Hi everyone!
I am very excited to finally be starting some new wines! I ended up purchasing two more wine making kits: the Cellar Craft Sterling California Chardonnay and the KenRidge Classic Nebbiolo. I chose the Cellar Craft Sterling Chardonnay because I have yet to make a white wine using oak chips and I wanted the opportunity to do so. As far as the red goes, I chose the Ken Ridge Classic Nebbiolo because it is a red that did not come with the skins, nor does it use oak. It does contain a packet of dried elderberries, which I thought was a fun change-up for a wine making kit.
I decided to start with the Chardonnay first for no reason in particular. Just like all the other times, I drew off water the night before, just in case there was chlorine in there so it could dissipate. The day of fermentation, I first prepared and added the bentonite solution, then added the wine base. Then, I used about 8 cups of warm water to rinse out the bag.
At this point, I checked the specific gravity with my hydrometer as well as the temperature, which came out to 1.100 and 69oF.
Feeling satisfied with these values, I then sprinkled the yeast onto the top of the juice and loosely placed the lid on top. I decided not to place the lid on tightly or use an air lock because from what I’ve read about primary fermentations, they actually like and need to have some oxygen in order to successfully proceed through the process.
According to the instructions that came with the wine making kit, I was to leave the wine fermenting until at least day 6. So, I did just that.
On day 6, I went to check in on the specific gravity and was surprised to find it had barely moved and was at 1.080. I had forgotten to check the temperature of the wine, but I could feel in the room it was somewhat cool.
See, previously the heat was switching on regularly, as it was late winter and that’s what happens! Around the time I started the Sterling Chardonnay, however, it had actually been very warm outside, so I wasn’t using the heat at all. There were actually a couple of days where it was so hot that I needed to switch on the air conditioning, but didn’t think about the fact that the vents were open in the winery room and while I was making things nice and comfortable in the upstairs living areas, I was inadvertently making things very cold in the basement where the winery room is located.
Beginning to wonder if that had something to do with my ridiculously slow fermentation; I decided to try a couple things to get this wine making kit fermenting while simultaneously reaching out to ECKraus for advice. My next post will follow up more on that.
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My name is Leigh Erwin, and I am a brand-spankin’ new home winemaker! E. C. Kraus has asked me to share with you my journey from a first-time dabbler to an accomplished home winemaker. From time to time I’ll be checking in with this blog and reporting my experience with you: the good, bad — and the ugly.
Category Archives: Home Wine Making Tips
Introducing The Cork Retriever!
No, the Cork Retriever is not a new breed of hunting dog, but it can be just as nice to have around.
A Cork Retriever is a useful tool that any winemaker should have. Anyone whose tried to fetch a cork from inside a wine bottle knows what I’m talking about. You try your darnedest to uncork the bottle, but neither the corkscrew nor the cork feel obliged to cooperate. Instead of the wine cork coming out, it ends up going in.
Not only do you end up with the aggravation of drinking a bottle of wine with a cork floating in it, now you need to figure out how to get the cork out or end up throwing away a perfectly good, reusable, wine bottle.
Whoever said that, necessity is the mother of invention was a genius, and the Wine Cork Retriever is just one more piece of evidence supporting their wisdom.
The Wine Cork Retriever is designed to remove the cork from within the bottle. Now, instead of throwing the wine bottle away, you can rescue it, and use it to bottle your next batch of wine.
The Wine Cork Retriever is easy to use. The three heavy wire prongs go into the bottle and act like a cradle. They spread out as they are pushed in, so you can easily grab the cork.
Once the cork is in the cradle, just give it a tug on the grip handle. As the prongs are pulled out they come together, trapping the cork tightly and pulling it out.
Not only does the Wine Cork Retriever save your wine bottles, it saves you from all the headache. That alone is worth having one sitting around.
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Ed Kraus is a 3rd generation home brewer/winemaker and has been an owner of E. C. Kraus since 1999. He has been helping individuals make better wine and beer for over 25 years.
How Sweet it Is: Sugar and Honey in Home Brew Wine
Home brewed wine is a beautiful product that is composed, in essence, of three parts – material selection, method of crafting, and time given for fermentation. With the right wine making supplies, intrepid brewers can elevate their collections beyond store shelf fodder by incorporating their own twists on additives and base ingredients. Wine making kits will come with components such as grape juices, yeasts and brewing containers, but curiosity drives many home brew enthusiasts to think outside the box when it comes to wine kits, researching switches and swaps that make vino truly personal. One of the most common changes is the sugar, or sugar alternative like honey, that is used to feed the yeast that ferments the juice.
Honey: Pros and Cons
Honey is a very complex ingredient all by itself – flower pollens and dozens of sugar compounds like dextrose and maltose are all packed into that thick, sweet syrup we all know and love. The taste of honey can vary widely depending on what flowers the producing hive frequents, giving rise to classic types like wildflower and more exotic varieties like orange flower or elderflower. When incorporated into the ingredients found in wine making kits, honey adds a deep complexity and sweetness to wine that many home brewers find more attractive than sugar, but it comes at a price. Due to the multiple sugars present in honey versus the single compound in traditional wine making sugar, fermentation takes considerably longer. According to home brewing enthusiast and blogger Jack Keller of JackKeller.net, 1.25 pounds of honey can be substituted for a pound of sugar in a given wine recipe, though if all of the sugar is exchanged for honey, you’ll end up brewing a honey wine or mead, rather than a traditional wine.
Sugar: Pros and Cons
Sugar, despite being a relatively simple ingredient, also comes in a wide range of forms that affect the wine it ferments. Traditional table sugar will produce wine that is consistent and familiar, but experimenting with more unique forms such as the blonde turbinado sugar or dark muscavado sugar with its hints of molasses will give your palate plenty to explore. The drawbacks of using sugar is that table varieties may not produce the depth of a finished product that you’d like, and the more exotic forms of sugar may be outside of the price range of beginning brewers. Sugar, however, is an excellent and stable ingredient to stretch your winemaking “legs” with, making it a must-have inclusion in wine kits. Sugar can also be added to a finished wine to sweeten it; rock sugar and bar or caster sugar are the most popular choices for this option due to their respective long and short dissolve times.
If you’re interested in home brewing wine, or are already a fan of the hobby, experimenting with both honey and sugar is the best way to find out which one, or what form of combinations, will work for your needs.
Why are Campden Tablets, Acid Blend, Yeast Nutrients and Pectic Enzymes so Important to Wine Making?
When you first start getting into wine making, you’re going to be recommended various brands of Campden tablets, acid blends, yeast nutrients and pectic enzymes. Before you can make an informed purchasing decision on any of these products, you’re going to need to know what they do in the first place. Here’s a brief rundown of why these ingredients matter:
Campden Tablets
Think of Campden tablets as your wine’s immune system. Campden tablets are used in the making of wine and other alcohols to inhibit the growth of wild yeast and to destroy unwanted bacteria in the wine. In short, these tablets prevent your wine from spoiling. While you do want certain yeast to grow inside your wine, allowing wild yeast free reign is a sure way to ruin your wine.
Acid Blend
Acid blend is actually a generic term; it can refer to anything from a blend of citric acids to a blend of tartaric or malic acids. Every brand will have its own acid blends that can be used to acidify your wine. This is necessary to create a balanced wine.
Yeast Nutrients
Yeast nutrients can help to ensure that your yeast thrives and produces the alcoholic content that you’re looking for. Yeast nutrients can be used to prevent a stuck fermentation, which is what happens when your yeast lacks the nutrients it needs and the wine can no longer ferment. Remember, your yeast is a living thing, and you won’t get the results you’re after if you don’t feed it.
Pectic Enzymes
Pectic enzymes, or pectinase, are a series of enzymes such as polygalacturonase, pectolyase and pectozyme. These enzymes can help to break down pectin. What this essentially means is that it helps to break down the plant matter and get a richer bounty of flavors from the grape, and it can help to break down the cloudy appearance that you see in some wines.
These four ingredients weren’t always used, but more recently, you simply don’t want to make wine without these products on hand to help you get the results that you’re after.
Check out our store for any winemaking ingredients you’ll need for your own homemade wine.
Incorporating Fruit into Your Homemade Wine
Have you had success with making homemade grape wine and want to branch out into something a little different? Do you have fruit trees on your property and want to be able to use that extra fruit in your wine-making? Adding fruit to your homemade wine is a little different than making wine entirely from grapes, but it’s not difficult to do.
Beyond Grapes
Homemade grape wine isn’t the only tasty wine that a amateur winemaker can create. Peaches, plums, apricots, cherries, strawberries, currants, blackberries and nectarines are just some of the fruits that can be fermented in wine-making to create wine at home. The best fruits to use are fully ripe and fresh off of the vine. Thus, it’s best to avoid grocery store fruit and deal with your local orchard or farmers market instead. If you have your own fruit trees or plants that’s even better.
Preparing the Fruit
- To prepare your fruit, clean the fruit gently in a 1:40 bleach solution to get kid of any bacteria, dirt or residue from pesticides.
- Rinse thoroughly twice with fresh water and pat dry.
- Cut the large fruit in half and gently remove the stones, if applicable.
- De-stem, if necessary, and cut out any browns spots.
- At this point you can either freeze the fruit or proceed by adding it to your wine. Freezing the fruit helps you buy time if your fruit is ripe, but the rest of your wine isn’t quite ready. Some also feel that frozen fruit makes for tastier wine because it breaks down the fiber in the fruit.
Adding Fruit to Wine
Most fruits lack the body and substance to create a tasty wine by themselves so they are generally added to grapes or grape concentrate. To extract the juice, tie the fruit in a cheesecloth bag and mash gently with your hands over a bowl until no solids remain except for the skins. The amount of fruit to be used will vary with the fruit you chose. There are just as many recipes for making fruit wines as there are successful winemakers. All include yeast, sugar and water.
Don’t be afraid to experiment with different fruits as you gain experience as a winemaker. Wine-making shouldn’t be limited to just grapes.
How To Make Homemade Applejack
Interested in home wine making or beer brewing but want something that offers more of a kick? Applejack is a time-tested classic with a temperament that makes it the ideal exploratory option for any aspiring home brewer. All you need is a finished apple wine, extremely cold temperatures, and a lidded plastic container.
To begin, be sure to use a plastic container – not glass – to reduce the risk of cracking as a result of the subzero temperatures your wine will experience during its transformation. Any subtle fruit wine can be used to achieve the same delicious results for a distinctive experience. Using homemade wines will give you the most control over your final product and are just as easy to make.
The most difficult step is often just finding a place to store your wine at below freezing temperatures. This enables a process to occur known as fractional crystallization, in which the water in the wine will freeze and rise to the top, while the alcohol remains in liquid form. Scooping off the ice buildup everyday will result in more concentrated alcohol content and a more intense apple flavor.
The initial alcohol content of your wine has no bearing on the final levels that will be expressed in your Applejack. The temperature at which the wine is stored directly determines the amount of ice that will ultimately form, which determines the resulting alcohol concentration. At zero degrees, ice will appear until 14% alcohol by volume is reached, and at 30 below you can attain an alcohol concentration of 33% (66 proof). That is substantially higher than the 5% alcohol per volume championed by hard ciders and the 10-12% offered by apple wines.
So, how did this ingenious beverage come to be? Applejack reached its peak popularity a few hundred years ago in the New England colonies, who had barrels of apple wine that would freeze during the winter and thaw come spring – being a heck of a lot stronger. After using your wine making kits to develop the perfect apple wine, celebrate history with some homemade Applejack!
New Shipment of Grape Crushers and Presses
We recently announced a new stock of seasonal presses and crushers. Presses and crushers are integral to the winemaking process, and ensure that grapes and fruit crush properly before fermentation. For the current season, Adventures in Homebrewing has fully stocked this highly in demand product.
Crushers and presses are used to break the skin of grapes or fruit in order to properly extract juices for fermentation. The crushing process is integral to the success of the wine batch, and requires careful attention to properly de-stem and crush skins. Modern crushers and presses provide both manual and motorized options, ensuring that the crushing process is completed thoroughly and accurately.
While traditionally grapes have been stomped or crushed by hand, contemporary presses allow winemakers to crush large proportions of fruit with minimal time and effort. Late spring is a common time for grape picking and crushing, which promises to deliver fully crafted by wine by the peak summer months.
We place a strong focus on innovation and maintaining status as a complete home wine and beer supplier. We recently added new kegging systems, and the introduction of new wine juice kits continues to be a step towards future expansion. Currently, we offer a wide selection of crushers and presses from leading manufacturers in addition to our reliable supply of wine making kits and beer brewing supplies. Check ’em out today!
Natural vs. Synthetic Corks
When you think of breaking out a bottle of wine, what’s the first thing that comes to mind? Many think of the traditional cork ‘pop’ as a signal of a freshly cracked bottle of wine. But would your wine be just as enjoyable without this symbolic introduction? Today, synthetic wine corks are becoming a popular option over the traditional form of natural corks. There is a great debate over the pros and cons of synthetic and natural corks. For the home wine maker, this can be an important decision. While the home wine making process develops integral flavor profiles, bottling and aging are also primary considerations for developing and maintaining flavor. Before pulling out the wine making kits, read five things you need to know when deciding between a synthetic or natural cork for your homemade wine.
1. Cork Taint. Cork taint occurs in natural corks due to a chemical compound called trichloroanisole (TCA). Cork taint can be very disappointing, as it can spoil wine that has been aging for years. Cork taint occurs in approximately 3-15 percent of all bottled wine.
2. Sealing. One of the primary concerns with bottled wine is consistency in keeping the cork snug. Glass bottles naturally expand and contract based on temperature and environment, and natural corks will expand and contract along with the bottle. Synthetic corks don’t offer this benefit, and can easily become too loose, letting in too much air, or too tight, rendering bottles unable to be opened.
3. Air. While corks need to remain snug, a little bit of natural oxygen is necessary for the wine to age properly. Oxygen allows the natural chemical reactions in wine to occur, producing the aging flavors that are developed over time. Synthetic corks prevent oxygen from reaching the wine, meaning synthetically corked wine technically doesn’t experience the aging process. However, the benefit of synthetic corks is that it does prevent wine from over-oxidation, another primary concern during the aging process.
4. Environmentally friendly bottling. Natural cork is derived from the bark of cork trees, which is actually a very environmentally friendly process. The bark is a renewable resource that grows back over time. Cork bark is striped every ten years, and each individual tree can produce bark for up to 200 years. Cork trees also provide lots of environmental benefits, such as trapping harmful carbon dioxide and lessening pollution.
5. Cost. The cost of synthetic corks is substantially lower, one of the reasons that many commercial bottles are now adopting this trend. Today, approximately 9% of all bottles of commercially packed wine use a synthetic cork, and these numbers continue to quickly rise.
As you may see, there are pros and cons for using each type of cork. There are many debates over which cork type is best suited for a specific wine type, and as we divulge here, it is hard to come to a conclusive answer. Being aware of the pros and cons will allow you to make an informative decision on how you want to approach your next bottling process. Making careful choices, from the type of wine making equipment used to the appropriate type of cork, will allow you to successfully create the wine of your dreams.
Homegrown Grapes for Wine Making
Courtesy of Wikipedia
Whether you are an old pro at home wine making or just getting started, there is so much potential to create your own signature flavors and creations. Many wine-makers enjoy doing so by growing their own batch of grapes. Homegrown grapes are a growing trend in wine making, and a great way to get more involved in the flavor creation process.
Different grapes prosper in different regions, so before getting started it’s important to carefully research which grapes will grow optimally in your specific location and climate. One popular type is vitis vinifera, a grape that produces popular flavors such as Chardonnay, Merlot, White Zinfandel, and Cabernet Sauvignon. Vitis vinifera derives from a European grape family, and is commonly found in areas such as the Pacific Northwest, California, and Mid-Atlantic regions with milder climates. For colder or wetter climates, alternate grape options are often found. Vitis labrusca grapes are a common type of grape less vulnerable to cold, and may be successfully grown in northern regions.
Now, for the grape growing. After you have researched the best type of grapes to successfully grow in your region, get started with planting vines. The best time of the year to plant vines is early spring. Vines generally take about three years to mature and bear fruit, so be prepared with some patience. Make sure to pick a very sunny location, with good soil drainage. Nutrient poor soil is optimal for grapes, because smaller, undernourished grapes produce the most flavorful wines. After planting vines, ensure that trellises are at least six feet high. As the vine continues to grow, prune and train the vine carefully and correctly.
You will see your vine blossom and mature over several years, until it finally bears fruit. Approximately ten pounds of grapes produce a gallon of wine, meaning ten to twenty vines are needed to produce a smaller batch of wine. Growing grapes is a rewarding aspect of wine making, and allows you to create distinct, authentic flavoring. Remember, great grapes make great wine. While the harvest process is important in developing strong flavors, it is just important to carefully store grapes prior to wine making. Once you get down the basics of growing grapes, break out the wine making kits, and get started on learning how to use your wine making equipment to develop your own signature creation!
Springtime Wines
Springtime is finally in full gear, and before we know it summer will be right around the corner. With the season warming up, we thought it was appropriate to share some of our favorite springtime wines (and food pairings!). So pull out the wine making kits, sit back, and relax as we spill our best-kept springtime secrets for wine.
Sauvignon Blanc: Sauvignon Blanc and other Sauvignon blends make the perfect springtime wine. Sauvignon blends have become exceedingly popular due to their extensive variety and unmatched quality for an unbeatable price. Sauvignon blends generally give off a hint of citrus, lime, and crisp fruits, while always providing a fresh taste. Pairs well with light springtime meals including: seafood dishes, asparagus, and goat cheese.
Prosecco: Often a summertime favorite, Prosecco is a soft wine loved by many. Similar in taste to champagne, but with less of an edge, Prosecco is a charming and sparkling alternative. Drink poolside and mix with an assortment of fresh berries and fruits!
Pinot Grigio: Quality Pinot Grigio is a must-have for summer. This minerally white wine is light but not too thin. We suggest pairing this crisp wine with an Italian meal, preferably light pastas or with tomato-based sauces.
Grüner Veltliner: This white wine has an unmatched crisp-ness that is toned down with fruit flavors such as nectarine and grapefruit. Some versions are light-bodied, while others produce a more concentrated richness. This wine matches best with foods with an Asian influence, such as noodles, salad dishes, and spring rolls.
Spring is a great time of the year to pull out the wine making equipment, and create a seasonal favorite of your own. Mix and match to find your very own perfect wine pairing. Trouble figuring out what to do for a springtime recipe? Check out our recipe page to get started. Happy wine making!