sweeting and bottling. Any ideas why, or how to improve on this process, please add it to the comments.
Sometimes a batch of wine that you are working on is so bad that you just have to dump it out. We've all been there, months of hard work and the batch still tastes horrible. If you haven't been there you will be sooner or later. Here are some ways to cope with the thought of having to pour all your hard work down the drain. This assumes that you have tried to troubleshoot it, and nothing works.
The easiest method is to crack open a good bottle of wine, get liquored up a bit, and stare at the offending batch.
The easiest method is to crack open a good bottle of wine, get liquored up a bit, and stare at the offending batch. Once you've drank enough about the wine, and pondered on how bad the batch really is, it should be easy just to dump it down the drain.
Another way is to start a new batch. Starting a new batch will add a bit more excitement into your wine making experience, and will lessen the hurt of pouring out a batch. While dumping the old batch down the drain, try to focus on how great the new batch is going to be. If your confidence has been shaken, try starting a batch from a kit. These kits are moderately priced and it's really hard to mess them up.
Phone a friend. Call in one of those lifelines and have another wine buddy come over and taste it. Ask your buddy to be honest. If it is truly horrible, your friend should have no problem agreeing with you. Hopefully this reassurance is all that is needed to help you make the plunge. If not, ask your friend to dump it out while your not looking.
If all this fails, or you just can't bring yourself to do it. Simply put the carboy to the back of your shelves and cover it up. Leave it for 6 months, even put a note with a date of when to try it next. When the time rolls around, try it again, if it's gotten worse try one of the above methods again. If it's better, but not quite right, wait another 6 months. If it's a miracle and tastes great, consider yourself lucky and bottle it.
Remember, wine making is an art, not a science. Some paintings are not going to turn out. It's not your fault, it's just God's way of saying you can do better.
Having an organized winery can make wine making easier, less stressful and more fun. Even smaller spaces can be organized to make efficient use out of the space you do have. With a new baby on the way (our first) my wife and I decided to move our office downstairs, giving us an extra bedroom upstairs. This move chopped the winery space I had in half. After some carefull planning I now feel like I have more room. Below are some of the key areas I focused on. Improving my organization and layout in these areas has given me more working space and more storage space.
The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly
The Ugly
Before the move I had the following setup:
One rickety old desk which served as both my working area and my full carboy storage. This meant I usually had no working area at all, as the desk was chuck full of carboys. The desk had one drawer in it which served as my only storage for chemicals, corks, funnels etc. As you can imagine the drawer was always full and I had to dig through it to find anything. My floor corker (a must have) sat next to the desk. During bottling I had to stack the full bottles on the floor. There was also no running water, only a floor drain. The floor drain was usable but very messy when trying to empty a carboy into it. To fill anything with water I would have to trek upstairs then haul it back downstairs. Some improvement was definitely needed.
The Bad
The first 2 steps in the improvement process were adding running water with a viable drain and bottle storage. I bought a utility sink kit from home depot and tapped into the nearby water pipes and drain lines. With all the parts included this project cost less than a hundred dollars. I was very pleased to never again run up the stairs to retrieve water. And the floor drain stays nice and clean as well. Bottle storage was next next problem. Wine cases tipped on their side on the floor wasn't cutting it. I searched on-line for different racking systems. They all seemed very expensive, ranging from $1 to $3 per bottle. I figured I wanted to be able to shelve about 200 bottles. So $200 to $600 wasn't going to work for me. So I asked my handy carpenter friend for some help. He came up with a rack system that stored 98 bottles for less than fifty bucks. I built two of them and painted them white. So now I had the water and the bottle storage problem solved. I felt like I was getting somewhere. Then the dreaded move came, cutting my floor space in half.
The Good
I figured as long as I was forced to move things around, I might as well make some more improvements. First step was to throw out the rickety desk and replace it with a new laminated counter-top ($23), with two twelve inch cabinets holding it up ($50 each). This counter-top would be my new working space. The cabinets also provided some storage for supplies. The space between the cabinets was open, leaving space for a garbage can and storage for some empty buckets. The next solution was to add carboy storage. I purchased 3 sheets of medium density fiber board 24 by 48 inches ($6 x 3) and 3 square support brackets for each of the top two shelves ($5 x 6). I installed the bottom two about 30 inches apart. I can store 16 six gallon carboys on these bottom two shelves. On the top shelve I can store 3 gallon carboys and other miscellaneous items. The only downfall to this setup is not being able to get a racking thief into the carboys. So from now on I am using a pump to rack and bottle. Even though I had much more storage already, I added a wire shelf above the counter-top, around the corner and over the wine racks. This shelf is great, it's nice to have some things handy, right above your work area.
The results
Even though I have less raw floor space to use, I feel like my new winery is much better then the old one. With a little planning and effort you can maximize the space you do have, with out too much money, to make your winery fun and organized.