Cranberry Clearing

It's been a little over a month since I last racked the cranberry wines off the gross lees. On Saturday, I went down to the wine cellar for another reason, but was struck by the different rates at which my Cranberry-Niagra and Cranberry-Banana wines are clearing. During the last racking in February, the Cranberry-Banana had won the prize for the most sediment, so I wasn't overly surprised to see how much clearer it was. However, that wine is almost crystal clear. The picture on the right shows how clear it is (carboy on the right). The Cranberry-Niagra (on the left in the picture) had dropped a lot of sediment in the past month, but still has a long way to go.

I was expecting this difference, as banana wines are known for their fast clearing rates. However I've never seen this in person until these wines.

Salute,
a Wine Student

Prior Cranberry 2008 posts:
Starting the Body Experiment
Fermentation Almost Done
Racked the Cranberry-Grape
Racked the Cranberry-Banana
Racking off the Gross Lees

Introducing the Macchine Enologiche!

I recently received a bonus at work, so I decided to spend it on myself and bought a new crusher/destemmer (I'm doing my economy stimulus part)! I'm proud to introduce my latest baby--the Macchine Enologiche! This recent arrival to these shores sports 100% Italian craftsmanship, stainless steel hopper and working parts, and an electric motor to make short shift of those pesky grapes. No grape can stand up to its awesome crushing power--bwahahaha!

Sorry, I think I was channeling Tim "The Tool Man" Taylor there for a moment!

During the 2006 grape season, I used an antique crusher for my cabernet sauvignon and zinfandel grapes. I had bought it from the same folks that sold me a grape press. They used to run a winemaking store in Colorado and both the crusher and press were the store's equipment. Lots of good karma there. Unfortunately, the crusher did not have a destemmer, so I literally spent 4 hours bent over a bin full of 100 lbs of grape must, hand sifting out as many stems as I could. My back simply can't take that again. During the trip to New York to pick up some grapes, I made use of the vineyard's crusher/destemmer. These lovely devices crush the grapes and then sift out the stems before dropping the grape mush into your collection bin. What took me 4 hrs of back-numbing work before was done in 15 minutes, and the only sweat I worked up was in moving the collection bins into the back of my truck. Ever since then, I've been lusting after one of these beauties. With the upcoming Chilean season, and my recent bonus, I took the plunge! Now that it is in my basement, my first thought was "Wow, that's big!" Oh well, it will certainly make my life easier this spring and fall, and many subsequent years. It will keep my wife from getting bored while we hand destemmed. And it is large enough for a small winery, so let's call it an investment in the possible future!

Say hello to my new baby--the gleaming Macchine Enologiche! She needs a better name--something feminine in Italian. Perhaps Vinia (Latin for wine)? Other suggestions?

Salute,
a Wine Student

Blueberry 2008--A Pressing Issue

The past few weeks have been very busy--computer troubles, a sick guinea pig (now there's an interesting story), and the usual work load, so I've been thankful that the blueberry wine that I started on Feb 12 has been quietly bubbling away in the kitchen corner. However, all good fermentations must come to an end, and indeed, the yeast activity on this batch began to significantly drop in the past few days. On Thursday night, it had reached Brix = 2.6 so I decided to press and transfer to a carboy.

Now some people use a small press for their fruit wines. Not me, I use a hands-on approach. I line a plastic bucket with a nylon mesh bag, pour the must into the bag/bucket, and then lift up the bag to let the wine drain out. Yes, it's a little labor and time intensive, but it's cheap (no wonder I fit into New England well), and easy to clean up. Plus, I get to get my hands dirty!

Disclaimer--I am not and never was a member of any "Athletic Department". Although lifting a 4 gal bag of fermenting mush isn't trivial! And I do seem to have the hairy chest to match!

For those who recall the mess I made when I added the yeast (see post), I am sitting on a layer of plastic. Note the stain free wall and cabinets behind me (Thank you, Oxiclean)! Now, don't freak out--there is no fire hazard in this process, that's just where I keep the extinguisher because I haven't yet hung it on the wall. Trust me, I'm not that dangerous in the kitchen!

After pressing, I poured the liquid into a carboy and topped with an airlock to let the fermentation finish. I'm not worried about the airspace in the carboy at this point because the must is still giving off CO2 that will displace the air in the carboy. I've moved the carboy to the warmest place in the house (the guest bathroom) to finish fermentation, and it is dutifully slowly bubbling away. Will probably be done within a week. At that point, I'll rack into a smaller carboy and top off to protect it from oxidation.

I'm quite pleased with the color extraction that I achieved. Adding the Lallzyme EX during the cold soak really gave a boost of color. Of course, a lot of that color will drop out as the wine clears, but we're starting at a very inky reddish-purple, so the final result should still be very dark.

So far, so good!

Salute,
a Wine Student

Blueberry 2008 prior posts:
Initial Mix
Yeast Addition and Oxi-Clean

Cranberry 2008 #4--First Racking

Oh dear, look at the date. It's been awhile since I've updated you with my efforts. Had a little minor computer hard drive problem--it crashed. A lesson learned about storing your life on a computer, it costs a lot of money to get it back after a hard drive crash! Could of bought a new computer by the time it was over. Oh well, I can at least take comfort in the fact that by fixing the old one, I'm reducing my carbon footprint. Although given that I'm sick of snow, a little global warming sounds like a good idea at the moment!

Anyway, back to the wine...

About 3 weeks after completion of fermentation, both batches had dropped a pretty good layer of lees (these are the solids--yeast cells, fruit solids, seeds, etc--that drop out of the wine as it clears). The cranberry-banana had dropped significantly more and was much clearer than the cranberry-grape. I decided to rack off the lees to avoid any possible off-tastes from autolysis of the dead yeast cells. Each carboy was racked into a new sanitized carboy with 1/8 tsp of k meta and I used the extra bottles of cranberry-banana to top off the carboys.

Some observations:
1) the Cranberry-banana is much clearer (and tastes more like pure cranberry). It is just slightly translucent at this point.
2) Neither wine gave off much CO2 when I tried to degas.
3) The cranberry-grape is very pleasant tasting with a distinctive grape aftertaste. Perhaps a better balance of the cranberry tartness and the grapey flavor--time will tell!
4) Interestingly, within a week of racking, the cranberry-grape had dropped another good layer of lees. The picture below highlights this new lees layer and the difference in clearing rates.


Some lessons learned:
1) Adding bananas to a wine really DOES help a wine clear faster.
2) Niagra grape juice can make a good blending component for fruit wines.
3) Hand pressing really helps degas a wine!

Salute,
a Wine Student

Prior Cranberry 2008 posts:
Starting the Body Experiment
Fermentation Almost Done
Racked the Cranberry-Grape
Racked the Cranberry-Banana

Skirted Disaster...

On Tuesday morning, I brought the pail of blueberry must up from the basement where it had been cold soaking for 72 hr at a nice, chilly 45 °F and let it warm up while I was at work. I came home and got my starter made and set it aside to grow while I double-checked my Brix and acid levels.

A couple of interesting observations were noted. One, the pectic enzyme and Lallzyme EX had worked wonders in breaking down the fruit solids to give a very liquidy must with this wonderful, deep, deep, inky dark color (more on that later...). Second, both my Brix and acid levels were lower that my tests when I mixed everything together. The Brix level had dropped slightly to Brix = 22.2 and the total acidity was back around 3.1 g/L. I added another 10 oz of sugar to reach Brix = 23.8 and another 10 g of tartaric acid to reach total acidity = 4.4 g/L. The acid levels are still on the low side, but I'm more worried about the pH at the moment because that has a big affect on getting fermentation started in blueberries.

So everything was going pretty hunky dory. After several hours the yeast starter was fermenting well, so around 10:00 PM I went to add the starter to the must. After dumping it in, I reached around for my sanitized spoon to scrape out the remnants of the starter, lost my grip on the bowl, and watched helplessly as it fell into the must.

KER-SPLASH!!

Inky dark blueberry juice went flying all of the kitchen wall, floor, and nearby cupboard doors! It wasn't a lot of juice, but it sure made one heck of a mess.

It's late, my wife is in the bedroom doing her pre-bed relaxation routine, and I've got blueberry juice all of the wall. I grabbed a dishcloth and start scrubbing, only to find that the juice easily wiped away, but it left a purple stain on the paint and everything else it touched! Panic began to set in. I carefully eased open the bedroom door and asked quietly if we had any bleach in the house. No--crud! (to her credit, my wife did not come running in distress to see the horror that I had made of her new kitchen). Wild thoughts are running through my mind--can I repaint the kitchen by morning? And how many counts of paint will it take to cover up the stains? A quick scan of the laundry room to see what strong soaps were available, and I spied a container of OxiClean. What the heck, let's give it a shot...

Oh salvation! Wiping the walls down with a concentrated solution of OxiClean removed the juice stains with nary a trace! I did have to admit what had happened the next morning to my wife, but I'm proud to say that she could find no trace of stainage even after practically examining the walls with a microscope!

No, this was not a thinly veiled commercial for OxiClean. Although, I am open to an endorsement deal if the company would like to recreate the event--let's just do it in someone else's kitchen. I didn't have the luxury of time to take pictures of the mess and the end result, so you'll just have to take my word for it.

OxiClean--that stuff kicks a...!

Salute,
a Wine Student

Blueberry Wine 2008

January/February seems to be my time to make a batch of blueberry wine! One of the first wines I made was a blueberry wine in January, 2006, I made another batch in January, 2007, and here I am again. It does really help when blueberries freeze so well!

I really liked how the 2007 batch turned out (see recent review post), so this year, I just want to tweak the recipe a bit. My main objective is to produce a rich, full-bodied red wine, so I'm going to try to extract as much color and tannins as possible with a cold soak, enzyme addition, and yeast choice.

2008 Blueberry Recipe:
10 lbs frozen blueberries from Trader Joe's
10 lbs frozen wild Maine Blueberries from my local Market Basket
6 L H2O
3/8 tsp grape tannin
3 tsp pectic enzyme (8.1 g)
Lallzyme EX (0.8 g)
RC-212 wine yeast
Yield = ~3 gallons

I let the blueberries partially thaw on the countertop and then poured 6 L of boiling water over the berries in the fermenter to help set the color. At this point, I got my hands dirty and crushed the berries by hand. The larger cultivated blueberries from Trader Joe's were much easier to crush than the small, wild Maine berries. Fortunately, freezing the berries does a pretty good job in breaking down the cellular structure and release the juice. Boy, does blueberry juice stain human skin--my fingertips were almost black after the squishing was complete! It's hard to see in the picture, but I did put down a layer of plastic so I wouldn't stain my wife's kitchen floor!

I added pectic enzyme, as well as Lallzyme EX, which is a pectic enzyme designed for optimal color extraction and stabilization in red wines. I also added the grape tannin, a dose of potassium metabisulfite, and lysozymes to sanitize the must and prevent malolactic fermentation. Blueberries contain citric acid, which is metabolized to acetic acid by ML bacteria and I don't want that in the finished wine.

At this point, the raw must had Brix = 7.4 (SG = 1.028), so I added 5 lbs 12 oz white sugar to reach Brix = 23 (SG = 1.094, PA = 12%). I'm a little bit concerned about the acid levels, which were really low at total acidity = 1.08 g/L and pH = 3.45. The must tasted very flat and lifeless. A malic acid tested indicated only ~160 mg/L, so I'm assuming that the rest of the acid is citric acid (good thing I added the lysozyme). I added 8 tsp of tartaric acid (41.3 g) to bring the total acidity = 4.05 g/L and pH = 2.93. I decided to do any more acid additions after fermentation was complete as I'm getting worried about the low pH. Loyal readers will recall that the 2007 batch also had a low pH, but total acidity was ~6 g/L from the fruit alone without having to add additional tartaric acid. At the moment, I'm chalking this up to a difference in Michigan & Maine blueberries. The must tastes good at this point, maybe still a little low in acid, but much improved and much more lively than the starting point.

At this point, the must looks like the picture on the right--a lovely dark purple and thick must. I moved the bucket downstairs to the basement for a 48 hr cold soak at 45 °F (New England winters are good for something!). The must is currently resting comfortably, and I plan on letting it warm up to the kitchen room temperature for about 8-9 hours before pitching yeast starter on Tuesday evening. I'll keep you updated with fermentation details!

Salute!
a Wine Student

Cranberry Update #3--My babies are asleep...

Sorry, folks! Haven't had much time in the past week to add the latest news of the cranberry saga.

The cranberry-banana batch finally reached the same Brix level as the cranberry-grape after a very slooowwww fermentation (Brix = -1.7, SG = 0.994), so I decided to rack and sulfite to keep the outcome consistent. This batch was a comparative breeze to rack as the lees were very compact, although the wine itself is much cloudier. I obtained 3 gal and 2.25 L of wine. I'm keeping what didn't fit into the carboy in some wine bottles for use in topping up during future rackings. Everything received 100 ppm addition of sulfite and 1.5 g of lysozyme to prevent MLF.

All of the cranberry is now safely resting in the basement (current temperature is 50-55 °F) and beginning to clear. The cranberry-grape is on the left and the cranberry-banana is on the right in the picture. Yes, I'm pretty low tech with my carboy labels--masking tape and magic marker works just fine for me! You may not be able to tell from the picture, but both wines are throwing a pretty significant layer of lees even after a couple of weeks. Not too much to do on these wines for now, but to sit and wait for them to clear. Ah, the agony of patience!

Salute,
a Wine Student.