Wine for Cheese

[Viirin]

I'm not ready to start it yet, not even a little, but a plan I have for the future is to make some homebrew wine for a fondue ingredient. Any suggestions on how I can begin to learn the basics of fermentation for this purpose?

 

[bernardsmith]

I would try to get hold of some old technology - you know - books that have been published through trade publishers. They tend to fact check and their editors tend to require the authors to test their recipes multiple times. In my opinion, one of the best wine making books is by Sheridan Warrick The Way to Make Wine, University of California Press. Your library may have this or be able to get a copy through ILL if they don't. This book focuses on grape wines.
Another good book is by CJJ Berry and his book focuses on country wines (wines made from fruit and flowers). First Steps in Wine Making. This was published by Argus Books in the 80's but it is still a solid read.
BUT to make wine you simply add appropriate yeast to fruit that you have crushed to expose the fruit inside the skin to the yeast, allow the yeast to ferment all the sugars in the fruit and then press the fruit to expel all the juice. You then allow that wine to quietly age for a few months and then bottle. You can make that process simpler by buying juice. And you can make this process less prone to chance by feeding the yeast nutrients (most fruit does not have enough nutrients for the yeast to ferment without creating some problems). And you can make the wines you make taste better by adding tannin and acidity if the fruit is short of either - and it often is. Wine is usually drunk when it is about 12% alcohol by volume (beer might be 3-5%) so you might need to add sugar to the fruit since most fruit has only about half the amount of sugar to ferment to that level of alcohol. (wine grapes being an exception).
If you want to experiment - even today, you might buy a gallon of Motts apple juice (it has no chemical preservatives that will kill yeast) and you might simply remove a cup of the juice and add a packet of wine yeast (yeast cultured by a lab for making wine) . Screw the cap on VERY loosely (or simply plug the mouth of the container with cotton wool and wait three weeks or so until the yeast has fermented all the sugar into alcohol. This will be bone dry (not at all sweet) so you may want to add some sugar to sweeten this (perhaps 4 oz) but if you simply add sugar to the gallon of cider you have made the yeast will ferment that too so you need to "stabilize" the beverage (usually with the addition of chemical stabilizers that prevent the yeast from reproducing and prevent them from continuing to ferment the available sugars. But in 3 weeks you will have made a low alcohol apple wine known as cider. It'll be about 5-6% alcohol by volume (ABV). But for the price of a gallon of Mott's you will have made a cider that is quite delicious. And you would have achieved this without any equipment or any real understanding of the processes involved

 

[user 246304]

I would try to get hold of some old technology - you know - books that have been published through trade publishers. They tend to fact check and their editors tend to require the authors to test their recipes multiple times. In my opinion, one of the best wine making books is by Sheridan Warrick The Way to Make Wine, University of California Press. Your library may have this or be able to get a copy through ILL if they don't. This book focuses on grape wines.
Another good book is by CJJ Berry and his book focuses on country wines (wines made from fruit and flowers). First Steps in Wine Making. This was published by Argus Books in the 80's but it is still a solid read.
BUT to make wine you simply add appropriate yeast to fruit that you have crushed to expose the fruit inside the skin to the yeast, allow the yeast to ferment all the sugars in the fruit and then press the fruit to expel all the juice. You then allow that wine to quietly age for a few months and then bottle. You can make that process simpler by buying juice. And you can make this process less prone to chance by feeding the yeast nutrients (most fruit does not have enough nutrients for the yeast to ferment without creating some problems). And you can make the wines you make taste better by adding tannin and acidity if the fruit is short of either - and it often is. Wine is usually drunk when it is about 12% alcohol by volume (beer might be 3-5%) so you might need to add sugar to the fruit since most fruit has only about half the amount of sugar to ferment to that level of alcohol. (wine grapes being an exception).
If you want to experiment - even today, you might buy a gallon of Motts apple juice (it has no chemical preservatives that will kill yeast) and you might simply remove a cup of the juice and add a packet of wine yeast (yeast cultured by a lab for making wine) . Screw the cap on VERY loosely (or simply plug the mouth of the container with cotton wool and wait three weeks or so until the yeast has fermented all the sugar into alcohol. This will be bone dry (not at all sweet) so you may want to add some sugar to sweeten this (perhaps 4 oz) but if you simply add sugar to the gallon of cider you have made the yeast will ferment that too so you need to "stabilize" the beverage (usually with the addition of chemical stabilizers that prevent the yeast from reproducing and prevent them from continuing to ferment the available sugars. But in 3 weeks you will have made a low alcohol apple wine known as cider. It'll be about 5-6% alcohol by volume (ABV). But for the price of a gallon of Mott's you will have made a cider that is quite delicious. And you would have achieved this without any equipment or any real understanding of the processes involved

Great post, Bernard. Hadn't seen Sheridan's book and will pick it up, My cousin is a pretty well known CA winemaker who graduated from UC Davis's wine program a long time ago. I see Sheridan comes from Berkeley - any idea if he's connected to Davis in some way?

 

[bernardsmith]

That I don't know. I do know that Sheridan makes the process of wine making very clear in a non scientific way but in a way that if you want to make wine from fresh grapes it is as though he was standing by your side. But that said, I might have suggested to Viirin that perhaps the best method for a complete novice is to check out wine kits. (With that I am assuming when Viirin mentions making wine he means from grapes and not so much country wines from berries and fruit or honey (mead)). Wine kits have all the ingredients you need and the instructions are very clearly laid out. The one issue I have with kits - is that they are designed (there are a few exceptions) for making 6 gallons and that means you make about 30 bottles. But you then need to purchase a large enough food grade bucket for the initial (primary) fermentation and a plastic or glass carboy for aging. You also need to obtain the 30 wine bottles and the corking tools (for most wine making you are going to need tubing for siphoning and an hydrometer to monitor the fermentation and an airlock to allow the CO2 to escape and prevent air from entering... So there is also a basic cost involved even to make one batch... but the cost of making gallon batches (4-5 bottles is significantly less than the non recurring cost of making 6 gallon batches... and if it turns out that after making one batch Viiirin does not want to make a second then that cost is sunk. It's not a mortgage... but it is money.

 

[user 246304]

That I don't know. I do know that Sheridan makes the process of wine making very clear in a non scientific way but in a way that if you want to make wine from fresh grapes it is as though he was standing by your side. But that said, I might have suggested to Viirin that perhaps the best method for a complete novice is to check out wine kits. (With that I am assuming when Viirin mentions making wine he means from grapes and not so much country wines from berries and fruit or honey (mead)). Wine kits have all the ingredients you need and the instructions are very clearly laid out. The one issue I have with kits - is that they are designed (there are a few exceptions) for making 6 gallons and that means you make about 30 bottles. But you then need to purchase a large enough food grade bucket for the initial (primary) fermentation and a plastic or glass carboy for aging. You also need to obtain the 30 wine bottles and the corking tools (for most wine making you are going to need tubing for siphoning and an hydrometer to monitor the fermentation and an airlock to allow the CO2 to escape and prevent air from entering... So there is also a basic cost involved even to make one batch... but the cost of making gallon batches (4-5 bottles is significantly less than the non recurring cost of making 6 gallon batches... and if it turns out that after making one batch Viiirin does not want to make a second then that cost is sunk. It's not a mortgage... but it is money.

I've got enough crap from too much collecting of brewing stuff over the years! Another way to sleep with my dog again...!

I've got a 28 gallon s/s stockpot I was thinking of using for an open-vat fermentor, for red wine. Bother my cousin as needed, lol.

 

[bernardsmith]

But the new member Viirin may not... and I was sorta kinda indicating that there may be costs involved in making a 6 gallon batch which if it turns out is his /her first and last batch could be expensive... but if this is the start of a life long love then those costs are neither large (when amortized over years and batches) and are not continually recurring: kettles and buckets and carboys, hoses and corkers last many years (as do hydrometers and bungs and airlocks)...

 

[bwible]

The few times I’ve made wine it has always been from a kit. Except for the one time I tried to make dandelion wine and that was mostly table sugar.

Most of the kits make 6 gallons. They come with about 2 gallons of juice concentrate and you add 4 gallons of water. They come with all the chemicals in numbered packages and the instructions tell you what to do and when to add them. These kits are very easy to put together, it takes almost no time. 6 gallons ends up being about 30 x 750 ml bottles. The kits are good. They range is price but none of the kits this size are cheap. They usually break it to you in cost per bottle. “This is only $5 per bottle, you can’t buy good wine for that.”

I have a kegging setup for wine. You push it with nitrogen at low pressure and it doesn’t carbonate. I have about 4 gallons left of a cab franc kit I made that’s been in a keg for over a year and its still fine.

Some of the online shops sell 3 gallon kits. Those are less expensive but there aren’t that many to choose from. I made a 3 gallon petite syrah kit that was pretty good. I think it came from Williams Brewing.

I know there used to be canned wine concentrates and fruit purees. Alexander’s and others.

There’s no boiling wine, but wine is ALL chemistry. You think ph, etc is important in beer, its double for wine. Ph, titration, acid levels, etc. Thats the advantage to the kits, all that is done for you. You don’t need your own lab.

Beer brewers who have accumulated all the stuff can use what they have, its about all the same stuff. They would probably only need a corker. Trust me, you want the floor corker.