Frugal Wine Making

Today I am going to talk about how to sweeten home made wine. Most of my fruit wine finishes very dry. When a wine is too dry, the only thing I can taste is the acid in the wine. I like to bring the fruit flavor out even in my dry wines. I am going to explain how I figure out how much sugar to add.

First be sure your wine is finished fermenting! This is very important. If you add sugar to a wine that is not finished, it will start fermenting again. If it happens to be in bottles when it starts up, it will pop the corks.

Second, I always stabilize my wine prior to sweetening. I do this to stop any residual yeast from starting to ferment again. I stabilize by adding Sorbate K and Campden Tablets (Potassium Metabisulfite). These two added together will stop the yeast from regrowing when the sweetener is added.

Now for the process. I draw a 750ml bottle of wine from the carboy and divide it among 4 wine glasses. This will make the math easier. One glass will not have any sugar add. This is the control glass, so I can compare this to the sweetened wine. In each of the other glasses I will add sugar in 1/4 teaspoon increments. So in glass 1 I will add 1/4 teaspoon of sugar, glass 2 will get 1/2 teaspoon of sugar and glass three will get 3/4 teaspoon of sugar.

Then I taste each glass of wine. I taste just enough wine to get an idea of the flavor profile. After the first tasting, I will add another batch of sugar to the wine. Since I am testing 3 glasses of wine, each with sugar in 1/4 tsp increments, I will add 3/4 teaspoon of sugar to each glass. 1/4 tsp plus 3/4 tsp, give a glass with 1 ts of sugar. Adding 3/4 tsp. to each of the other glasses gives 1 1/4 tsp and 1 1/2 tsp respectfully. I then perform the tasting of each of the sweetened glasses again. I make sure to clean my palate each time with water between tastings.

If the second round does not produce the flavor I want, I will do this process a third time. After I know how much sugar is needed to bring out the flavor of the wine, I can calculate how much sugar to add to the 5 gallon carboy. Since I did this with 4 glasses of wine from 1 bottle, it is easy to do the math.

For instance, if 1 tsp. of sugar is needed for a glass of wine, I know I need 4 tsp. for one bottle of wine.  There are 25 bottles of wine per carboy, so 4×25=100 tsp of sugar for 5 gallons. There are 48 tsp in a cup, so I add just over two cups of sugar. (Note: This conversion works with a full carboy. If your carboy is not full, then you need to add a little less sugar. Wine Making is part art, so it doesn’t have to be perfect.   )

That is how I determine how to sweeten a wine. I usually add just enough sugar to bring the fruit flavor out. But, if you prefer a sweeter wine, you can make that as well. That is the beauty of making you own wine!

Enjoy!

It is Elderberry season and time to shuck Elderberries! I’ve been trying a new method to clean the elderberries that I am going to share with you. I also have information on shucking elderberries on my Elderberry Project page.

I love Elderberry Wine, but cleaning the Elderberries is time consuming. I’ve been trying to find new ways to improve the process. The most widely used way to clean Elderberries is to shuck them by hand, pulling the berries off with your fingers. This method produces Elderberries with very few stems. Stems give a bitter taste to Elderberry Wine so the less stems the better.

Freezing Elderberries is another way to shuck them. This method consists of putting the Elderberries, stems and all, in a bag or box and freezing them. Then a day or two later, shaking the bag or box to dislodge the berries from the stems. The up side is that it is quick. You can remove lots of berries from the stem in just a few minutes. The down side is that the berries have lots of stem parts in them. The stems will impart a bitter taste to wine. Also, once the berries are frozen, they are hard to work with because if they thaw slightly, they will burst, loosing their juice.

The freezing process seems most promising, so I am trying to improve on it. The two largest problems I encountered last year were stems in the elderberries, and the occasional bug or leaf. (Stink bugs are not good for wine!)

I addressed the leaf problem in the field by only putting elderberry pods in the bag. I cut the pod from the bush above the last leaf. Sometimes there are leafs close to the berries, I just remove them before putting the pod in the bag.

Next, I addressed the bug problem back at the house. The Elderberries are going to need washed at some point in the process. You need to get the bugs and other stuff off the berries before using them. I have a large wash tub in the basement, and this is where I washed the berries. I put them all in one side of the tub and sprayed them with water. I take the berry pods out one layer at a time and spray again. My goal here is to wash the bugs and dirt to the bottom of the tub.

Berries being cleaned

As I take them out of the tub, I lay them out on newspaper to get them the drip dry for a few minuets. (Five or ten minuets at the most) My goal here is to not have them dripping water at the next step, wet is OK.

Elderberry drying after cleaning

Next I cut the Elderberries off the pod into a bowl. I am trying to get most of the stem removed at this point, but not all of the stem. I’ll get to that later. There are usually 5 pods of berries on the stem. I was able to cut all five off at one time on most of the pods.

After cutting the Elderberries off the pod, I placed them in 1 gallon freezer bags and froze the clean elderberries. At this point, the bugs and most of the stems are removed from the berries. (The berries left in the tub were gathered up and placed in a bowl and covered with water. This floats the bugs and stems to the top. I then pour the bugs and stems from the bowl and save the berries at the bottom of the bowl.)

After they are frozen, I take the bag out of the freezer and shake a bit. (Don’t shake it too hard, because it may break and spill elderberries on the floor. Frozen elderberries thaw pretty quick when laying on the floor and make a bit of a mess. ) This shaking will shake the berries off the stems. The berries will fall to the the bottom of the bag, and the stems will move to the top. I also get my fingers in the bag in a raking motion, and bring the stems up to the top of the bag. When done, the top of the bag will have lots of stems, and the bottom of the bag will have lots of berries.

Frozen elderberries seperated from stem

Here is a picture viewed from the side. Notice the stems are on the top and berries are on the bottom. I haven’t removed these stems yet.

Frozen shucked elderberries

When I remove the stems, I place them in another bag to go back in the freezer. The first batch of stems will still have some berries on them. This will allow me to get some more berries off these stems. Once the stem bag is full I put it in the freezer for a day, I’ll repeat the shaking process with the stem bag to get more berries. Then I will discard the stems after the second cleaning.

Here is a picture of cleaned Elderberries.

Cleaned Elderberries

Notice there is still a small amount of stems in the bag. This small amount should not affect the taste of the wine. I will report back after I have a batch of wine made.

While this method is not perfect, it does save some time over shucking the berries. It took me about a hour to process 10 pounds of berries. I imagine the time will go down as I get more practice. I am always looking for better ways to clean elderberries, so if you have any ideas, post them in the comments below. Unfortunately, I only get a couple of weeks a year to try to improve the process, but there is always next year!

Enjoy!

Here at Frugal Wine Making, I’m always looking for ways to save a couple of dollars in my wine making. One way I did that was by building my own wine rack in the new house. I read a thread in Wine Press about how to make a wine rack out of pallets. I didn’t have any pallets, but I did have some left over lumber from the house.

On a standard pallet, the support boards are just 2×4 lumber. I measured a standard 750ml wine bottle and sure enough, it measures just under 3 inches. A 2×4 measures 3 1/2 inches wide. So, if I take 2 pieces of 2×4 and nail them to each end of a piece of 3/4 inch plywood, I have a stackable wine rack!

Here is a picture:

Frugal Wine Rack

I did have a pallet, but it was pretty broken up. I used the center of it for my base, but a pallet base is not necessary. I had several strips of 3/4 inch plywood left over that measured 9×32 inches, so that is what i used for my plank. I also had some pieces of 2×4 left over and I cut them to 9 inches. I stood the 2×4 on their sides and laid the plywood on top like I was making a step. I nailed the plywood to the 2×4 and then stacked them on top of each other. I then used 2 inch drywall screws to attach each self to the one below it by driving the screws at an angle to go into the board below.

One improvement I do plan on making is adding a center 2×4 to the wine rack. I noticed that the plywood planks are starting to sag a little bit. The next time I’m at Lowe’s, I will pick up a 2×4, cut it into 9 inch sections and put them in the middle of the rack for support.

My rack is only 43 inches tall. I would not make it much taller without attaching it to the wall some how. I wouldn’t want to risk the wine rack falling over.

I have 9 shelves that hold 9 bottles each. With some left over lumber, I was able to build a 81 bottle wine rack. If you add the pallet on the bottom, and the small racks on the top, I have plenty of storage for wine. I just wish I had more full bottles than empty ones.

Enjoy!

RJ Spangles sells a White Chocolate Port wine kit that is very good, but expensive. I plan on trying to create something similar using a bit of creativity. I am starting with White Niagara frozen grape juice as a base. I used my Frozen Wine Concentrate recipe to start. My LHBS has chocolate flavoring for wine. I also purchased some raspberry flavoring from them. Once the wine is finished fermenting, I plan on flavoring that wine with these additives. I will do bench trials to determine the proper amount to add, so stay tuned!

My next batch of wine is going to be a grape\cranberry mix made from Welches frozen juice concentrate. I have 4 cans of Welches frozen grape juice concentrate and 4 cans of Welches frozen cranberry juice concentrate. We got these from Giant Eagle, but any grocery store should have them. The key with using frozen concentrate is to read the ingredients. You want to make sure there are no preservatives. The grape juice ingredients include “Grape juice concentrate, Grape juice, citric acid, ascorbic acid”. That’s it, no preservatives. These 8 cans will make 5 gallons of wine.

I will add boiled water to these cans to make 4 gallons. I will add enough sugar to get my PA reading to 10-12%. I will then add enough water to bring this volume to 5 gallons if needed (The sugar will add a certain amount of volume to the must). I will then test acid and adjust as needed. I will also need to add yeast nutrient and campdom tablets before pitching yeast.

I will add this recipe to the recipe section for your convineance.