We purchased a refrigerator to store our wine in, but the temp. is 47 degrees.  We cannot get the refrigerator to go any higher… Is that too cold to age wine?

Darlene
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Hello Darlene,

Thank you for this great question.

You are correct in assuming that temperature does make a difference when aging wine. But having said this, most home winemakers store their wine at room temperature or basement temperature and do perfectly fine. But if you want to try aging your wine in a refrigerator, it is possible under certain situations.

Temperature affects a wine by changing how fast or slow it ages. The cooler the temperature, the slower it will age. The warmer the temperature, the faster it will age.

Aging is critical to a wine. It is the time when a series of enzymatic activities occur that cause a wine to become more pleasant. It will have better body structure, a fruitier bouquet, and more complex, layered flavors. So you’d think that you would want your wine to age faster so that it could taste better sooner, but this is really not the case. While wine does get better with age, there is also a life-cycle that needs to be consider.

A wine will typically improve for a period of time, then somewhat plateau in its improvement. Eventually, there will come a time when the wine will start to degrade in quality at a very, very slow pace. It will start to become flabby, lifeless, then eventually, unacceptable to drink. So while warmer temperature will cause the wine to become better sooner, it will also shorten its lifespan.

A wine may plateau in quality in 6 months. Other wines might take 6 years. A lot of this has to do with the wine itself, and of course, the temperature at which it is being stored. Its body, flavor and structure all play a role in determining how long a life-cycle the wine will have.

Just how high a wine will plateau in quality is up to the wine, but how fast and long it stays at this plateau is up to the keeper of the wine and the temperature they decide at which to store the wine.

All of the above applies equally to commercially made and homemade wines. Most wine experts agree that 55°F. is a good temperature to stay with when aging wine for the long hall. This means that aging your wine in a refrigerator may not be practical for you, but it would not be a disaster to do so. It just may take longer than what is practical for the wine to age.

One way to ultimately resolve this issue is to purchase a power-interrupt thermostat. This is an item that is put in between the refrigerator plug and the wall outlet. It has a probe that goes inside the refrigerator to monitor temperature. Once the refrigerator temperature reaches the setting on the thermostat it will interrupt the power. I would almost call this a necessity for anyone who is planning on aging wine in a refrigerator.

Happy Wine Making,
Ed Kraus
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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.

My kit wine calls to immediately put the contents of the juice, wine yeast, etc. in an air-tight container with an airlock. However all over your site it says NOT to put it in an air-tight container for the first 5-7 days because it will inhibit the growth of the wine yeast. Can you clear this up for me?

Name: Dennis
State: North Carolina
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Hello Dennis,

It is a matter of weighing all the pros and cons differently.

The reason you use a fermentation airlock is to protect the wine from contamination. If you leave the lid and airlock off the primary fermenter and the fermentation begins in a timely manner and ferments vigorously, there is very little chance of the wine becoming compromised in any way. Not only is the CO2 gas rapidly rising off the fermentation, protecting it from fall-out of airborne nasties, but the vigorous activity of the wine yeast themselves are also destroying any contaminants that may make their way to the liquid.

The harder the wine ferments, the more protected the wine will be, and the sooner your wine will have completed its fermenting.

Wine kit manufacturers say to themselves, “we do not know that everyone’s fermentation is going to start as it should. What if it doesn’t and the airlock is not being used? Then there is a possibility of the fermentation being taken over by a mold or bacteria. We would rather be safe, because we are not sure every single fermentation will start-off as intended.”

So it comes down to this:

• Leaving the lid and airlock off will allow the primary fermentation to start sooner and continue more rapidly, but it can also leave the fermentation susceptible to contamination should it not start in a timely fashion.

• Leaving the lid and airlock on will keep the fermentation much more protected, but it will cause their primary fermentation to go more slowly.

I would like to point out that keeping an airlock off the primary fermentation is not something we made up. It is regularly practiced in the wine industry. It is also the typical way a fresh fruit wine is made by home winemakers.

Also, I would like to make it clear that we are only talking about the primary fermentation. As the fermentation starts to slow down, and it becomes time to rack the wine into a secondary fermenter, you should always be using an airlock. The same holds true if the fermentation is not starting out as strong or as quick as it should; put the lid and airlock on until you see the fermentation is going.

As a final point, whether or not you use an airlock during the primary fermentation, the wine will be made. It’s a matter of how fast and vigorous the fermentation proceeds, not a matter of whether or not your wine will turn out, so don’t feel that it is a critical decision because it’s not.

Happy Winemaking,
Ed Kraus
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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.

When making white wines with your wine kits they tastes fine right after fermentation, but after a while the wine gets bitter and strong. I notice it most right after I bottle the wine. What do I do to solve this problem?

Name: Richard L.
State: MA
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Hello Richard,

Most likely you are dealing with is what’s known as “bottle shock“.  This can be noticed as a flabby diminishing of the wine’s fruitiness and bouquet. The acids can seem out of whack, and in some more dramatic cases the wine can become bitter.

You as the wine making may be asking yourself at this point: “what does bottle shock even mean?” In wine making it’s the result of a reductive process that occurs when too much oxygen is saturated into the wine in too short of period. Wines need to absorb minuscule amounts of oxygen over long periods of time in order to age properly — that’s the purpose of the cork, to allow air to pass very, very slowly — but when wines absorb a too much oxygen in a short period of time, that’s what causes bottle shock.

In wine making bottle shock is something that can happen to any wine right after it has been bottled. As a wine maker I’m sure you can imagine, the process of filling the wine bottle and ramming a cork into its neck will increase the saturation of oxygen into the wine.

Bottle shock can also happen if the wine bottle is excessively agitated, such as traveling by car or whatever. This sloshing causes the cork to breath air more rapidly than intended.

The good news is the effects of bottle shock are temporary. The wine will overcome this condition given time. Just how long the bottle shock does last, depends on the severity of the condition, but usually it is a matter of one or two weeks.

Richard, hopefully your wine will experience improvements when given a little time. If it does, then you will know that bottle shock was the issue. The other possibility is a bacterial or fungal infection. Bacterial is usually more acetic in symptom and fungal more bitter. The way you will be able to tell if this is the issue is by the fact that your wine’s flavor continues getting worse and not slowly recovering.

With all that being said I am fairly confident that we are dealing with bottle shock. Just give it some time, and you should see your wine turn around.

Best Wishes,
Ed Kraus
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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.

I have been reading your blog for some time. My neighbor makes wine and said I should try it.  I have a question. He uses a wine filter to clear his wine. Do you have to filter homemade wine? He says it is not but I don’t see how if you don’t have something to clear it.

Eric
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Hello Eric,

Let me start off by saying that you can make perfectly clear homemade wine without using a wine filter of any kind. You do not need to filter a homemade wine for it be clear. Let me explain why…

What causes a wine to be cloudy is mostly wine yeast. The yeast multiply themselves into a colony of incredibly huge numbers during the fermentation. This wine yeast is finer than flour and adds a milky look to the fermenting wine must. Even though the wine yeast cells are microscopically tiny and can easily be stirred-up by the fermentation. They will also settle out through gravity once the fermentation activity has stopped. The other stuff like the pulp and tannin from the fruit will fall out even before the yeast.

If you do absolutely nothing, the wine yeast cells will settle out on their own, usually within a matter of days. This is why you do not have to filter the wine. It will become surprisingly clear on its on if given a chance.

If you would like to speed up the process you can use something called a fining agent. A fining agent is something that you add directly to the wine must. It collects the particles together and drags them to the bottom more quickly than they would on their own. A particular fining agent routinely used by many wineries is Bentonite.

You may be asking yourself at this point, “if the wine yeast will settle out on their own and I can use fining agents to speed up the process, then why does my neighbor have a wine filter? And furthermore, why do wine filters even exist“?

Wine filters do have a purpose in wine making,
but it’s not to clear up a cloudy wine.

A wine filter is designed to make a clear wine look even clearer. A wine filter should only be used on a wine after it is already visually clear. It filters out wine yeast, even beyond what the human I can see. This level of filtering adds further polish or luster to the wine causing it to illuminate more brilliantly.

It is important to understand that a wine filter is not something that strains the wine. The wine is actually forced under pressure through extremely fine filter pads. It filters the wine so fine that it can make a white wine look like a solid piece of glass in the wine bottle. With this kind of filtering power, using it on a wine that seems even slightly murky will cause the filter pads to clog up quickly. The wine needs to look absolutely clear to the naked-eye before the use of a wine filter can even be considered.

My suggestion to you is to go ahead and make a batch of wine and don’t worry about using a wine filter for now. Most home winemakers do not filter their wines and are absolutely satisfied with the clarity. Once the wine is finished and had time to clear, take a look at it and see if you are happy with its clarity. If not, then you can revisit purchasing a wine filter system to filter that wine.

Just remember that if you do decide that you need to filter your homemade wine, we have several different models of wine filters in stock that can be shipped the same day your order.

Happy Wine Making,
Ed Kraus
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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.

What is the best way to tell when my wine is ready to bottle?

Thank You,
Rick, IN
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Hello Rick,

Great question, and an important one too. The last thing anyone wants to do is bottle their wine too soon. This is especially important if you plan on handing any of it out as wine making gifts. A significant amount of sediment could eventually form in the wine bottle, or worse yet, corks could possibly start pushing out and cause a mess.

Fortunately for us home winemakers, it’s very easy to determine if a wine is ready to be bottled. Here is what has to happen before you can bottle your wine:

1. Your wine has to be completely clear. There should be no more sediment that needs to fall out. Most of the sediment you’ll be dealing with is made up of tiny, microscopic yeast cells. These cells are as fine as flour. It is important to understand that even the slightest amount of murkiness in the wine at bottling time could lead to sediment in the wine bottles later. Give the wine plenty of time to clear. If you’re not sure wait, longer.

2. Your wine should read less than .998 on the Specific Gravity scale of your wine hydrometer. This is telling you that the fermentation process has actually finished and hasn’t just stalled out halfway, or still fermenting very slowly as a stuck fermentation. If you do not have a wine hydrometer I would urge you to get one. They are not that expensive and can save you a lot of problems in the long run.

3. The wine should be free of any residual CO2 gas. This is the gas that occurs when the wine ferments. CO2 gas is the same stuff that makes beer foam and soda pop fizzy. Once the wine is taken off the sediment, you can stir the wine to get this gas to release. You may want to consider purchasing a Degassing/Mixing Paddle to help you with this process. It is a paddle that attaches to a hand drill and will fit in the opening of a carboy as well as an opening of a plastic fermenter.

Best Wishes,
Ed Kraus
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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.

My Cabernet Franc and Carmenere, made from juice, both need to have their acid levels increased. Both wines went through malolactic fermentation. What type of acid is best to use? I have acid blend but it contains malic acid. Would using malic acid defeat the purpose of the malolactic fermentation in this wine?

Name: Dennis D.
State: Ohio
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Hello Dennis,

There are three main reasons for wanting a malolactic fermentation in wine (MLF):

• To Make The Wine Stable: If the wine is induced into an MLF before bottling, you don’t have to worry about an MLF occurring in the wine bottles, spontaneously. Having a malolactic fermentation in the wine, naturally, while it’s in the wine bottle would be the last thing you’d want.

• To Lower The Acid Of The Wine: If the wine’s acidity is too high and the wine is tasting too sharp or too tart, then a malolactic fermentation can very possibly improve the wine by lowing its acidity level.

• To Change The Flavor: A malolactic fermentation in wine lowers the malic acid content and raises the lactic acid content. The net result is a lowering of the wine’s overall acid level, but also, because of the exchange of malic to lactic acid, the wine takes on a different flavor character. The wine will tend to be less fruity and more earthy. This may, or may not, be an improvement depending on the wine and your personal taste preference.

If your malolactic fermentation caused the wine to be too low in acid, I am going to assume that you did not put the wine through the MLF to lower its acidity level, but rather, you did it to either make the wine more stable or to change its flavor profile.

With that said, if you add malic acid back to the wine you are increasing its potential to become unstable again, especially sense, I assume, you put a malolactic culture in the wine to initiate the MLF. The malolactic culture is a bacteria that consumes malic acid. If you add more malic acid to raise the acidity of the wine, you could be feeding a renewed MLF.

This is why it is very important that the wine be treated with sulfites, such as sodium metabisulfite. This is needed to destroy the bacteria culture, or your MLF will very likely start back up again–fueled by the new malic acid.

If you put the wine through a malolactic fermentation for reasons of flavor, then again, adding malic acid is going to be counterproductive. The harsher malic acid was fermented into half carbon dioxide gas and half lactic acid. The lactic acid is not as harsh as malic. So if you replace your acid deficiency with malic acid you are going to go backwards.

There are some other things that go on with a malolactic fermentation in wine. It’s not just an exchange of acid that’s altering the wine’s character. One major example, is the production of diacetyl. This is a substance that causes the wine to have a buttery flavor and aroma and can give the wine a more creamy texture. These effects are there to stay regardless if you add back malic acid or not. So there could be an argument for using malic acid to raise the acid level if all you where looking for was the diacetyl effect on the wine.

After going through all of this, I think it starts to becomes clear that, for the most part, adding malic acid back to a wine that just went through a malolactic fermentation, does not make too much sense. You are better off using a blend of tartaric acid and citric acid, instead. I would suggest 2 parts citric acid and 1 part tartaric acid.

If you would like to read more about using a malolactic fermentation in wine—why they are used, how they affect a wine—you might want to take a look at: Malolactic Fermentation: Is It Right For You And Your Wines?

Happy Winemaking,
Ed Kraus
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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.

Preparing wine bottles for bottling wine is sometimes glossed-over or minimized by some home wine makers. That’s not a good thing. That’s a bad thing! Starting out with clean and sanitized wine bottles is paramount to having healthy wine. The alternative can lead to a spoilage and embarrassment. Learn more on how to clean wine bottles.

Cleaning Your Wine Bottle
Even if the wine bottles are new, out-of the-box they should be thoroughly rinsed to wash off any box dust that may have made its way inside.

If the wine bottles have been used then there is the dirt and grime to deal with as well. This can be cleaned off with regular dish soap. Clean the wine bottles as if you were cleaning the dishes. A wine bottle brush comes in very handy during this step. You may also find that it helps to have two wine bottle brushes to entice others to pitch in as well.

If the wine bottles are extremely filthy with dried crud and dirt, you may want to clean them in two steps. The first step would be to clean the pieces of dirt. The second, to clean the surface grime and rinse. Having this second bath of water will help to leave the serious filth behind.

Sanitizing Your Wine Bottles
Many beginning wine makers confuse “cleaning” and “sanitizing” to mean the same thing, but they are very different.

Think of “cleaning wine bottles” as getting rid of what you can see and “sanitizing wine bottles” as getting rid of what you can’t.

When you are sanitizing a wine bottle you are destroying the mold, germs and bacteria that may exist on the glass. You are making the glass as sterile as possible. Sounds serious, but it’s really very simple.

There are several products that can sanitize your wine bottles with little effort on your part. Some that we recommend are: Basic A, One-Step and Star-San. You mix any of them with water to create a sanitizing solution. In addition to the wine bottles, these solutions can be used to sanitize gallon glass jugs, wine carboys, and even plastic fermenters.

All three products are oxygenating-type cleansers. What this means is that the sanitizing of the wine bottles is actually being done while the solution dries or evaporates from the wine bottle’s surface. And, no residues are left on the wine bottles.

What this means for you is that these cleansers are quick and require no rinsing. Just submerge the wine bottles and let them drain and dry. One product that works perfect for drying is a Bottle Tree. Just as the name sounds, it is a single column with pegs. Each peg holds a wine bottle. Not only is it handy it’s also a great space-saver.

It should also be noted that the traditional solution of sodium metabisulfite and water can be used for sanitizing wine bottles, but only if the wine bottles are new, or the wine bottles were washed right after being emptied. Cruddy, scavenged wine bottles with “questionable backgrounds” should always be treated with a cleanser similar to the three mentioned earlier, not sodium metabisulfite.
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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.

I am currently fermenting a 5 to 6-gallon batch of wine from fresh raspberries, and still have the pulp in a straining bag in the plastic fermenter. SG about 1.045. Can I make a second wine from this pulp? Please explain how, and the ingredients/amounts.

Sam K.
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Hello Sam,

What you are referring to is a process called making seconds. This is where you take the spent pulp from a fermentation and use it to make a second wine. It is a practice that is mostly related to making wine from grapes, not raspberries or any other kind of fruits. There is a reason for this…

When you make wine using actual wine grapes, you are using around 80 pounds of grapes for every 5 gallons of wine. When making wine from raspberries and most all other fruits, you are using somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 to 20 pounds for every 5 gallons of wine. There is a lot less pulp involved in the later case. This smaller amount is typically not enough pulp to go around for a second batch of wine, whereas with grapes you’ll have quite a bit of pulp. The picture above shows a winery dispensing the grape pulp after fermentation.

Yes, you could use the spent raspberry pulp to make a second wine, smaller batch – say, one or two gallons. Only you can make a decision as to whether or not it is worth your time and effort.

How To Make Second Wines

All you need to do to make a second wine is to:

1. Take the pulp and add water until you reach the desired batch size – usually the same size as the original batch.

2. Use a wine hydrometer to determine how much sugar to add to the wine must to achieve the desired alcohol level.

3. Add acid blend to the wine must based on acid test readings taken with an acid testing kit. The directions that come with the acid testing kit will help you to determine how much acidity your wine should have.

4. Add a dose of yeast energizer to the must. Follow the amount that is recommended on the jar it came in.

5. Add the wine yeast – preferably a Champagne-type wine yeast. Go through all the fermentation stages just like you did with the first run and you’ll have your second run wine. If you need directions on how to make the wine, you can use the 7 Easy Steps To Making Wine that is listed on our website.

And that’s how to make a second wine. It should be noted that the wine will be harsh directly after the fermentation, but will improve remarkable after a month or two of aging.

Best Wishes,
Ed Kraus
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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.

Do you have any information on how to fix a stuck fermentation or should I dump this batch of wine out?

Name: A. J.
State: WI
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Hello A J,

Having a stalled or stuck fermentation is a problem that can happen from time to time, particularly when making wine from fresh fruits. But having a stuck fermentation does not mean that the wine is ruined or has gone bad. It just means that the environment in which the wine yeast currently is in is not suitable for a continued fermentation.

If you have a fermentation that has stalled, the first thing you need to do is take a hydrometer reading to confirm that the fermentation is, in fact, stuck and not simply done already. While the typical fermentation will carry on for one, sometimes two, weeks, we have seen fermentations finish as quickly as 3 days. By taking a hydrometer reading you can confirm whether or not there are still sugars in the wine that need to be fermented.

If the hydrometer indicates that all the sugars are gone, then the fermentation is done, regardless of how many days it has been fermenting. You do not have a stuck fermentation. There is no reason to add more sugar or more wine yeast. This solution to the problem is to simply move on to the next step of the wine making process as listed in any wine recipe you are following.

If you do find that you have a stuck fermentation, your job as a winemaker is to figure out why – to figure out what caused the stuck fermentation. There are many reasons why this problem can occur: the wine must’s temperature is too cool, or there’s too much alcohol already in the wine for the yeast to continue, etc.

Because there are several potential reasons for a fermentation to become stuck, we have put together The Top 10 Reasons For A Fermentation Failure. It goes over the 10 most common reasons for having a stuck fermentation – from the most likely to the least likely. There are other reasons besides these 10, but in our experience, these 10 causes cover well over 95% of the stuck or non-start fermentations we run across.

Once you know the cause of a stuck fermentation then you will know how to fix the stuck fermentation. Most of the 10 reasons have very simple solutions that involve simple techniques to remedy. The trick is to determine what caused the problem before trying to fix it.

As a final note, realize that a stuck fermentation is not the end of your wine. It is only a delay in the wine making process, a challenge to be overcome. Once the problem is fixed, the fermentation will start up again and your wine will turn out just as nothing ever happened.

Happy Winemaking,
Ed Kraus
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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.