Newbrew12
Well-Known Member
I am going to start a 5g batch of grapefruit wine adapted from Jack Keller's recipe on his site. I don't know what it is, but the grapefruits that are available right now are some of the best I have ever had with absolutely no bitterness and I have always wanted to, and am very excited to get this started this weekend.
My plan is to do a master batch of 5g and then when the time to transfer to secondary comes around, break it up into three different secondaries and try a couple things. One will be standard, follow the recipe word for word, and the other two I want to oak. I was thinking of doing one batch with American oak chips and the second with French to observe the difference. My other thought was to try the same style of chips with the addition at various times. And my last option is to use the same style oak chips at the same time while back sweetening one and letting the other stay dry.
I have heard that certain fruits wines do better being oaked than others and to me, the characters that are said to be imparted sound like they'd balance well with the grapefruit flavor.
I've never oaked a wine before so I don't know the ins and outs. Does adding it at a certain time matter? Should I add at the first secondary transfer, 3rd, 4th, last, etc...? My wines have usually taken 4-5 rackings (sometimes 6) as I like to let it clear naturally. Does the amount of oak added matter? Originally I was going to put it in a couple small barrels but I don't want to mess it up with dealing with small size barrels for now so I'll definitely use the chips and I'm leaning towards the French chips instead of the American.
Anyway... any suggestions would be great!
My plan is to do a master batch of 5g and then when the time to transfer to secondary comes around, break it up into three different secondaries and try a couple things. One will be standard, follow the recipe word for word, and the other two I want to oak. I was thinking of doing one batch with American oak chips and the second with French to observe the difference. My other thought was to try the same style of chips with the addition at various times. And my last option is to use the same style oak chips at the same time while back sweetening one and letting the other stay dry.
I have heard that certain fruits wines do better being oaked than others and to me, the characters that are said to be imparted sound like they'd balance well with the grapefruit flavor.
I've never oaked a wine before so I don't know the ins and outs. Does adding it at a certain time matter? Should I add at the first secondary transfer, 3rd, 4th, last, etc...? My wines have usually taken 4-5 rackings (sometimes 6) as I like to let it clear naturally. Does the amount of oak added matter? Originally I was going to put it in a couple small barrels but I don't want to mess it up with dealing with small size barrels for now so I'll definitely use the chips and I'm leaning towards the French chips instead of the American.
Anyway... any suggestions would be great!