Making Good Wine: Fermentation Part Three (Red Wines)

If you are growing your own grapes the decision to pick rests entirely with yourself. Naturally, weather and ripeness feature in the decision making. At HHF this involves a casual walk through the vineyard with a refractometer testing select grapes from different locations. Experience says that the overall impression of ripeness will be a degree or two higher than the true end result. Why is not a mystery. Once the bunches are de-stemmed and resting in a fermenter the sugar levels of ripe bunches are spread across not so ripe bunches.

Other considerations are seed maturity i.e. not green and not too brown, a taste test by crunching seeds in the mouth give an indication. The skins should also feel a little silky to touch giving an indication that ripeness is at its peak.

When buying and picking grapes from a commercial vineyard timing is dictated by their activity. Usually their winemaker makes a call and getting a share means fitting in with them. You take what you are given.

A good way to encourage better quality is to triage the bunches as they are picked. Getting rid of an rot, shrivelled or green grapes and even any under ripe fruit. The tool of choice is a pair of short nosed scissors. Their stubby length but sharp pointy end allows easy gouging out of any unwanted berries. The handles a rubbery lined making them comfortable to use for extended periods.

Picking is best in early morning when the fruit is cool. Crushing and de-stemming can commence immediately. If the grapes have been transported from another vineyard the picking bins will go into a refrigeration unit while the crush pad is setup and any other chores are completed. There is a long day after picking which involves a lot of cleaning once the grapes a crushed and de-stemmed. An important task is to weigh everything as this is the basis for payment to the grower but is also the basis for future calculations of sulphur, Acid and Oak additions.

As the fruit is loaded into the crusher de-stemmer any good bunches are set aside to be added to the fermenter as whole bunches which are placed at the bottom. The bunches chosen are undamaged and don't have green stems nor dried brown stems. What is required is mature stems which will add some additional tannin complexity not green herbaceous flavours. The usual ratio is about 10% whole bunches but if it is a particularly ripe year more can be added. A bit of a guess really. In a an under ripe year 0% may be the choice.

Once crushed and de-stemming is finished the resultant fruit and juice is placed under refrigeration for 1-3 days. 30 ppm Potassium Metabisulphite is added. Ideally the cooling temperature should be about 7 C but using old freezers results in the outer fruit freezing. Not a bad thing as the freezing breaks down the skin cells helping release the colour.

This is a good time to drain off 10% of the juice for Rose. Exactly when depends on how much colour is wanted. Again a bit of a guess, but 24 hours is a good start. Experience has shown that a little oak added after fermentation of rose i.e. at the first racking adds a excellent flavour to the dryness. Rose is ideally fermented at 20 C.

Reducing the juice by 10% means there are more skins and less juice adding even more colour.

24 hours after crushing is a good time to run some tests. Sugar levels should be what is expected. If not here is the opportunity to add sugar in the form of plain white sugar. pH should be in the 3.4 to 3.8 range. If it is above 3.8 then the addition of Tartaric acid may be the solution. Ideally testing for Total Acidity (TA) is better but that requires some more equipment and chemicals. Something that most amateurs don't bother with but then some do. I find pH is a reasonable indicator as to where acidity lies. We invested in a pH meter rather than pH papers.

After the cold soak the fruit and juice needs to warm up and the yeast re hydrated. By lowering the temperature of the yeast gradually it is possible to add it to the fermenter early. Usually that will be at about 20C.

Ideally the fermentation temperature should reach and stay at 30 C but certainly don't let it go higher than 32 C. Plunging of the cap of skins should be performed 3-4 times each day. This helps add oxygen to the must and aids the yeast.

5-7 days of fermentation should be followed with 10 days minimum although a total of 21-23 days from Commencement of cold soak to pressing is ideal. Post fermentation is a good time to cover the fermenter with plastic wrap and inject some inert gas such as CO2. We use CO2 because we own a SodaStream which has a conveniently sized spear pint over which a plastic tube can be fitted. CO2 or other gas cylinders are expensive to buy and tedious to rent for short periods.

Usually if the skins have completely fallen from the surface it is a reasonable guide to press. Pressing slowly is advantageous in reducing the amount of unpleasant flavours that can be forced from seeds and stems. Always a good idea to keep the pressings separate for later use in blending.

We use a fine sieve to reduce the amount of solids being funnelled into the fermenter. The addition of oak occurs at this stage in the form of chips. We found that 50% French and 50% American to be ideal but no more than 6 grams per litre in total and less if the wine is lighter.

If there is another batch of red still fermenting the addition of skins from the just pressed batch will add complexity.

Some people rack the wine 3-4 times before bottling. We found that racking once about 40 or so days after pressing was sufficient to get rid of the gross lees which might impart unpleasant flavours. It is at this time that a decision to add more oak can be accommodated. Ideally a little more sulphur helps, lets say the rest of the 50ppm that we try to stick with.

Bottling commences from 8 months after pressing. Using a Bio Dynamic calendar we choose the best week in each month when turbidity is at its minimum. With reds there will always be some sediment as they age but I'd rather have a bit of sediment and decant . Filtering to me seems to eliminate some of the goodness in the wine that makes it a healthy part of a meal.

That is the short version so any questions?

Making Good Wine: Fermentation Part Two (White Wines)

The juice now separated from the skins, sulphured and rests for 24 hours in demijohns. The prior skin contact will evolve in the flavours of the finished wine.

At this time it is possible to clarify the juice by continuing to chill but choosing not to clarify leads to a richer wine.

Now is the time to perform some testing. Firstly sugar levels using either S.G. or as it is done at HHF a refractometer. Now that all the grapes are combined and everything standardised the reading is accurate. Whether sugar is to be added really depends on the grape variety. Some like Hunter Semillon will do fine at 18.5 Brix (alcohol level of 10.5%). As a general rule at HHF anything above 20 Brix is fine as long as the fruit is ripe. Although there is more comfort in 21.5 Brix. At that level the wine has some body and keeps well without too much sulphur.

The second test which adds value is the pH test using either pH papers which are cheap but not as easy as a meter, although the meter needs to have calibration checked when unused for a period. Various guides recommend a lower level of 3.0 and an upper level of 3.3 through to 3.5. A goal of 3.25 is ideal and adjust only with Tartaric acid. 3.5 is the absolute upper limit but with 3.25 much less sulphuring is required.

If it has been a dry or drought year then yeast nutrient is critical. But don't use a lot and only add it after one third of the way into the fermentation. add the last yeast nutrient at two thirds through the fermentation and none after that.

While the testing is going on a bit of juice has been taken and the sample container sits in a bowl of hot water to get the sample to 40 C at which point the yeast is added. When the yeast commences fermentation a little cold juice is added until the temperature drops by no more than 10 C. This is left until the fermentation fires up again and then more cold juice is added and so on until the temperature of the yeasted juice falls to within 10 C of the main batch of juice. It is then gently added. Now wait until the airlock begins bubbling, usually about 24 hours.

There is a school of thought that the airlock should now be removed and replaced with cotton wool to allow the gases to vent more easily, especially any off aromas.. At HHF both methods have been used with success. although an airlock is safer.

The demijohn must now be slowly cooled to between 10 and 15C. This is done by placing the vessel into a refrigerator with an adjustable thermostat. The cooler fermentation results in the production of more fruity esters.

Test the sugar levels of the wine every day to follow the falling levels. At the same time shake up or stir the sediments in the fermentation container. This will add a complexity to the final wine. When two thirds of the sugar has expired take the demijohn out of the cooling chamber and allow it to finish at a higher temperature but not more than 30 C, 27 C being ideal. This serves two purposes. Firstly, helps prevent a stuck fermentation and secondly, adds another dimension to the final wine. All these manipulations do really add complexity into the wine some of which may not be apparent until the wine has aged a few years.

At this two thirds point when the wine reaches the ambient temperature, usually about a day, it ideally should be racked into vessels with as little head space as possible to finish fermentation. At the end of fermentation allow 30-40 days for the sediment to settle and then rack into clean containers. Getting it off the gross lees is important to prevent the production of Hydrogen Sulphide from the dead yeast cells.

When racking off gross lees is also the best time to add oak chips. Anywhere from 0.5 to 4 grams/litre although 5 grams has shown a good result in Semillon. The amount of Oak really depends on the fruit ripeness. More ripeness handles more Oak. Don't use Oak on Sauvignon Blanc or Traminer as they have strong spicy aromatics of their own.

It can be racked again if desired although at HHF the least amount of handling has produced the best results. If lees really build up then a racking is a good idea but if there is only a fine film it is left alone. 

Bottling is best done during the period leading up to no moon and ideally in the cool of mid to late Winter. The experience here is no sediment problems even after a number of years in bottle. Natural settling is far superior to fining or filtering.

What it means to have a small Holding

Here's the theory for July: It's cold or at least cool, it could be misty in the morning and even drizzly rain, the fireplace is ticking over with hot coals or a fresh piece of wood flaring, a bit of a wind gusting outside and the sky is grey. Time to spreadeagle on the lounge with a one of the many books backlogged in the pile and relax.

Now here is the reality: The sun is shining, the wind has gone for the moment, the grapes need pruning and weeding, tomato varieties need selection and potting under heat to be ready for a September planting, there is a pile of other fresh pruning's that need a run through the mulcher and there will be a need for lots of compost in spring so make use of all the green material you have.
 

The book goes back on the pile and work begins. All the grapes get pruned, a little layering or transplanting of last year's cuttings to fill a spare spot. Tying up any rogue shoots, a quick weed around the trunk and on goes a huge pile of cow rejected silage which stinks but the wind is blowing that scent across to the neighbours and away from us. Oh well, the smell will only last a few weeks. It is just part of nature in the country. Probably means moving a bottle or two of last vintage from our side of the cellar to the neighbours side of the cellar.

Table grapes pruned

Ready for chipping and mulching

A lot of work and tons of silage but will pay dividends

Using the freshly made compost to start seedlings

 

July can really be one of the busiest months of the year. At least in August it will only be the last week when the Tomato bed needs building that life will become a little hectic. Then of course with September becomes the planting out of the warm month vegetables. Always too many for two but there are always many happy recipients elsewhere in the village. There is the anticipation of the first fresh tomato and first young cucumber. Yes it is possible to use a hothouse and grow the most delicious produce all year round but then the mouth watering wait and abstinence is missing and life lacks those peaks and troughs that provide contrast and highs of long awaited pleasure.

As the weather warms up and if the rains come the following 6 months become a blur of weeding, watering, planting and harvesting until the blessed cool arrives with a sigh of relief tools go down and relation comes in the form of wine and cheese in the mildly warm garden.

The steady rhythm of seasonal demands and rewards. With each bringing the expectation and desire of the next stage. Maybe some find this repetitiveness boring. But there is a pleasure which can't be felt from any other form of activity. Contact with the soil, plants and animals seems to be a desire that comes from deep inside.

For some it's the travel, the sport, the toys for us it's being at home on our own plot, digging and weeding, having successes and having failures, plopping down in the evening with fresh home made produce and resting for tomorrow.

Mushroom Growing Experiment - Update

This is the end of July and the experiment started mid May. There is some progress.

Success

And more success

The process for Oyster Mushrooms works i.e. break up an Oyster Mushroom into some used coffee grounds obtained from your espresso machine or from the local coffee shop. Fresh grounds only as they will go mouldy after a few days. Keep the container warm (21 to 26 C) and moist (85%+) and within a few days or so some white threads appear. Boil some straw to sterilise and when cool mix in the coffee grounds. Wrap tightly in a plastic bag so it stays moist and continue to keep warm and moist. This can take 2-3 months. When the mushroom stems appear inside the plastic bag cut lots of small holes (20 cent coin size) in the bag for the shoots to pop out.

The only thing that we did wrong was cut the holes too early which allowed the straw (or in our case hay) to partially dry. It has received another soaking and now the waiting begins. Will the mushrooms shoot from the holes?

To keep the small hothouse warm at the correct temperature there are three lights. To keep the humidity up there is a 9 litre bucket with a small aquarium pump splashing water and it needs topping up daily. Running these must be consuming a lot of electricity compared to the potential yield of mushrooms. Either the volume will need to be ramped up, growing restricted to Spring and Autumn or it will be cheaper to buy mushrooms.

This process works for Oyster Mushrooms. The same process was used (optimistically) on several other mushroom varieties (just to fill the hothouse) with no success which means there is some more research to take place to understand their particular needs.

There are kits available from Bunnings and occasionally from Big W but at $20 there needs to be a harvest much greater than 2 kilograms to justify their acquisition. We have never ever been skilled enough to get more than a few individual mushrooms from a kit. Now that the hothouse is in operation this may change the situation and may be worth a trial.

I suppose the question to answer is whether it is possible to maintain a steady flow and not flood of mushrooms (with or without kits) such as is done in the garden with succession planting. Doing it seasonally and keeping running costs very low may make it a viable operation. Doing it without kits would make it an inexpensive exercise. Much like a vegetable garden there is still a lot to learn in order to get to a set and forget operation.

Home Kill Beef - Cured Beef Results

In a previous post on Cured Meats 6 different recipes were attempted. Three of those were tested this week as they appeared to be ready.

The River Cottage Pastrami was excellent with large crunchy pieces of herbs and spices still attached to the exterior. The only variation to the recipe was the exclusion of two steps. The cold smoking was bypassed as Jean felt that it may introduce unnecessary carcinogens  into her diet. Since she is the only meat eater in the family that seemed a fair request. Also skipped was the simmering in salted water. The meat was dry cured sufficiently that it didn't need any cooking. Taste wise it was excellent with good herbal flavours and textures and not excessively salty.

The River Cottage Biltong was also excellent, not too dry and chewy. And when sliced thinly melted in the mouth.

The Leith's Meat Bible's Bresaola was also quite good but a little over salty. The fault here may have been not adjusting the salt volume to the meat weight. The piece of beef used was quite thick and the central part was still well coloured. The feeling was that a good rinse with water to remove some excess salt and hanging for another month would provide a more well rounded flavour.

Once the samples had been shaved off and tasted the next step was to thinly slice, vacuum pack and freeze. There was far too much meat for one person to consume in just a few weeks. After some investigation it was clear that the cheapest vacuum packers can be of dubious quality. The other conclusion was that purchasing a vacuum packer made little sense if it was not used frequently.

The vacuum packer was easy to borrow as the boss at our work property had purchased a good quality unit a couple of years previously. We did purchase replacement bags with the conclusion that this is an expensive way to store food. The positive side was that the bags can be cleaned and reused although a little bit shorter each time once the seal was cut off. The cost of borrowing was a few sample packs.

The electric meat slicer was more of an issue. It is something that is not used frequently. There are cheap ones available but being unsure of how well they performed we preferred to borrow one to test the quality. Extensive communication with friends yielded no result and then by chance we came across a former work colleague who had a very old, high quality, restored Hobart commercial slicer. And what a gem it was. All three cured meats were sliced paper thin with ease.

The former work colleagues had become enamoured by meat curing and were heavily involved in making all forms of flavoured, air dried and  smoked meats. This including constructing smoking and drying facilities with thermostatically controlled fans and burners. A pleasant couple of hours of slicing and cleaning was followed by lunch. We left with not only a pile of our own sliced and vacuum packed meat but also various samples of their sausages. A pleasant way to spend half a day.

As an aside these people also had an new Aldi slicer which they were about to throw out as it was completely useless for cutting cured meats. Just too flimsy for these drier cuts leaving a ragged edge and not robust enough to produce consistent thin cuts. So it seems size and quality do make a difference in certain areas.

In another month or so the remaining three larger cuts of meat using three other recipes will be due for testing.

Blog Posting

It's been almost 2 weeks since the last blog post. A significant break after more than 12 months of publishing a post every day. Why? Just ran out of steam. There was lots to do outside and allocating writing time became secondary.

Normally, the blog would be written and edited over breakfast coffee but this takes a couple of hours. As well as reading and correcting several times, the preview feature is used right at the end to read and edit one final time. Something about seeing the post in the form it will be published that forces a better editing to transpire. The preview always picks up a few errors in wording or forces a grammatical change. Not to say it is perfect every time because time constraints push to end the screen time.

The goal to publish daily came about after reading/hearing an article on writing to deadlines. Journalists hone their writing skills via endless articles written to a short deadline. That was an encouragement to write as often as possible in an endeavour to improve skills. They have the benefit of an editor who corrects and modifies or chooses not to publish but the name of the game is quantity. The more articles written the greater the improvement in quality is the theory. The shorter the deadline the more natural the writing style and so on.

Well there is no independent editor to scan the articles, offer criticism, add improvements or drop the result into the trash can. So improvement remains unmeasured. There hasn't been a back tracking to review earlier writing to compare style changes but that seems like a good task to schedule, just not this morning.

The break in writing has resulted in a backlog of updates.

• The meat curing project produced some great information and results
• There is an update on the long long task of growing mushrooms with some success.
• The recycling of failed silage has continued unabated with actual tons used to both make composts and mulch nearly 200 metres of wine grapes.
• The series on winemaking still has a long way to go. It became a bigger task than first envisaged but a wonderful way to review all that has been learnt about wine taking. The challenge has been to put the information into logical and easily understandable sequence.

Well at least there is no shortage of topics.

Making Good Wine: Fermentation Part One (White Wines)

Once the grapes arrive at the Cave there is one simple step. The picking container is placed in a cooling device. In this case a salvaged freezer or refrigerator and the grapes chilled. This takes the pressure off and provides time to record information in the vintage book, clean any equipment that has been used and have a meal and/or cup of hot liquid and plan the next step.

White Wine
The initial step with Whites is the destemming process. Just a quick run through the crusher/destemmer and into the refrigeration unit for 16 to 20 hours of cold soaking. This seems to be the optimum time to obtain some of the flavour from the skins to enhance the final wine. Various makers try various levels of skin contact to obtain different results. An individual choice based on experience, type of fruit and the end result being targeted. Grapes with a higher sugar level will cope with more skin contact. Some makers go for 36 hours to produce long aging wine.

One variant is to not de-stem but press as whole bunches being careful to press gently so as not to break the stems. This leads to a clear juice with the lowest possible phenol levels and produces a wine that is finely flavoured and structured.

After cold soaking Potassium Metabisulphite can be added to reduce the risk of oxidisation and infection by unwanted yeasts and bacteria. Fruit quality dictates the level of sulphuring. With good quality fruit as little as 25 part per million (ppm) will work. With damaged fruit 50 ppm is safer. It should be noted that some producers add sulphur at the crush for extra safety.

It is possible to make white wine without preservative but it requires very special handling and specialised equipment to exclude any risk of oxidisation.

 It can also be made without the special equipment by relying on Acidity, Alcohol and Tannins to protect the juice. The end result is best called a red drinkers white wine. It ages well but doesn't exhibit those fresh and gentle notes of a delicate white wine. But it is preservative free.

Pressing should always be performed slowly and gently. Just a light pressure over a long time. Using finger tip pressure is a good guide. This allows the pulp to settle into the gaps and the juice to escape. It also reduces the opportunity for the skins to tear and release unwanted phenols. This is where patience is required.

At HHF pressed juice goes straight into glass demijohns as a precursor to fermentation. Cotton wool is used in the neck of the demijohn. The demijohns are kept under refrigeration at 10 C.

Once the wine is sulphured and pressed it should be rested for 24 hours to allow the sulphur to perform its function.


Next: Making Good Wine: Fermentation Part Two (White Wines)