Experienced homebrewer trying wine making for first time, needs advice

[stealthfixr]

I've been brewing for many years. While my early results were okay, I've grown with homebrewing to the point where my beer results are earning medals. However, my early attempts, many years ago, with plastic buckets and such to make wine has been less than stellar. My wife is the wine drinker and has not liked a bottle of the two wine batches I did 3-5 years ago. My homebrewing equipment has upgraded to all stainless conicals and a glycol chiller for temp control. I primarily keg, but still have a bottle filler and corker. I'd really like to make a batch of wine my wife will love!

I bought a Sauvignon Blanc kit from Wine Co, which is my wife's favorite style of wine. I plan to start this next weekend in my Spike CF-10 SS Conical, then transfer to 'something'. I've read through the instructions and still have a few questions for the experienced wine makers out there:

- I use RO water for brewing, adding brewing salts to specific water profiles. RO can kill yeast without some brewing salts being added, I am just unsure what water profile to try and replicate with Brewfather. Any advice?

- I plan to transfer after a primary in the Spike CF-10 SS conical into some vessel. Could be kegs, could be a plastic bottling bucket, could be a Spike Flex. Or, if I dump the yeast from the bottom of the CF-10, do I need to transfer at all?

- I normally spund my conicals at the end of fermentation up to about 10psi, so that when I cold crash I keep positive pressure in an O2 free environment. I assume none of these techniques are useful here correct? Don't want to make this sparkling wine, I think.

- Degassing...I have a Norcal SS mash paddle that I connect to a drill for doughing-in grains with homebrewing. It is stainless and can easily be sanitized. Sounds like a good degasser, right? Any degassing tips?

- Are kegs an option if I keep them O2 purged but no head pressure? Could put CO2 on to dispense, then disconnect and depressurize? Or, is bottles just easier?

- Temperature control during fermentation...I have a glycol chiller and coils that go into my Spike conicals. The yeast is Lalvin EC-1118, and I do not see anything about optimum fermentation temperatures. I live in SoAZ, so ambient in my house is about 75F. Is there a temp I should hold the primary fermentation at? Secondary?

- I use Tilt hydrometers to monitor my beer fermentations, and I plan to use one with this wine for tracking and knowing when the primary is truly over. Any tips here?

- Any other tips or techniques to make this wine batch the best it can be? Any and all help greatly appreciated!!

 

[stealthfixr]

Bump…appreciate any advice here.

 

[Raptor99]

I have never made beer, but I have read enough about it to know that there are significant difference between brewing and making wine. I will try to address some of your questions.

Most home wine makers do primary fermentation in a food grade bucket covered by a towel. In the early stages, yeast need some O2.That makes it easy to stir twice a day. Then when fermentation is mostly done, around SG 1.010, rack into a carboy and put on an airlock. From this point on, you should try to minimize oxygen exposure. So it is best to use a carboy with a narrow neck. filled nearly to the top so that there is very little headspace.

For wine, you do not need to balance the mineral content to a specific target. Just use filtered water with a good flavor and you should be fine. If you use RO water, you will need to add back minerals that are needed by the yeast, but I have no experience with that. Going that route seems to make it more complicated than it needs to be.

Wine is not as sensitive to O2 as beer, so I don't think you need to purge with CO2. But you should add Kmeta each time you rack it.

You can age wine in kegs, but if they are under pressure with CO2 it will end up carbonated. I know that some winemakers use Nitrogen to dispense wine, but I don't have any experience with that. Many wines need to age a year or two, so you probably don't want to tie up your kegs for that long. That is probably one of the biggest differences between wine and beer. Wine need to age to be any good. The aging time depends on several factors. For some fruit wines 6 months is adequate, but for others such as elderberry you need at least 2 years of aging for optimal flavor. High tannin wines need a longer aging time. You can age in carboys and/or bottles. I usually leave my wines in carboys for at least 6-8 months before I bottle them.

Sauvignon Blanc does not need to age as long as a red wine, so 6 months might be enough. The kits generally tell you that it can be ready to drink in a month or two, but the flavor will be much better if you age it. Maybe someone who makes Sauvignon Blanc can give you suggestions on aging.

The optimal temperature depends on the yeast, but generally I get good results from wine yeast by fermenting around 65-68 degrees F. Lower temperatures slows the fermentation, which helps to retain the fruit flavors. For secondary / bulk aging, it is also best to keep the temperature in this range if you can. But wine is pretty forgiving, so if you can't do that it will probably be okay.

 

[DuncB]

Bump…appreciate any advice here.

Sorry didn't get to this earlier.
I'm basically beer brewer but make wine kits for wife.

I use normal tap water and add some sodium metabisulphate to get rid of chlorine.

Ferment in conical, using temperature control. White cooler ferment than red so I go mid range on yeast recommendation for white and top end if red.

No pressure fermenting.

Drop the yeast out and add the other stuff as kit instructions. So no transfer to secondary.
Then drop out the fined product to basically leave bright wine.

I transfer to wine bags which can be sanitised and reused multiple times. I do add the kit recommendations of sodium metabisulphate to each bag and it keeps very well.
I use an ispindel to monitor and found fermentation finished a lot quicker than kit timing.
The fermentation is not as violent or with any krausen to speak of.
I just sprinkle the packet of yeast on the wine surface and do oxygenate even though dry yeast said not to need it. I also add some wine nutrients supplementary to what's probably in the kit.

 

[Richard Roehl]

For degassing, yes your mash paddle on an electric drill will work, but there are two things to consider:

1) I can't imagine this method is not introducing air into the finished product. You effectively create a vortex similar to a yeast starter on a stir plate. I'm not saying that it's going to ruin your wine, but fundamentally it's painful to watch that vortex while you're waiting for the CO2 to dissipate.

2) Depending on the amount of CO2 in the mixture, this could take 10 to 20 minutes to get the gas out. The simple test to see if you are done is to stop, put a small amount in a cup that you can create a seal over with the palm of your hand, shake, and then listen to how much gas hisses out when you break the seal between the cup and your palm. If you try this with some commercial wine, you will notice that there actually is a slight hiss even though you don't detect CO2 on your tongue. So, you don't need to degas 100%, just long enough that you don't bottle it while it is still noticeably "effervescent".

The alternative is to use a vacuum pump. The upsides are: 1) you can visually see the gas being drawn out of the wine and 2) no oxygen is introduced. As of this writing there is a 3.5 CFM pump on Amazon for $80 U.S. I think mine is 2.5 CFM and that is more than enough. The downside is that vacuum pumps don't store well. The internals will rust, especially if you accidentally pull some wine into it like I did. Make sure there is plenty of headspace in your vessel when you turn that pump on. Plenty of headspace would be equivalent to filling a 6.5-gallon carboy with only 5 gallons.

R-

 

[Brooothru]

I've been brewing for many years. While my early results were okay, I've grown with homebrewing to the point where my beer results are earning medals. However, my early attempts, many years ago, with plastic buckets and such to make wine has been less than stellar. My wife is the wine drinker and has not liked a bottle of the two wine batches I did 3-5 years ago. My homebrewing equipment has upgraded to all stainless conicals and a glycol chiller for temp control. I primarily keg, but still have a bottle filler and corker. I'd really like to make a batch of wine my wife will love!

I bought a Sauvignon Blanc kit from Wine Co, which is my wife's favorite style of wine. I plan to start this next weekend in my Spike CF-10 SS Conical, then transfer to 'something'. I've read through the instructions and still have a few questions for the experienced wine makers out there:

- I use RO water for brewing, adding brewing salts to specific water profiles. RO can kill yeast without some brewing salts being added, I am just unsure what water profile to try and replicate with Brewfather. Any advice?

- I plan to transfer after a primary in the Spike CF-10 SS conical into some vessel. Could be kegs, could be a plastic bottling bucket, could be a Spike Flex. Or, if I dump the yeast from the bottom of the CF-10, do I need to transfer at all?

- I normally spund my conicals at the end of fermentation up to about 10psi, so that when I cold crash I keep positive pressure in an O2 free environment. I assume none of these techniques are useful here correct? Don't want to make this sparkling wine, I think.

- Degassing...I have a Norcal SS mash paddle that I connect to a drill for doughing-in grains with homebrewing. It is stainless and can easily be sanitized. Sounds like a good degasser, right? Any degassing tips?

- Are kegs an option if I keep them O2 purged but no head pressure? Could put CO2 on to dispense, then disconnect and depressurize? Or, is bottles just easier?

- Temperature control during fermentation...I have a glycol chiller and coils that go into my Spike conicals. The yeast is Lalvin EC-1118, and I do not see anything about optimum fermentation temperatures. I live in SoAZ, so ambient in my house is about 75F. Is there a temp I should hold the primary fermentation at? Secondary?

- I use Tilt hydrometers to monitor my beer fermentations, and I plan to use one with this wine for tracking and knowing when the primary is truly over. Any tips here?

- Any other tips or techniques to make this wine batch the best it can be? Any and all help greatly appreciated!!

Similar family dynamic with the Spousal Unit being a wine lover/beer hater. I’ve made a metric crap ton of kit wines in the last 40+ years. Depending on the “kit”, they can produce very drinkable wines.

I usually go with the higher end offerings from WineXpert and RJS and usually follow the instructions fairly closely with a few minor tweaks: I take the published time frames for fermentation, etc., as ‘advisory’ in nature.

My primary fermenter is an SS BrewTech 7gal. Brew Bucket. I don’t rack until the wine tells me that it’s time to rack, at or near final gravity. Then I transfer to a glass carboy for stabilization and clarification. Glass can be dangerous but plastic is just asking for oxidation. After the wine is settled (at least a month in glass) I bottle with an automatic vacuum filler, which degasses while filling and virtually eliminates oxygen ingress.

For reds, I like to do extended aging before bottling (months, even a year or more) with oak spirals, once again in glass carboys. I currently have four reds that have been bulk aging for well over a year.

We’re frequent visitors to wineries from Virginia to California, and enjoy many styles and varietals. I can honestly say (without too much self-aggrandizement) that many of my wines are quite enjoyable, at a fraction of the cost of commercial wines. After all, they all start from grapes picked at those same vineyards. The heavy lifting has already been done for you.

 

[Raptor99]

When degassing, the key is to stir it gently so that you don't introduce much oxygen. If it creates a vortex, you are stirring too hard. I use a drill mounted degassing paddle like this: https://www.amazon.com/Fermtech-Stainlesss-Degassing-Attachment-Paddles-Mixing/dp/B0BXHYGNDD/

For wines that require a longer period of bulk aging, it is not necessary to do anything special. It will gradually degas if you leave it in the carboy for 6 months or longer.

I use a AIO wine pump to rack my wine between carboys and when bottling, so that will naturally degas the wine.

 

[madscientist451]

I'd really like to make a batch of wine my wife will love!

- Any other tips or techniques to make this wine batch the best it can be? Any and all help greatly appreciated!!

You are way overthinking this and are skipping the most important part: the grapes.
Yeah, you can make all kinds of wines with kits but why bother when you are so close to the California wine grape growing region? I did a quick search and found a supplier in Phoenix that has buckets of wine juice called the Peddler's Son, there may be others and maybe something closer to you.
Anyway, you don't need a conical or any complicated stuff to make wine from buckets of juice. The juice comes in a 6 gallon bucket, split it up between 2 carboys, toss in the yeast of choice and the wine makes itself. 75 degrees F is a little high, low 60's or high 50's would be a better temperature. When its done, let it settle and clarify 60-90 days and then rack it off the sediment to another carboy. I put my white wine out on the porch for the early part of the winter here (low 30s temp) and the wine clears some more. Its ready to drink about 6 months later, but I usually wait a year or more since I have a large inventory.
Some wine makers will add sulphite before pitching yeast but I usually only add it when racking. I don't test for PH or do any additions, the wine is what it is, I make adjustments by blending with other
wine I have. So get a bucket of Sauvignon Blanc but also consider making another variety in case you want to do some blending. You can also blend with cheaper wine they sell at the store by the gallon.
Note that most commercial wines are blended, they don't have to disclose how much of Sav. Blanc is actually in the bottle although some producers do disclose that.
I also make wine from grapes I get from a local grower and I can get west coast grapes here in PA as well, but the buckets of juice are fine and much easier to deal with.