A Good Food Day

Last weekend we went to the Chalet. Lake Michigan showed its many different faces. Grandma Sharon and Grandpa Bob came on Friday, when the Lake was angry, and so the afternoon was spent poking around St. Joseph.

Saturday the Lake calmed down and we stayed home. We had a delicious Bit of Swiss breakfast, followed by a nice walk. Lunch was tasty Vietnamese-style vegetarian sandwiches. The afternoon was spent on the beach (Lisa and Robert) and hanging out at the Chalet (Sharon and Bob). We broke out the wine early, starting with the 2016 Pinot grigio. Lisa and Sharon love it, but I still get the faintest hint of hay or a barnyard. Next we moved to appetizers and 2016 blueberry rosé. All agreed this was good wine, even better at the end of the bottle. Dinner was flat iron steak with tomato-fregola warm salad, accompanied by 2016 blackberry wine. I'm satisfied that this year's blackberry does not suffer the flaws of 2015. More Bit of Swiss for desert. Sharon declared it "a good food day." Indeed.

Making Repairs

The 2017 Icepocalypse has, so far, not materialized. In fact, some of the ice is melting today. The power is still on, and while we can't do anything outside, we can get plenty of winemaking done inside.

A patient brought me 30# of blueberries. The circumstances of the acquisition are suspicious but I didn't ask too many questions.

I already have a straight blueberry and a blueberry rosé in the carboy, so some of these berries are going into a quickie blueberry lemon wine.

This wine will be a quick, early drinker. It is not even worth a chapter, it's pretty cookbook. The rest of the morning was spent remedying various wines which have gone off the track.

Another patient gave me a huge batch of Arkansas Black apples. I pressed them off and made a straight juice, no water, Arkansas Black wine. The wine had been cleared, stabilized, and satisfactorily backsweetened, but it still had a musty smell which kept me from putting it in a bottle. Then I stumbled across this slide deck from Dominique Delteil detailing the use of Noblesse to clean up various problems in wine. The apple got 1g of Noblesse and astonishingly, it is much better. It's more "appley" with a longer finish and little to none of the mustiness it had before. Now I just have to clear it again before bottling.

The problem with the 2016 Blueberry wine was acidity. A pH of 3.07 might be fine for a Sauv Blanc but this wine was like eating a blueberry Sweetart. I've never used any post-ferment KHCO3, but this wine needed help. We bench trialed KHCO3 additions and landed on 1.5g/L. I treated the whole batch and cold stabilized it. Today I racked it; the pH is 3.37 and it is much smoother. I'm not yet sure that I didn't kill the aromatics and make it flabby.

The 2016 Syrah was made from California grapes. This wine has a couple of issues. First, it ended up too light. I should have cold macerated it. But for a light red it will be fine. The bigger problem is a lingering bitterness. The only thing I can think of is that maybe I overpressed it. I fined a portion with bentonite and albumin and it worked as advertised, the bitterness is completely gone! I treated the 5 gallon batch last weekend and today I racked it off the lees, with a plan to bulk age this until next fall. I have 8 gallons, and I intend to bottle some and use the rest for blending with elderberry and Chambourcin.

The biggest problem is the 2016 Lemongrass Mint wine. It developed a slight off odor during fermentation which seemed to improve with splash racking. However, a month later the smell was back, worse than ever. I suspected a H2S problem. I tried the usual splash racking and sulfites, no joy. I then treated it a month ago with Reduless which initially didn't seem to do a thing. I was one step from pitching this wine when today I went back to recheck it and lo and behold, it was much better! Not perfect, but improved. I racked it off the Reduless and dosed it with Noblesse to try to finish the cleanup. My last trick was going to be ascorbic acid and copper, but I may not have to do that.

The rest of the 2016 wines are coming along nicely. I have one more batch of elderberry rosé and that will be about it. It's a good thing, too, because I'm out of carboys and airlocks.

We have one more wave of freezing rain tonight, but we are no longer in the "crippling" zone and based on the appearance of our roof, I'm thinking we dodged a bullet.

I hope I don't need this

2016 Wines - Chapter 11 - EB

Saying "Elderberry Blackberry" is awkward. I just call this wine "EB." I just today sent the 2015 EB to the Kansas City Cellarmasters 18th Annual Wine Classic. I like the 2015 version a lot, but now I've probably just jinxed myself out of a medal.

So it was time to make the 2016 EB. This time I changed the ratio from 40:60 to 30:70 and bumped up the fruit quite a bit, 12# of elderberries and 28# of blackberries.

The elderberries were simmered to reduce the green goo, and a few bananas added for body.

These were added to the blackberries...

...and everything was thawed, treated with Kmeta, and gently crushed. To this I added 1 cup heavy toast American oak chips, 6# sugar, Opti Red, pectic enzyme, and Lallzyme EX. The inital pH was 3.30, and I'm aiming for a smoother lighter red here, so I added 6 tsp of calcium carbonate. The SG was perfect at 1.090. Then it got a 3 day cold soak for the pectic and Lallzyme to do their thing.  

I used K1-V1116 on this wine, but now I'm regretting not using 71B. The ferment was extremely fast; it hit 27.4C and after only about 4 days was down to 1.008, so I pressed.

From 5.75 gal of must I ended up with 4 gal of free run and 1 gal of pressed wine. There is a lot of sediment however, and I expect to lose another gallon with the first racking in another week or so. 

2016 Wines - Chapter 10 - Lemongrass Mint

As with the Chambourcin, I did not seek out this wine; rather, it found me. Lisa decided to clean out the lemongrass on the east side of the greenhouse. Naturally, I couldn't let it go to waste. I happened to have picked up a couple of weeks ago a 1 gallon Winexpert Pinot Grigio kit. This kit has 1.6l of PG concentrate, and I imagined that it would work well as a grape base for lemongrass ginger wine.

Ingredients for a 3 gallon batch with extra for topping:
650g fresh lemongrass
1 freshly picked Meyer lemon, juiced and zested
1.6l Winexpert Pinot Grigio concentrate
100g of mild crystalized ginger
44g of strong crystalized ginger
1/2tsp tannin
6g Opti White
3g Booster Blanc
3t pectic enzyme
2kg sugar
2.25tsp citric acid

I prepped the lemongrass stock as I have done before, simmering it twice with the ginger. The stock was drained into the primary and the lemongrass/ginger added to a mesh bag, along with the lemon zest.

The bag was added to the primary, along with the concentrate, and water to 3 gallons. Once cool, the rest of the ingredients were added. pH adjusted from 4.04 to 3.39 with the citric acid. SG went from 1.030 to 1.085 with the 2kg of sugar.

The next day I rehydrated the EC-1118 that came with the kit, and it turned out to be my first case of nonviable yeast. I didn't get any bubbling in the starter like I usually do. I pitched it anyway, and predictably, nothing happened. I suppose the yeast was killed while sitting in the kit somewhere. So I sprinkled K1-V1116 and it took off within a couple of hours. I step-fed Fermaid K and got a nice even ferment and on day 7 at 1.010 I racked it to the carboy.

I will add Kmeta in a couple more days. This wine smelled great during the entire fermentation. It will make a nice drink for summer 2017.

2016 Wines - Chapter 1 - Blackberry

We had our best ever blackberry haul in 2016 and September is the time to start making wine. Forty-two pounds of blackberries were dosed with K-meta thawed in two buckets.

Twenty-four hours later the berries were gently crushed and combined. SG was 1.042, and with 1.77kg sugar brought up to 1.085. pH 2.98 adjusted with 2.5t calcium carbonate to 3.28. Added 3t of pectic, 3g of Opti-Red, and we let the temp come up.

The next day we pitched a starter of 71B, and it took about 24 hours to form a nice cap. Fermaid K was step fed and after 6 days we were near 0 Brix and we pressed the must.

Yes, I filled the airlocks

We got about 2.5 gallons of free run and almost 4 gallons after pressing, about 11# per gallon. The pH is 3.03, probably from the additional acid released by the blackberries. I was aiming for a little higher than that, but hey, that's blackberry. Backsweetening will hopefully balance that out. We'll try to keep this wine protected from the light to preserve its color, but last year I had to blend a little elderberry to make this wine look good.