Adventures in Homemade Wine Making – Part 2

Last Monday I picked up my Riesling grapes from Potek Winery. While the wine making process had officially already begun the week prior, this was first day of my grapes turning from Juice to Wine!

This is part 2 of my Winemaking article series that will cover the exciting and hectic first week of wine making, the primary fermentation period. For part one on my history of winemaking and home set up, click HERE.

David, the winemaker from whom I was purchasing my grapes, told me they would receive a picking of grapes the Thursday prior, but I was out of town for my cousin’s amazing wedding. I knew my timing was not going to work for getting these grapes that day, so I dropped off 4 six-gallon carboys off at the winery on Wednesday. He kindly promised to siphon off some of the destemmed, crushed and pressed juice into my fermentation containers and hold them in his walk-in fridge till Monday when I could pick them up.

Cold storing them would prevent any fermentation from occurring before I arrived to pick them up.

I was surprised to see that my 4 containers of wine each looked so different given that they were the same juice from the same grapes.

The stark variations in color were due to the differences in timing of the juice’s extraction from the grapes throughout the pressing process.

The lightest colored juice is from free run juice, when the crushed grape juice is allowed to run freely through a screen and into fermentation containers. After all the juice that can run freely from the squashed grapes is gathered, the mix of grape skins, seeds and juice is pressed down to extract as much juice as possible. As this mushy mix is further pressed, more juice is in contact with the grape skins. As Riesling grapes skins can be a dark yellowish color and are seeds are dark, these colors are extracted and imparted to the juice.

Step 0 in any wine making steps is always to sanitize every tool and vessel you are planning to use. I used a 2 oz. per gallon mix of Potassium Metabisulphite and water to sanitize all my equipment as I had already cleaned it all thoroughly the week prior.

The tools and vessels all soaked in the sulfite mixture for 20+ mins to kill any bacteria or yeast that may be hanging out on the equipment. You don’t want uninvited guests in your wine. These free range tagalongs can cause your wine to spoil or have off flavors.

Next I carefully measured the wine’s key stats: Brix, PH and Specific Gravity. I learned from prior years’ mistakes and made sure to get my measurements right away. I still made a big oversight in not measuring all 4 containers separately. I picked a mid colored carboy and measured that one, thinking they would all be similar. I should have labeled each container from the get go and measured each one to track separately.

I realized this error a bit too late, but I did end up labeling each one and taking separate measurements from there on.

My juice’s initial measurements:

• PH – 3-3.1
• Specific Gravity – 1.092
• Brix – 22

After taking all the measurements it was time to start the wine making for real. This meant first racking the juice off of all the sediment that had settled to the bottom of each container while it was being cold stored. I did not want any off flavors from the chunks that were in the wine.

Racking the wine involves creating a siphon from one carboy to another. A couple pumps of the tubing gets the juice flowing then gravity takes over. You must be careful to not push the siphon tool too far into the wine so that you don’t suck up the gunk at the bottom of the carboy that you are trying to separate from the clean juice/wine.

This whole racking process is quite the chore as after I racked each container I needed to wash and sanitize it so that I could use it to rack the next container into. At a larger scale you would have enough vessel volume to do the racking in larger swaths, but I only had 1 more carboy than wine, so I had to cycle through them as I racked along.

The whole racking, cleaning and sanitizing process took about 2 hours. Finally I was ready for the fun part.

When I picked up the Riesling Juice, I asked David if he had any recommendations for yeast. He ran over to a work station and said he would give me what he uses. He wrote up little instructions on the container and sent me on my way with the juice and yeast, all ready to go.

Once the yeast was added and stirred in, I put on the freshly sanitized airlocks and found a temporary home for the 4 carboys. Wine was officially being made!

Fermentation Begins!

The next morning I excitedly checked the wine as if they were Christmas morning surprises. Seeing the tiny bubbles and foamy top on the wine certainly rivaled a Santa visit, as it meant my yeast had taken and the wine was happily fermenting.

One worry I had was keeping the fermenting wine at a cool enough temperature. This was an issue my friend Jack and I had faced during our second vintage.

I started off by putting bags of ice and frozen packs around the wine to keep it cool. But the fermenters were still getting up to the mid 70’s when I wanted them to be in the low to mid 60’s.

I finally figured out that keeping them outside at night got their temperatures low and keeping a fan on them during the day helped a bit to slow their warmth. After a few days of experimenting, I discover the best solution ended up being to keep them outside all day and night, putting some ice packs around them and a thick blanket over them during the day. This has successfully kept the wine between 55* and 65* even when the weather has been getting in the mid-high 70’s during the day.

After the second day of fermentation I added in yeast nutrient as recommended by David. The yeast really enjoyed that and took off. I came home to find one carboy overflowed with foam!

Luckily this was not a disaster for the wine, just another mess to clean up.

Primary Fermentation Ends, Secondary Begins

After about 5 days of the wine fermenting rapidly, I noticed that 3 of the carboy’s foam and bubble action had slowed. I figured it was time to remeasure all the wines and give them a taste.

At this point I had labeled all the wines for tracking purposes: A-D

Wines A, C & D were all through their primary fermentation with specific gravities below the recommended 1.030; and thus, were ready to be racked off of the lees (dead yeast and other sediments that collect at the bottom) into fresh carboys.

All of the wines were only at about 8-9% alcohol at this point and had brix’s around 4-6 (or 16 Brix for B that was not as far through primary). This meant that when I tasted them they were all very sweet. What surprised me the most was the fruit flavors they had. A tasted like lemony applesauce, B was super guava tasting, C was lighter with stone fruit and melon and D was tropical and mango-y.

The next step was to rack, clean and sanitize each of the three carboys that were through primary fermentation. Once in their fresh carboys they would continue fermenting, just at a slower pace, until the wines reach a Brix, Specific Gravity, ABV combination that I am happy with. The fourth carboy of wine finished primary 3 days later for a total fermentation time of 8 days compared to 5 for the other three.

When I racked this wine into a fresh carboy I was left with large air gaps in all 4 containers, so I made the decision to condense the 4 carboys down to 3 for the secondary fermentation process. I tasted all 4 again and picked the wine that was the most neutral and I thought would blend best with the others. It ended up being wine C, which was pretty dry, with a crisp lime flavor. The three remaining blended wines will continue fermenting slow and steady until ready.

I expect these wines to be around 11.5%-12.5% ABV when finished. I have yet to decide whether I want to go for semi-dry, dry or sparkling styles. I am thinking about trying to make all 3, but we will see how the rest of the fermentation goes and how the wines are tasting over the next couple weeks.

The white wine making process is a bit faster than red wine making, so I should be ready to make this decision and even start bottling in the next 1-3 weeks!

Until then I plan to keep testing and trying the wines every few days to see how they are progressing. Once they are to my liking the next stages will begin: racking, arresting fermentation, aging, bottling and as always more cleaning and sanitizing!

Until then, Cheers!

– Alan Evans

Check out my other SB wine adventures:

Santa Barbara Urban Wine Trail Update