| The First Batch |
| This is a little detail about every thing that lead up to my first batch of homemade wine. I'll try to dive detail as to how the wine is coming along. After I got interested in making wine and learned what it was about I started looking for a place to buy equipment.. I needed everything and I wanted to start off with a wine concentrate kit. After looking extensively I found an online store. I liked the way these guys looked and their prices, so I decided to give them a shot. I ordered a 6-gallon winemaking equipment kit and a merlot wine kit. Once the equipment and wine kit came in I went to work. I wanted to do a little more research to make sure I had all my balls in one basket and then I was off. The Details Day 1: The most important part of making wine is to make sure all your equipment is sanitized properly. I sanitized everything that would have a chance to come in contact with the wine. I used an iodine solution that came with the equipment. After everything was sanitized I gathered all my ingredients and got to it. I had the assistance of my wife; actually she did all the work. 1. We opened the bag of concentrate and poured it into the primary fermenter. Then we added hot tap water to the bag to make sure we got every drop of concentrate. We then added the oak powder and about 4 1/2 gallons of water to the concentrate. Stirred until it was mixed well. 3. Using the wine thief, we took a sample of the wine and took a specific gravity (S.G.) reading. 4. We let everything settle out and made sure the temperature was between (65-80 degres F) and then sprinkled the top with the wine yeast. 5. We put the lid on the fermenter and placed it on an elevated stand, in the pantry, so it would be easy to rack, later. Day 2: I got to thinking about it real hard and I didn't put the airlock in the hole in the top of the primary I remember the directions with the kit and it didn't say to but I thought it would be a good Idea. All I know is that air is bad for wine. So I installed the airlock which will let air out but none inside the primary. Some slow fermentation has started to happen. By the way, I spent two and a half hours removing labels and cleaning bottles today. NOT FUN!! Day 3: Oh yeah, baby! We are seriously fermenting now. The airlock is bubbling about 70 times a minute. I can actually hear the yeast releasing CO2. The bad part is, you can hardly stand the smell inside the pantry. It's really strong. I can wait until tomorrow, just one more day closer to having wine. Day 4: Nothing special to report other then a very strong fermenting smell coming from my pantry. Day 5: My wife is ready to stick me in the pantry with the stench. Day 6: Finally! Time to rack. Racking is when we're taking the wine from the primary fermenter to the secondary fermenter (glass carboy), separating the must (wine) from the sediment (lees). This will start secondary fermentation. Now the fermentation is slowing down and the smell is a lot less strong. Normally you may want to wait more than six days until you rack but this is what the kit directions said. I topped-up with an inexpensive bottle of merlot. This just replaces what you lost during racking. Now it's a big waiting game. I will not do anything else until day twenty. So I guess this will get updated on May 15th. Day 8: New development. I came home today to check on my wine and when I opened the pantry door I noticed the airlock was full of wine. What happened?? I guess the slight shaking of the yeast and the topping up of the wine caused it to bubble and overflow. From everything I've read, this will happen from time to time so be prepared. Everything is cleaned up and now we're back to normal. Day 9 -17 Anticipation is rising and we're getting ready to bottle. I've started cleaning bottles and found out this is a royal pain in the kester. Removing labels and glue has become quite the task. I guess I should start working on my own labels. I bought some from the company where I got the kit and all I have to do is personalize them. I think I'll call it "Pollan", since that's my name and all. Who knows? There will be more later and I promised my good buddy C.B. I would add some pictures so hopefully in the near future there will be more to look at. Until next time. Bottling Day Know there has been quite a jump from day seventeen until day twenty-eight but there hasn't been anything important to tell. This day has been quite exciting for me. I know twenty-eight days doesn't seem like a long time and it pails in comparison to the next year I'll have to wait before I test the wine. We started out by getting the bottles ready for the wine, I had them sanitized and dried. My wife filled and I corked. The kit came with a bottling tube. It has a spring-loaded valve in the end and when it is placed in the bottle all you have to do is push the tube down, against the bottom of the bottle, the valve opens and the wine flows. It took a couple times to get the level just right but we found out if you let it fill to the top, when you pull the tube out the wine goes down to the perfect level. Twenty-six bottles later, bottling complete. O.K. I know you're supposed to let the wine mature but I just couldn't. Two days after bottling I popped a cork. Not bad, but not great. It was a little immature tasting but if I was in a pickle and needed a wine fix or if I was broke, an immature homemade merlot would do just fine. It has a very pungent smell that is not to appealing and it gets you in the glands. I hope it gets better. I expected it to be better so I don't think I'll make wine from a kit for a while. I'm not giving up I just want to try some different wines like fruit and maybe even honey. Who knows well just have to see what's next. Sorry about not having pictures. Until next time,... Happy Fermenting! |
| This page was last updated on July 23, 2004 |
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