Winemaking Procedure Details

[JaimesBeam]

I’ve been making wine successfully for several years, but I thought it would be useful to share and get any feedback on some details on the way I do things.

First I make large batches of wine, typically 50 gallon barrels, mostly mead, cider and fruit wines. I typically start a batch off with a quart of sterilized juice and hydrated yeast, then use my basic wine recipe to multiply the size of the batch to a gallon, then five gallon, then fifty gallons. This way I always have a strong yeast culture because I don’t use sulfates for sterilize the fruit before fermenting them. Usually I am using frozen fruit.

I use Star-San as a sanitizer. Great stuff, you don’t need to rinse it, but I usually do. The foam can be a bit of a pain to rinse, but I like that it keeps surfaces wetter longer. I wash stuff with dish soap and sponge scrubber and rinse before sanitizing, but do you really need to if it is already clean, IE no visible dirt? What if it’s been sitting a week, and flies have ‘landed’ on it?

I also have a hard time thinking of Star-San as a kills ANYTHING sanitizer, say the equivalent to Clorox. It is basically phosphoric acid, like in Coke. Is it really a kills ANYTHING sanitizer, or a kills-most-yeast&bacteria-found-on-winemaking-equipment sanitizer? Hydrogen Peroxide would be an alternative, but I don’t want to use Clorox, Iodine, or C-Brite; too much chemicals.

Occasionally I will use PBW to clean the inside of closed barrels, but if I can reach it, plain dish soap does it for me. It’s hard to know if you are wasting your time do overkill in cleaning. While working on wine, I generally have three buckets, one of water to rinse still off, one of Star-San, and a second bucket of water to rinse Star-San off, or backup rinse water in case the first bucket gets dirty. I use distilled water to make the Star-San, so it stays effective for days instead of having it get cloudy in a couple hours and needing to make more Star-San.

I keep any equipment I am not using in the Star-San, and dip my hands in Star-San occasionally. I take a shower and get clean clothes before doing any winemaking, and I keep stuff clean and wipe/mop up any spills, but don’t specifically clean/sanitize tables/floors before winemaking. I assume my great well water is clean. I get it tested each year, but it really is not really “sanitized."?

Now I imagine 90% of the time, 50% of this is overkill. People were making wine for millions of years in primitive circumstances without many problems. After you are making wine for a while you develop a good wine culture in your environment that helps prevent any bad infections getting into your wine. The thing is that historically the wine did not always end up being very good wine. We want it to be good wine all the time, so we use specific wine yeasts and sanitizer. Historically, the really good wine was rare and sought after and expensive. Now a days even the cheapest wine is better then what the common folk drank.

So... say I am making Blueberry wine, with frozen blueberries... what I usually do is mix up five gallon batches of wine in a bucket repeatedly and dump it in the barrel. I start with three gallons of hot water, as hot as I can get it out of the faucet. Sometimes I will heat it further if the temperature of my batch is running colder. I will mix eight lbs of sugar into the hot water; the hot water makes it easy to dissolve the sugar. Then I take ten lbs of blueberries and add enough of the hot water to partly thaw the blueberries to make a slurry. I used to thaw the blueberries and mash them with a potatoe masher, but it was time consuming and messy. Now I flash thaw them with hot sugar water and blend them with an immersion blender. And the result ends up getting quickly to 65F, so I can pitch in my previous starter wine/yeast batch.

I weight the ingredients of each minibatch, and total them up as I go. I want to end up with 150-200 lbs lbs of blueberries, and adjust the %Sugar to 24-25% toward the end of the barrel. The original recipe that I got from a book was three lbs of blueberries/ bilberries and 2.25 lbs of sugar per gallon, which is WAY less sugar then I use! I end up using 2-2/3 lbs of sugar per gallon or more at the end to get the %Sugar up to 24%. The only reason I can think for that some of the Sugar gets used in bringing the sugar level of the blueberry juice up to 24% sugar. I figure that the (dry-non-Juice) part of the fruit pulp is irrelevant .

This is getting long, so I’ll just say I ferment in Food-Grade Barrells with sealed lids. I will punch them down as needed for the first week or so. I will leave the fruit in for quite a while, at least a month, and then siphon off the wine, rack a few times and bottle...

What do you think?

 

[jgmillr1]

A lot to cover above...

but do you really need to if it is already clean, IE no visible dirt?

In short, yes. I've scrubbed and hosed done my stainless tanks many times and then sprayed it with caustic sodium hydroxide and watched it change color as it reacts with residual anthocyanin pigments on the tank walls. Absolutely no amount of scrubbing can remove the residual traces of gunk like a chemical clean.

I also have a hard time thinking of Star-San as a kills ANYTHING sanitizer, say the equivalent to Clorox. It is basically phosphoric acid, like in Coke. Is it really a kills ANYTHING sanitizer, or a kills-most-yeast&bacteria-found-on-winemaking-equipment sanitizer? Hydrogen Peroxide would be an alternative, but I don’t want to use Clorox, Iodine, or C-Brite; too much chemicals.

The degree of sanitation is only necessary to the point of getting your yeast to be the dominant beast in the batch. After fermentation, let the sulfites do their job.

I will use PBW to clean the inside of closed barrels, but if I can reach it, plain dish soap does it for me

Dish soap can contain artificial aromas that can be hard to remove. This is why I simply go for the straight sodium hydroxide cleaner (ie. lye).

I keep any equipment I am not using in the Star-San, and dip my hands in Star-San occasionally. I take a shower and get clean clothes

Hopefully not much of the wine is getting in touch with clothing or skin. It always is in contact with air, which is why sulfites are necessary after the wine is fermented.

People were making wine for millions of years in primitive circumstances without many problems

That is not to say that all of the wine produced was actually good and not turning to vinegar. You'd drink vinegar if meant you wouldn't starve to death too.

So... say I am making Blueberry wine, with frozen blueberries... what I usually do is mix up five gallon batches of wine in a bucket repeatedly and dump it in the barrel.

I've had mixed results with scaling up a batch of yeast. I guess I'd say that it will work until it doesn't work. The yeast needs oxygen and nutrients to propagate effectively. Be cautious or you won't have enough of a yeast population to overwhelm the native yeasties and/or have your population survive to fermenting the batch dryness.

I ferment in Food-Grade Barrells with sealed lids. I will punch them down as needed for the first week or so. I will leave the fruit in for quite a while, at least a month, and then siphon off the wine, rack a few times and bottle

I find punching down twice a day minimum is necessary for extraction and to keep the skin from extra exposure to oxygen and nasty bacteria. Extended maceration of the fruit skin can add complexity but may also extract unwanted flavors in some fruit.

Cheers!

 

[Coffee49]

I’ve been making wine successfully for several years, but I thought it would be useful to share and get any feedback on some details on the way I do things.

First I make large batches of wine, typically 50 gallon barrels, mostly mead, cider and fruit wines. I typically start a batch off with a quart of sterilized juice and hydrated yeast, then use my basic wine recipe to multiply the size of the batch to a gallon, then five gallon, then fifty gallons. This way I always have a strong yeast culture because I don’t use sulfates for sterilize the fruit before fermenting them. Usually I am using frozen fruit.

I use Star-San as a sanitizer. Great stuff, you don’t need to rinse it, but I usually do. The foam can be a bit of a pain to rinse, but I like that it keeps surfaces wetter longer. I wash stuff with dish soap and sponge scrubber and rinse before sanitizing, but do you really need to if it is already clean, IE no visible dirt? What if it’s been sitting a week, and flies have ‘landed’ on it?

I also have a hard time thinking of Star-San as a kills ANYTHING sanitizer, say the equivalent to Clorox. It is basically phosphoric acid, like in Coke. Is it really a kills ANYTHING sanitizer, or a kills-most-yeast&bacteria-found-on-winemaking-equipment sanitizer? Hydrogen Peroxide would be an alternative, but I don’t want to use Clorox, Iodine, or C-Brite; too much chemicals.

Occasionally I will use PBW to clean the inside of closed barrels, but if I can reach it, plain dish soap does it for me. It’s hard to know if you are wasting your time do overkill in cleaning. While working on wine, I generally have three buckets, one of water to rinse still off, one of Star-San, and a second bucket of water to rinse Star-San off, or backup rinse water in case the first bucket gets dirty. I use distilled water to make the Star-San, so it stays effective for days instead of having it get cloudy in a couple hours and needing to make more Star-San.

I keep any equipment I am not using in the Star-San, and dip my hands in Star-San occasionally. I take a shower and get clean clothes before doing any winemaking, and I keep stuff clean and wipe/mop up any spills, but don’t specifically clean/sanitize tables/floors before winemaking. I assume my great well water is clean. I get it tested each year, but it really is not really “sanitized."?

Now I imagine 90% of the time, 50% of this is overkill. People were making wine for millions of years in primitive circumstances without many problems. After you are making wine for a while you develop a good wine culture in your environment that helps prevent any bad infections getting into your wine. The thing is that historically the wine did not always end up being very good wine. We want it to be good wine all the time, so we use specific wine yeasts and sanitizer. Historically, the really good wine was rare and sought after and expensive. Now a days even the cheapest wine is better then what the common folk drank.

So... say I am making Blueberry wine, with frozen blueberries... what I usually do is mix up five gallon batches of wine in a bucket repeatedly and dump it in the barrel. I start with three gallons of hot water, as hot as I can get it out of the faucet. Sometimes I will heat it further if the temperature of my batch is running colder. I will mix eight lbs of sugar into the hot water; the hot water makes it easy to dissolve the sugar. Then I take ten lbs of blueberries and add enough of the hot water to partly thaw the blueberries to make a slurry. I used to thaw the blueberries and mash them with a potatoe masher, but it was time consuming and messy. Now I flash thaw them with hot sugar water and blend them with an immersion blender. And the result ends up getting quickly to 65F, so I can pitch in my previous starter wine/yeast batch.

I weight the ingredients of each minibatch, and total them up as I go. I want to end up with 150-200 lbs lbs of blueberries, and adjust the %Sugar to 24-25% toward the end of the barrel. The original recipe that I got from a book was three lbs of blueberries/ bilberries and 2.25 lbs of sugar per gallon, which is WAY less sugar then I use! I end up using 2-2/3 lbs of sugar per gallon or more at the end to get the %Sugar up to 24%. The only reason I can think for that some of the Sugar gets used in bringing the sugar level of the blueberry juice up to 24% sugar. I figure that the (dry-non-Juice) part of the fruit pulp is irrelevant .

This is getting long, so I’ll just say I ferment in Food-Grade Barrells with sealed lids. I will punch them down as needed for the first week or so. I will leave the fruit in for quite a while, at least a month, and then siphon off the wine, rack a few times and bottle...

What do you think?

Sanitation is always the concern unless winemaking is done in a laboratory kitchen, where do I sign up. I usually assume all areas above the floor in a 10' radius of the sink basins is contaminated prior to wine startup. I wipe all surfaces and washout everything with hot water and paper towels. Then hit everything again with a sullphite water mix, my water supply is well water with a slight sulfur content, I find that useful in sanitizing, last don hairnet, sleeves and gloves. The next enemy is O2. Aluminum foil makes a good temporary cover on transfer vessels. I rack twice, hitting the second racking with sullphite. My wine sits in a carboy for 11 months before final bottling. That way the suspension and I can add sweetener with no yeast to pop my corks. Finally the whites are 6 months from drinking, the reds 12 months. This is the most successful guarantee that the juice wine will be matured and be a winner at a wine tasting.