Getting back into wine making again [Archive]

Blackwater

07-17-2016, 03:14 PM

My cousin came back home from overseas in the SE Asia area after 30+ years in that area as an English teacher/tutor and interpreter. He's led a very interesting life, but on getting back, after his Mom died, he got her old home place, and they had @ 100 blueberry bushes. He's been picking and selling them locally and to various farmer's markets, and wants to make some wine. I have enough big carboys to make 28 gal. at a time. I need to get them out and get them cleaned up again, and some of the wine bottles I have in a couple of big plastic trash cans. And I've forgotten how much sugar to put into the mix. Got some campden tablets and good, established packets of yeast. I never used all the other stuff they had, so don't plan to now, but I'm open to instruction. An old buddy of mine and I made gallons and gallons of it from all sorts of fruits for over 20 years, but I lost the incentive when he moved to north Ga., near where he was originally from.

I like my wines moderately dry. Tends to make food taste better, generally. We're doing blueberries first, but I want to make some cranberry wine too, for Thanksgiving and Christmas. If you've never had any cranberry wine, and like making wines, you might want to try it. It comes out the prettiest, clearest red color you could imagine! And it's really good with turkey n' fixins' too! At least it is to me and my taste buds. I've always given away 90+% of the wine I've made, and when I quit making it, some folks actually got mad at me! And one was a Jehovah's Witness, and a devout one, too! Had several others as well, who snubbed me when I quit, and none had any sort of problem with alcohol. It was a much appreciated Thanksgiving and Christmas gift. Oh well, can't please everybody, I guess???

I'm thinking 1.5-2 lbs. of sugar to a 6.5 gal. carboy? Does that sound right to you guys???? It's been long enough I just can't remember, and I know there are many recipes on line, but I prefer to get my advice from folks I know and trust. Any help would be appreciated, and thanks ahead of time.

DerekP Houston

07-17-2016, 03:42 PM

No idea but I just traded a gaming pc to a coworker for his entire brew set so I'll stay tuned and see how yours comes out. I'm going with 2 batches of mead to start with, one regular and the other apple cider.

I know my dad tried it a few times, I might see if he still has some equipment I can liberate as well.

Best of luck.

farmerjim

07-17-2016, 03:49 PM

Use a starting specific gravity of about 1.08.

WebMonkey

07-17-2016, 04:11 PM

3/4 cup sugar per gallon when I make apple cider.
Good luck.

Eddie2002

07-17-2016, 06:38 PM

I've been making mead and wine for about ten years now and use about 1 pound of sugar per gallon for a medium dry fruit wine. If you don't have a hydrometer then you can start low and add sugar as you go. A lot depends on the type of yeast you are using and the target alcohol content you want in the finished wine. Two pounds of sugar for 6 1/2 gallons sounds a little light for a good wine unless you are using a lot of blueberries.
I did a medium sweet cranberry mead two years ago, boy did it turn out good. Have fun with it.

Moonie

07-17-2016, 09:21 PM

You really need a hydrometer otherwise you are just guessing. Most wines are around 11-13%. For my wines and meads I target about 12%.

Blackwater

07-17-2016, 10:41 PM

I think I still have a hygrometer, but we honestly never used it. My buddy and I made wines of all types for a little over 20 years, and not one batch turned to vinegar. I always attributed that to keeping everything chemically clean, and using the campden tablets to kill any yeast on the pulp of the berries we used, and then reintroducing a known good yeast into the mix. We sure made some awfully good wines! We had "black" and "white" grapes (muscadines and scuppernongs) and one vine of purple grapes. Those purple ones made the very BEST wind I've ever had! We put a pinch in some before corking the bottle, and they came out sparkling, and VERY good!

Pear wine is really good for a fruity tasting sweet wine. It's ready to drink as soon as it's bottled. Best we ever made in the non-grape category was probably plum wine, but you really have to with until the fruit is completely 100% ripe or it has a "twang" that's not quite "right" to it. Aging for 3-7 years will deal with the 'twang' but it's really hard to hide it from myself that long. Apple wine is really good, too. A little "fruity" and just a bit tart, depending on the apples you use. We always used the "horse apples" that grew profusely in his back yard, the plums and grapes that grew in mine, and whatever else we came up with and thought we'd try, just for kicks and giggles.

Good grape wines can be had pretty cheap now, and we gravitated mostly away from the grapes into various fruits.

Does anyone have a good recipe and technique for watermellon wine? That's the only type we never got right. There's some sort of "secret" to it, apparently, that we missed in our efforts. I still have some that's 15 years old, and I need to pour it out now. It's got an awful, musty sort of taste and smell. Just awful! That's our only failure in 20 years of wine making, but keep everything scrupulously clean and use the campden tablets to kill the natural yeasts, and come back in 24 hours with a known good yeast, and it's really pretty easy. Like all "cooking" though, it's how much of what ingredients that always make the crucial differences.

Can't wait to try the first batch!

KLR

07-17-2016, 11:36 PM

I'm thinking 1.5-2 lbs. of sugar to a 6.5 gal. carboy? Does that sound right to you guys????

Like all "cooking" though, it's how much of what ingredients that always make the crucial differences.

How long is a piece of string? It varies depending on what you need.

Same with sugar. How ripe/sweet is your fruit? How much are you using? How much alcohol do you want in the finished wine?

You really need to measure the S.G. and add as much sugar as it takes to get what you want if you want consistent, repeatable results.

MaryB

07-18-2016, 12:06 AM

www.northernbrewer.com has some good videos and beer and wine making.

Blackwater

07-18-2016, 08:42 AM

Thanks Mary. And I understand, KLR. The yeast eats the sugar and gives off alcohol. But when the alcohol level gets to a certain point, it kills off the yeast, stopping the generation of alcohol, and thus, limiting the alcohol level to under 15% usually. I've heard of adding rice and other things, like raisins to the mix, to get the alcohol level up, but we never did that, or at least I didn't. I was much more interested in taste and experimenting than I was in alcohol content. If I wanted alcohol content, I'd have set up a still! And anyway, I can't take that much alcohol any more, but a little seems to be a good thing, and helpful. I'm satisfied with that. I kinda' have to be.

And with respect to the ripeness of the fruit, I let them set out until they got fully ripe. Any "greenness" tends to give the wine a tart flavor. I like the mellower taste of fully ripe fruit, with no tartness involved. The tartness tends to dissipate with aging, but it's hard to let that stuff age! What can I say? I can resist most anything except temptation! Especially when it tastes good!

It's a shame the memory went south with my youth! Thanks to all.

DerekP Houston

07-18-2016, 08:48 AM

if I recall correctly, the winery I worked at way back when used a different strain of yeast for the stronger varieties.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saccharomyces_bayanus

That appears to sound like what they used, I was just sales though I didn't work the line or help the brewing. I recall it was siphoned from the first tank and another dose of sugar and yeast went back in to make the port stronger. We also cheated on making the "late harvest" varieties as I saw fork lift loads of sugar used all the time ;).

Most of the harvesting was done by mechanical means so you had underripe and overripe fruit all mixed together in the tank. Personally I would follow your route and just use ripe fruit. Tastes the best to me anyways.

EMC45

07-18-2016, 09:09 AM

The last wine I made was with Publix apple juice in the gallon jug. It was "All Natural" with nothing added and I would use Fleichmann's yeast packet (for bread) and 2 cups sugar for each gallon made. I concocted my own airlock and would let it ferment about 8 days until all the bubbles stopped and I would rack it a few times and let it sit in the fridge a few days before "tasting" any of it. It was potent! Very much so.

Blackwater

07-18-2016, 08:51 PM

One very funny story about wine: My father in law was like a 2nd father to me. He was one of the 61st SeaBees in WWII, the ones who built the air strip on Midway Isl, and did a whole lot of the building in the Pacific campaign, sometimes while under sniper fire. For his and my MIL's 50th wedding anniv., I got my wife to "steal" some old pics from their lives, including WWII combat pics, and took slide pics of the old snapshots. Then I put them together in an old slide projector, and we had about 50 people in their home when I showed the pics, and narrated from a strip specifically addressing each pic and the circumstances of each one. Let's just say I kind'a roasted him, but everyone there had a wonderful time seeing the old pics, and having ol' Auby roasted. It went over extremely well with all. Both MIL and FIL had gone into this as grudgingly as they could, but after the slide show, they thoroughly enjoyed it.

Those old SeaBees met annually since the end of WWII, and in time, their numbers dwindled as they gradually died off. My FIL planted and grew a bunch of really good grape vines, and he decided to make some wine. His always came out WAY too sweet for me, but he took a couple of cases of it to the next year's SeaBee reunion. They always invited the widows of their comrades, and they were very prim and proper ladies, and very much ladies in the truest sense of the word. Well, they may have been ladies, but they were genuinely human, and all humanity makes mistakes. They tried some of the wine from my FIL, at his insistence, and found they really liked the taste of it. Not too long afterward, he looked over to see how they were doing, and they were all standing there with neat little smiles on their faces, swaying too and fro like trees in the wind. In the enclosed ball room, though, there WAS no wind. They apparently didn't drink much, and it kind'a got to them. I suspect it was aspirins all around for them the next day.

Those were some great old men, and their widows were grand ladies, each and every one of them. I miss those kinds of folks. My wife and I got to serve them when they had one of their reunions here. You've never seen a bunch of old men and women have a finer time! I'll always remember that as one of my most memorable occasions. It's a real honor to serve folks like that. I just wish we still had them here. And believe it or not, those ladies asked him the next year if he'd brought "any more of that good wine you make?" These were no shy shrinking violets! [smilie=l:

44man

07-19-2016, 09:06 AM

Great story. Honor of the greatest too.

Ballistics in Scotland

07-19-2016, 10:28 AM

You do need a hydrometer, unless you are a,d sjexactly what has worked before. The simplest to use is one which has a scale in % potential alcohol. For example if you have juice which reads 14% potential alcohol before fermentation, that means it has quite a lot of sugar. Ferment that down to 2% and you have a wine with 12% alcohol, but en bough sugar to stop it being undesirably sour. If it measures only specific gravity, 1.1 to 1.13 is pretty good, and should reduce to about .95. That reading of potential alcohol may be slightly distorted by any other constituents that alter the specific gravity, but not by much.

Fermentation stops for one of three reasons. One is that the yeast runs out of sugar and dies of starvation/ This gets the maximum strength but a tendency to sourness. Another is that it builds up enough alcohol to die of alcoholic poisoning, just like anyone else can, and leaves some excess sugar. how much alcohol this is depends on the strain of yeast you use. Some special wine yeasts can give much higher strength than others. The third is that you stop the fermentation at the point of your choice, with the right balance of alcohol and sugar. You do with what in the UK are termed Camden tablets, though I don't know about the US. Various water purification tablets might do it.

Then there is the question of where the sugar comes from. People do make "wine" entirely out of commercial cane sugar, which in the Middle East is the usual start for illicit distilling. But you get a far better product from the natural sugars contained in the grapes or other fruit. I would always want to add the minimum of granulated sugar. In fact when I had supermarket grape juice with a potential alcohol of only around 9%, I boiled it to strengthen the solution rather than add any.

Blackwater

07-19-2016, 11:28 AM

Thanks, guys. All this stuff is really interesting. Sure makes it easy to understand why there's so many labels out there, doesn't it? And just about all of it is good. My cousin is approaching it from a viewpoint that everything has to be weighed out very precisely, but I learned long ago that's just not so. Yes, it does affect the quality, taste and alcohol content, but it's really pretty easy to make wine. In fact, if you keep everything scrupulously clean, it's really pretty hard to NOT wind up with some kind of wine. One's initial efforts are adjusted by regulating the amt. of fruit and sugar that's put in. Other than that, the rest is what tends to get as technical or non-technical as you want it to.

If anyone here has never made any, it's a good skill to learn, and your first efforts should be pleasing, even if not quite what you thought you wanted. Just keep everything really clean, use a vapor lock (I always just used a tight cork in the top, with clear plastic hose running out and into an empty bottle half full of water) so no airborne yeasts or other stuff that might ruin the batch gets in. Deciding how much fruit and sugar to put in is the biggest part of the whole thing. And that can be readily and easily regulated in subsequent batches.

My old buddy I made wine with for so many years had made his own alcoholic refreshments back in college. We didn't have much "pocket money" back then, and he liked to party, so .... he made his own beer and wine. The ingenuity of college kids always exceeds their pocketbooks! Once we got into it, it was really pretty easy to make some very good wines. We started with the grapes from the vines my grandfather planted on the farm 100 years previously, but other fruits were more easily available - the plums in my back yard and horse apples in his - and we branched out, and had an awful lot of fun in the process. That cranberry wine, though, was really special. We got it just sweet enough and just dry enough that it REALLY made Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners really special, and gee golly wow did it go good with the usual turkey, dressing, etc.! Just like cranberry sauce, only better. And that beautiful wonderfully clear red color just added to the air of festivity. I highly recommend you try it if you get a chance. I think you'll be pleased, but then, that's why wines come in so many delicately subtle varieties.

My own experience would be to stay away from watermelon wine, though. Has anyone made any successfully? The guy I got the campden tablets, etc. from in Savannah had the same experience I did, but said a neighbor of his, a "little old lady," made her first wine from watermelons, and said it came out fine! Obviously, there's some "secret" to making watermelon wine that I have yet to discover. Anybody have a good recipe for it?

DerekP Houston

07-19-2016, 11:31 AM

I'm gonna give it a try...need some more hobbies to keep my hands busy and myself out of trouble.

JonB_in_Glencoe

07-19-2016, 11:47 AM

SNIP...
And with respect to the ripeness of the fruit, I let them set out until they got fully ripe. Any "greenness" tends to give the wine a tart flavor. I like the mellower taste of fully ripe fruit, with no tartness involved. The tartness tends to dissipate with aging, but it's hard to let that stuff age!

I was gonna suggest that blueberries (at least the blueberries grown in MN), are fairly low in acid, especially when fully ripe, and I prefer wines with some acid bite to them (like a Pinot Gris). So I was gonna suggest adding lime or lemon or even food grade citric acid powder. But with what you said above, I guess you'll be going a different route.

One of my concocted homestyle wine recipes is a Beetwine, but there is NO acidity in Beets, so I added Gooseberries (a type of current), they are extremely tart...until they are fully ripe, then not so much, I use them at half ripeness. I called it Goozbeit wine. Here is the recipe and notes from a batch I made in 2009.
=====================
Goozbeit
5 gallon bucket of Beets cleaned and sliced thin (like scalped potatoes)
1lb 11oz lite DME
7lb 14oz table sugar
12lb Gooseberrys
1/8 tsp vegemite
Muntons ale yeast cake off Apple cider

covered beets in brewpot w/filtered Glencoe tap water.
Heat up to 160 deg. and hold til cooked tender (about 40 min).
strain out liquid and throw away Beets (you can eat them too, if you like)
Add DME slowly, once disolved add sugar, once disolved then measure G=1.
Heat back up to 160 deg.
Add wort chiller, Gooseberrys, heat back to 160 deg. and hold for 20 min.
NEW THIS YEAR, I ran the gooseberrys through a food mill, then add vegemite,
heat back to 160 deg.
Chill to 73 deg, strain and aerate
Yield was 5.0 gallons, OG=1.102
Threw yeast 3:00 PM

https://scontent-ord1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/1919346_1260189948848_5868933_n.jpg?oh=7d075f38286 ac307341ec75e9c30dbb3&oe=582FF3E7

BTW, this recipe has become almost world famous, due to a UK friend of mine putting the recipe in his book, "Booze for free"
https://www.amazon.com/Booze-Free-Andy-Hamilton/dp/1905811705

Blackwater

07-19-2016, 05:58 PM

Jon, that's a great looking wine! I'm betting it tastes nothing like beets, right? It's amazing what some wines come out tasting like. One book we once had listed a recipe for onion wine, and in the comments, it said not to tell folks what the wine was made of until AFTER they'd tasted it. I've never tried that one, but I'd still like to some time. I'm betting the Vidalia sweet onions might make a really good one?

And your idea of the lemon or lime is interesting to me. With wines, the littlest things can make a difference in the taste of the wine, and you have me intrigued now. There's no end to the learning about wine making, it seems. Always things to learn. I like that in my pursuits. It seems I'm never quite happy unless I'm pursuing some sort of knowledge and skill and more understanding. Now that I'm retired, it's become a full time job for me. I just wish I were smarter!!! But I have a good time, anyway. That's the key for me.

roysha

07-19-2016, 07:07 PM

The Wife and I have been making wine for about 15 years. We make primarily Elderberry wine. Our EBs are the blue type, sambucus cerulean, not the sambucus nigra or Canadensis, which are the more common, better known EB. EBs have very little sugar so we have to add quite a bit. Our favorite is to use the dried EBs which we reconstitute with boiling water. The fruit is not boiled just the boiling water added. I don't know the whys and wherefores but it makes a very different wine than fresh or frozen berries.
We use K-meta instead of Camden tablets and we only use it on the initial setting of the wine to kill any stray yeast that may have survived the boiling water.
We used to add lemon juice but it seemed it took forever for the acidity to mellow and sometimes I don't think it ever did.
What the folks said about a hydrometer is, in our opinion, very correct.
Our favorite yeast is Lalvin RC 212. It is good to about 15-16% but does require adding yeast nutrient and yeast energizer, perhaps because of the EBs lack or perhaps that is just what it is. It also is very low in formation of SO2 and H2S which can REALLY screw up a batch of wine.
We usually throw in 4-6 ounces of toasted Oak chips during the initial fermentation and a couple of cans of concentrate frozen grape juice.
I am pretty much with your cousin. Precise records are easy to keep and while flying by the seat of your pants is fun, it is disappointing when you have a really good batch and can't remember how you made it. If you saw my records, you would probably laugh yourself silly. Pages and pages of details from day one till the bottles are empty. We have made some really good and some not so good, (read that undrinkable) wines and I have been able to go back to the recipe and either mark it unfit or be able to duplicate it. Yes, I know it is virtually impossible for hobbyists to absolutely duplicate batch after batch but we can come fairly close, all things being equal.
We keep around 35-40 gallons in various stages going all the time.
Actually I'm a beer guy so we also keep 25-30 gallons of pale ale in various stages plus an occasional IPA, PORTER, STOUT, or some other concoction that I'm moved to brew at the moment. It is just as much fun and the results are consumable MUCH sooner than waiting for the wine to mature.
My experience with watermelon wine parallels yours. BAD! Haven't met anyone yet that has been successful at it but I'm sure there are folks that can, and do, make watermelon wine. Why else would there be a song about it?[smilie=l:

One last note. We ferment our wine to dry. Bottle it, age it and when we serve it we sweeten it back with an invert sugar syrup I make. My Wife prefers sweet and I prefer just off dry so it makes it simple to have one bottle (or 2) of wine please both of us. Also, we don't have the hassle of adding K-Sorbate and hoping the fermentation doesn't restart in the bottle. Exploding wine bottles are NOT fun!! Somehow the glass gives before the cork goes. Never figured that out but I do know it for a fact.

JonB_in_Glencoe

07-19-2016, 08:38 PM

watermelon wine...
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention. I have made it twice. Both times, it turned out like a French (Burgundy?) white wine I had at a wine tasting years earlier. Everyone raved about it, said it was complex, some words to describe it was barnyard and horse leather...Yep, that's what it tasted like and smelled like, and that's what my watermelon wine tasted like also.

Blackwater

07-19-2016, 10:50 PM

Well, that makes 3 of us now. You, me and the guy in Savannah I got my supplies from. I still have some of that watermelon wine I made, and after 20 years, it's STILL so musty I wouldn't EVER take a sip. Just thought it'd keep the wine bottles clean to leave 'em in and corked up. I need to pour it out after 20+ years of "aging," but it's SO bad I hate facing the smell! Maybe I should give it to someone I don't like? :bigsmyl2:

MaryB

07-20-2016, 12:53 AM

Hydrometers are dirt cheap now, complete setup for $15 http://www.northernbrewer.com/brewery-essentials-gravity-testing-assembly brewing/wine making has come way down in price and you can do lab grade measurements that previously only the big boys could do.

Thanks, guys. All this stuff is really interesting. Sure makes it easy to understand why there's so many labels out there, doesn't it? And just about all of it is good. My cousin is approaching it from a viewpoint that everything has to be weighed out very precisely, but I learned long ago that's just not so. Yes, it does affect the quality, taste and alcohol content, but it's really pretty easy to make wine. In fact, if you keep everything scrupulously clean, it's really pretty hard to NOT wind up with some kind of wine. One's initial efforts are adjusted by regulating the amt. of fruit and sugar that's put in. Other than that, the rest is what tends to get as technical or non-technical as you want it to.

If anyone here has never made any, it's a good skill to learn, and your first efforts should be pleasing, even if not quite what you thought you wanted. Just keep everything really clean, use a vapor lock (I always just used a tight cork in the top, with clear plastic hose running out and into an empty bottle half full of water) so no airborne yeasts or other stuff that might ruin the batch gets in. Deciding how much fruit and sugar to put in is the biggest part of the whole thing. And that can be readily and easily regulated in subsequent batches.

My old buddy I made wine with for so many years had made his own alcoholic refreshments back in college. We didn't have much "pocket money" back then, and he liked to party, so .... he made his own beer and wine. The ingenuity of college kids always exceeds their pocketbooks! Once we got into it, it was really pretty easy to make some very good wines. We started with the grapes from the vines my grandfather planted on the farm 100 years previously, but other fruits were more easily available - the plums in my back yard and horse apples in his - and we branched out, and had an awful lot of fun in the process. That cranberry wine, though, was really special. We got it just sweet enough and just dry enough that it REALLY made Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners really special, and gee golly wow did it go good with the usual turkey, dressing, etc.! Just like cranberry sauce, only better. And that beautiful wonderfully clear red color just added to the air of festivity. I highly recommend you try it if you get a chance. I think you'll be pleased, but then, that's why wines come in so many delicately subtle varieties.

My own experience would be to stay away from watermelon wine, though. Has anyone made any successfully? The guy I got the campden tablets, etc. from in Savannah had the same experience I did, but said a neighbor of his, a "little old lady," made her first wine from watermelons, and said it came out fine! Obviously, there's some "secret" to making watermelon wine that I have yet to discover. Anybody have a good recipe for it?

MaryB

07-20-2016, 12:56 AM

Hmm I wonder if you could pickle the beets slices for beet relish? Add some onion, maybe red pepper...

I was gonna suggest that blueberries (at least the blueberries grown in MN), are fairly low in acid, especially when fully ripe, and I prefer wines with some acid bite to them (like a Pinot Gris). So I was gonna suggest adding lime or lemon or even food grade citric acid powder. But with what you said above, I guess you'll be going a different route.

One of my concocted homestyle wine recipes is a Beetwine, but there is NO acidity in Beets, so I added Gooseberries (a type of current), they are extremely tart...until they are fully ripe, then not so much, I use them at half ripeness. I called it Goozbeit wine. Here is the recipe and notes from a batch I made in 2009.
=====================
Goozbeit
5 gallon bucket of Beets cleaned and sliced thin (like scalped potatoes)
1lb 11oz lite DME
7lb 14oz table sugar
12lb Gooseberrys
1/8 tsp vegemite
Muntons ale yeast cake off Apple cider

covered beets in brewpot w/filtered Glencoe tap water.
Heat up to 160 deg. and hold til cooked tender (about 40 min).
strain out liquid and throw away Beets (you can eat them too, if you like)
Add DME slowly, once disolved add sugar, once disolved then measure G=1.
Heat back up to 160 deg.
Add wort chiller, Gooseberrys, heat back to 160 deg. and hold for 20 min.
NEW THIS YEAR, I ran the gooseberrys through a food mill, then add vegemite,
heat back to 160 deg.
Chill to 73 deg, strain and aerate
Yield was 5.0 gallons, OG=1.102
Threw yeast 3:00 PM

https://scontent-ord1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/1919346_1260189948848_5868933_n.jpg?oh=7d075f38286 ac307341ec75e9c30dbb3&oe=582FF3E7

BTW, this recipe has become almost world famous, due to a UK friend of mine putting the recipe in his book, "Booze for free"
https://www.amazon.com/Booze-Free-Andy-Hamilton/dp/1905811705

MaryB

07-20-2016, 01:00 AM

I think I have enough mulberries for a 5 gallon batch of wine... I need to get another fermenter(all 3 of mine always have beer in them...). From what I have heard mulberry wine can be some potent stuff due to the sugar level of the fruit...

Rustyleee

07-20-2016, 03:28 AM

I made some cider last year and I was told to use 2.5 lbs for the 6 gal fermenter I bought. I thought it turned out a little dry for me. I like more on the sweet side.
I've been thinking of trying some wine though. The store I purchased my stuff from told me the reason to measure is so you can repeat your successes.

JonB_in_Glencoe

07-20-2016, 11:01 AM

Hmm I wonder if you could pickle the beets slices for beet relish? Add some onion, maybe red pepper...
Oh, I'm sure you could...they taste real good after they've been cooked...The cooking only bumps the water/sugar level up about 7 points and Beets have soooo much flavor, the amount taken and imparted into the water only mellows the actual beets a little bit.

Ballistics in Scotland

07-26-2016, 05:34 AM

My experience with watermelon wine parallels yours. BAD! Haven't met anyone yet that has been successful at it but I'm sure there are folks that can, and do, make watermelon wine. Why else would there be a song about it?[smilie=l:

Well look at some of the other things there are songs about.

I think it is important to remember than you can't judge acidity simply by how acid a fruit tastes. A spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down, and an acid-tasting fruit may be quite adequate on sugar, but with a very high acid content - which may leave the wine strong but particularly acidic or astringent, but that is another problem. Conversely a lot less sugar than you need may still taste sweet, if there is an absence of acid. My guess is that watermelons may be the latter situation - or with them so cheap for a given amount of juice, in season, why wouldn't a lot more people be using them?

Boiling the juice down to a smaller volume may help, and it has another advantage. Traditionally winemaking originally relied on the natural yeasts found in the bloom on the grape skin. But harmful natural fungi and yeasts can get in by the same route. Boiling kills those. But you have to let it cool down to lukewarm before adding your own yeast, as higher temperatures will kill or prevent the action of that too.

You can even make your own simply hydrometer. It can be as simple as a plastic tube or drinking straw with a buckshot in one end. Just mark the waterline in pure water and/or a wine that is of the sweetness you want, using a DVD labeling pen, and if you don't plug the top glue on a thread to lower it in, so that liquid doesn't slop into the tube..

Provided that it is cylindrical, you can mark in any other specific gravity by calculation or by testing with a salt solution made up according to the table below. Or if you have been getting along with trial and error, mark the starting water-level in a juice that works for you.

http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=4&ved=0ahUKEwib56fC6JDOAhUkIMAKHa9WDrQQFggyMAM&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.alkar.com%2Fdownload%2Fpdf%2F Sodium%2520Chloride%2520Brine%2520Tables%2520for%2 52060F.pdf&usg=AFQjCNHE0sQ8akD3B5foCU610UwpbYyDWQ&sig2=MrY7AETUpbMUVpTST-mpGw

Blackwater

07-26-2016, 12:58 PM

Great resource, BinS. THANKS! I still doubt I'll use a hydrometer, though. Part of the fun of making it has always been the mystery and surprise and anticipation of it all. Just tends to make the work more worth while. And we were always lucky with the results, just from keeping everything so clean, I think, and killing the yeasts and funji as you note. I always used a simple tube (sterilized of course) into a wine bottle partially filled with good, clean water for my air lock. Worked great. And I guess I just kind'a like keeping it as simple as possible, and the surprise at the end.

I'm even tempted to try the watermelon wine again. I guess I can be a glutton for punishment, but Tom T. Hall wouldn't lie ..... would he? Love that old song. I'm considering using the rind and giving it at least a try. Haven't heard of anyone doing that, so can't help but wonder if that might not be the "secret" to making it? I'd think it would come out something akin to a Rhine wine maybe????

44man

07-29-2016, 12:47 PM

Don't try paw-paw wine! Stuff boiled out the lock to cover the floor with slime only cardboard could pick up. Took half a day to clean up. Stuff never tasted good either.

Blackwater

07-29-2016, 01:17 PM

Thanks for the tip, 44man. I and probably a lot of us would try to make wine out of all sorts of stuff, just to see what would happen.

And for y'all who use carboys, I wound up having to improvise and overcome to clean out my old jugs that had been stored in our utility bldg. for @ 15 years now. Big job to clean up! And not what we call "fun" usually. Could only find a short bottle brush, and that came from a dollar store. Nobody apparently uses them much. Have two long ones with twisted wire handles coming so I'll be able to bend them and scrub the inner sides of the carboys. They have to fit down inside the small hole in the top, so I looked in the hardware and other sections, and finally found two BBQ forks, a smaller one and a larger, longer one, and they worked out well. Used the smaller one by tying wash rags to the two prongs with nylon fly tying thread, bent the very ends of the tines inward so they wouldn't fall off. Took a knife and split the handles off, so I could chuck the handle end in an electric drill. The centrifugal force threw the rags out and did a FINE job of cleaning out the insides! Success! I love it when a plan comes together. Only problem was, with the smaller one with thinner wire shank and tines, the tines broke off. I'll get a friend to weld it back much more securely than it was when new. I think it cost me $1 or $2. No big loss if I can't use it again. The bigger one's tines are too wide to get into the bottle, so I had to take a hammer and reshape them to a narrower profile, so it'd get into the big jars. Haven't tried it yet, and may well have to get it welded too, in order for it to last. Just thought I'd pass this along.

Will be happy to get those long bottle brushes to clean with, but I'll keep these "just in case." I like the idea and what they did before the tines broke off. Really did a great job inside the jugs. Just thought I'd pass this on to any who encounter this same situation. I got two of the better designed bottle brushes in case one breaks or whatever. Haven't been able to find some of my old stuff, but still have the corker tool and some corks on the way.

Talked to my old friend up northward now (his back yard is the Chattahoochee River), and he and a couple of friends have been making wine in 100 gal. batches! He hasn't needed to make any for a couple of years now, and it gets to age a while that way. We both got kind'a excited and enthusiastic about making it again in our conversation. We really made some very nice wines, and we both miss them, him probably even more than me.

And BTW, have any of you ever heard of a dark purple grape with smooth skins that grows in big clusters? We used to have a vine of those behind our house for many, many years. My grandfather planted them and built the arbors for them. They were the walk under kind. We had 5 very large vines and folks came from all around the county to pick and eat them, and make jellies, etc. from them. Mom and Dad would have skinned my hide if I'd made wine with them back then! Mom cut them down before she passed on - one of the times when all I could do was just groan and bear it. I have some vines now from those grapes, though, that were from vines that my cousin grew from cuttings from them. Nothing like the amount we had growing up, but enough for a jug or maybe two. Scuppernong wine has never really thrilled me, but muscadine I really like. Everyone's taste is different. That's why we have thousands of commercial varieties, I guess. Sure is good to get back into this. It's the anticipation and temporary mystery that makes it fun.

What kinds of wines are y'all making, or planning on making this year?

jwhite

07-29-2016, 07:17 PM

I too have had trouble with watermelon wine and the only one i ever made that got dumped out! My favorite is rhubarb followed by cranberry, i make at least ten gallons of the rhubarb every year. Some others i have tried in addition the ones mentioned by others already are rose hip wine, ginger wine, and blackberry wine.

Blackwater

07-29-2016, 08:08 PM

Blackberry wine has always been one of my great favorites. Now that they're using so many herbacides, though, it's hard to find many around here, and they once were literally almost everywhere. Just took a blackberry pie I found by pure accident to the Senior's dinner at church yesterday. Most folks went for the cake, but there was only a little of it left. So many berries! So little time!

And I've thought about trying several varieties of berries at the same time. Will that work? Any reason it won't? I've never tried it, or even heard of it, but I couldn't help but wonder if the berries were mixed in the initial stage, what the wine might taste like. Anybody tried this?

DerekP Houston

07-29-2016, 08:19 PM

Apple cider mead is on my first list to try once I get the equipment. recipe is super simple and from the results I've sampled equally delicious and potent.

bangerjim

07-29-2016, 09:22 PM

I totally respect those that ferment wines and brew beers at home!!!!! I tried it several time in my younger daze and was a total failure! Even brewed up a batch "corn squeezins" in my parents basement! OMG!!!!! What a stinking mess!!!!! Made a pot still and everthing was a disaster.

Now (in my wiser olde age) I make only fine liqueurs........by using 95% Everclear alcohol and various select fruits and herbs. They turn out perfect ever time! (in fact, after typing this, I am going into my home bar and have a "sampling"!)

I now buy all my wines and beers at my local Total Wine & More! The wife is the wine (whine!) consumer around here. Sweet and semi-sweet.....not red or dry at all. For me, one sip of a blood red wine with heavy tannins gives me INSTANT heartburn! YUCK!

Give me a fine liqueur or good old bourbon any day! Praise the Lord for Pappy VanWinkle! And 18-25 year old Irish single malts. ("Whisky is the only reason the Irish do not rule the world"....sign in an Irish pub I visited over there).

I have several sachrometers in my antique scientific instrument collection.

Let us know how your latest batch of vino turns out@@@@@!

banger - (fine alcohol molecule aficionado)

kens

07-29-2016, 10:27 PM

I been making wine since last summer, started with a pear tree giving bountiful harvest. I needed about 2lbs sugar per gallon of crushed fruit, to get to a specific gravity of 1.100
This summer Im doing blueberries, and it still needs about 2lbs sugar per gallon for a reading of 1.100.
I am using wine yeast in all cases, and it has fermented to dryness under 1.000.
For pears I use about 4lbs fruit per gallon plus 2lb sugar.
For blueberries, cherries, grapes, about 3lbs per gallon plus 2lb sugar per gallon.
Because grapes have all the necessary nutrients & natural sugar to make yeast ferment well, it is a good thing to substitute 1lb of your fruit per gallon with grapes.
always use wine yeast for best results, and keep your equipment clean.

bangerjim

07-29-2016, 11:46 PM

And the Lord God said, "....let there be bountiful fruits of all sorts".......and man made it into hooch!!!!!!!!

Oh well.

Blackwater

07-30-2016, 06:35 AM

Jim, if it helps any, and you'd like to try again, try these recommendations:

1. Make SURE everything you use is clean and totally disinfected. Clorox is good for the final cleaning, but be sure it's rinsed out thoroughly (no smell remaining at all) before putting your fruit in.

2. Use campden tablets (sp?) to kill all the natural yeasts, molds and funji on the skins of the fruit. Some of these can cause your wine to go bad or turn it to vinegar (if it does, keep that vinegar! It's more expensive now, on average, than the wines!).

3. Come back after 24 hours with a known good yeast. You can use Fleishman's just like you'd use for rolls from the grocery store, but the various wine-making yeasts MIGHT (?) be a tad better.

4. Keep your airlock, whichever type you use, in place and don't let the air contaminate your wine as it's working.

These 4 things should help you get a very good result. Wine CAN, at least to some, tend to smell "bad" at certain stages, but I always liked the smell. I guess it was anticipation kicking in??? It's really pretty easy to make wine, but you DO have to be scrupulous about how you go about it. The rest is just nature taking its course. Simply leave a bunch of berries to itself and in the open, and it'll often turn to either wine or vinegar all on its own. It's controlling those natural processes, and keeping them from going awry, that the winemaker has to do. And that's mostly just keeping everything clean and sterile, and letting nature take its course. Hope this helps???

bangerjim

07-30-2016, 09:20 AM

Thanks. Our 5 grape vines at the back of the property have long finished production. I love just eating the white and red wine grapes we get.......at least B4 the birds find them! We have 2 whites, 1 red, and 2 table grape vines. None produced very well this year for some reason.

May try it next year! Remember.....our seasons are much earlier here in the desert SW!

Blackwater

07-30-2016, 04:17 PM

In my experience, grapes can be like that. I think the rains and when they come have a lot to do with their production. I think they'd fertilize them something like every other year. Water is the big factor, though, I think. Some of the more knowledgeable farmers and gardeners here can probably give better info on that than I can, though. If you feel froggy before then, do what I just did and go buy some juice and have at it. I got cranberry juice today. Thanksgiving should be especially good this year. I've always given 90% of the stuff I've made away. When I stopped making it, some of them got mad at me! I'd never realized how much it meant to them. I guess I have some amends to make now. It's a small pleasure of course, but who doesn't miss the small pleasures that come our way when they're gone? Got to go get some more things cleaned and ready, and maybe get some of it started. Now's when the anticipation and mystery starts!

Moonie

07-30-2016, 10:17 PM

Apple cider mead is on my first list to try once I get the equipment. recipe is super simple and from the results I've sampled equally delicious and potent.

I've made a mead like that, lots of cinnamon, tasted like apple pie, was one of my most requested ones.

MaryB

07-31-2016, 12:28 AM

Wine yeasts are very different from bread yeast! Spend the $3.99 a packet and control the final flavor! Some yeasts produce a drier wine, some can add some fruity ester alcohol notes etc.

I have 8 different yeasts in the fridge for beer making!

Blackwater

07-31-2016, 02:43 PM

I suspect you're right, Mary. All I know for sure is that using the natural yeasts on the hulls leaves the possibility that molds and funji might spoil the batch, and using the campden tablets to kill all that, and coming back with a good, known "safe" yeast tends, along with keeping everything sterile, tends to yield great results. All that's left is how much and how ripe the fruit is, and how much of it and the sugar we use. It's really not rocket science. It IS some work to git-r-done, though, but the anticipation, mystery and the "sweet taste of success" makes it all worth it, and then some!

I've never really tried to get into the science of it all, and just personally prefer the mystery and anticipation of doing it the simplest way possible. I admire those who really get into it deeply and work out the specifics. It's just not "my bag" these days, but hanging around you folks, that could change! It's hard to impossible to stay around here without learning a LOT of stuff!