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Misadventures in Wine Making

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Misadventures in Wine Making

This page follows the great, good and not so good results I've had while winemaking. Word of caution. I'm a rank amateur. Mistakes will happen. I’m no sommelier.

So how’d we get here? Well I was always told, “If you’re going to make a mistake, make it big.” Because if you make a big mistake, everyone can see it, we can all learn and improve. Not that this page is a mistake. But by taking this hobby up I decided that I would share the joy and pain of learning this skill with everybody I know. If it works out well, great. If it goes badly well, it'll be ent

ertaining. Mind you, I’m no wine expert. I won’t hold up my nose as educated. I might find a $8 wine that I rave about and then taste a $100 wine and say “It’s alright”. Or vice versa. I am a home winemaker with a loud mouth and a love of writing. If through my follies someone learns a kernel of knowledge so much the better. In talking to my mom, apparently I am a third generation alcohol maker. My grandfather made moonshine and grandmother made beer. My mother made muscadine wine in Texas. I don't want to see the knowledge die off just yet. I’ll I make wines that sound interesting and my winemaking is done with an eye toward entering into wine competitions. In researching home winemaking I found there are an unlimited amount of combinations made in homes worldwide. If you can think of a fruit, there is a wine recipe. There are vegetable wines, nut wines and many things in between. Right now I have three batches in fermenters as well as a cider with at least three more wines planned in the next year.

10/16/2017

So I cleared out some fermenter space for the red I'm working on and rediscovered my chardonnay (number 1 left to right) Gotta bottle that. Working on settling out my strawberry wine (number 3) but the nose is right. The dragons (2 and 4) are very different. Should have broken them out for summer.

07/07/2016

2 years. 2 silver.

05/17/2016

I'm experimenting with 6 gallons of cherry wine. Today I added one 8 Oz can of Dutch cocoa. So now it's a chocolate cherry wine. Just racked the batch. See it again next month.

01/15/2016

Today I finally hit 1.000 on my second Dragon wine. 11% wine is a great change for me. Most of my wines sit around 13-15%. A couple wines were a 17% and pretty hot. This 11% wine has a lot of flavor. Now the goal is keeping the alcohol in check and maximizing the flavors. Lesson learned.

01/06/2016

Mark II sweetened it came back to life. This wine fermented down to 0.99 and does not do well as a dry. But I sweetened it and the flavors come out.

It's still really young. A few months in bottle and this will be a gold medal wine by itself. It's already clear as a bell.

I usually just taste but I've had two glasses out of this fermenter and it needs to be closed up before I drink out all.

01/02/2016

So I have two dragon's blood wines. The one on the left has cleared and started to mellow. I'm going to back sweeten this before I bottle. It should age nicely. The one on the right is in the middle of it's initial fermentation. The cold weather is really slowing fermentation down, but it's keeping the color.

12/11/2015

So I took a stab at the label for this wine. A little work in GIMP, some work in Avery and voila! A quick label or two. Now I'm working on the back

12/10/2015

So I've got a dilemma here. Since I started this wine at a high specific gravity, it's going to come out at a high alcohol content. Right now, the wine is sitting around 15%, if it goes to 1.000 then we're looking at 17%. The flavor is great. Very fruit forward. But very hot.

So I have two choices because diluting with water isn't the answer. I can bottle it full strength and hope it mellows with time. Or I can ferment another batch at a lower alcohol level and blend it. Decisions decisions.

12/09/2015

I know you're spending a lot of time looking at beakers and hydrometer readings. That said, working on the dragon blood wine I decided to follow the recipe pretty much to the letter. Okay, I made the wine a teensy tiny bit stronger than recipe (it's testing about 14% or so).

The more I work on this the more I see myself opening a winery when I finally grow up. This isn't work. I can do this all day everyday.

Anyway, it's a week behind (because it's still fermenting out the extra sugars) and hopefully I'll get to rack this wine by Saturday. In the meantime, I stir it, measure it, and taste it. Right now, it tastes like a spiked fruit punch. Not a bad thing.

12/08/2015

So anyway, three things I've learned making Dragon Blood:

Cold fermenting makes a flavorful wine
Maybe a little I less sugar in the fermenter
Beach towels make great insulation

So Thursday maybe?

12/02/2015

At least it's warmer (It was about 60 today). The dragon blood wine fermentation is still slow, which is finest I'm not the most patient. So, in order to keep the temp up I went for the dual insulated beach towel approach.

But look at the color. That's all fruit. It'll be a pretty red!

12/01/2015

Houston, we're having a cold snap. When I started my dragon's blood wine about for days ago, I pitched the yeast with an idea that the primary fermentation would be done in a week.

Then the weather turned really cold. I pitched Lalvin EC-1118 Prise de Mousse. It's a truck of a yeast, operates in a wide range of temperatures 45-95 °F. Well the low the last few days has been 31° (way way WAY below that 45°)

This makes fermentation go really slow. I'm going to get this done so the fermenter is wrapped in towels. It's also moving to a warm part of the house tonight. But the upside, I'm loving the color!

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