Yeast to the Rescue!
A little history first. Many years ago I attempted winemaking. One batch done with friends was a disaster which found it’s rest in a storm drain, the second group effort produced potable (but not necessarily palatable) apple wine. I then tried making mead for myself which did a little better. I still have a few bottles remaining of one of the two batches and it’s remarkably good now. Go figure…
Flash forward 10 years or so... I have the bug again. I want to make my own wine, but not just make my own wine, but make it well. Well enough to satisfy myself and whatever harsh, unrealistic standards I decide to impose upon my endeavor.
So armed with my notebook of printed resources and many years of drinking good wine under my belt I set off. It’s been a while and I have learned that the same precision that I used to mix darkroom chemicals and develop prints would have been a good discipline in winemaking too. So to get my feet wet again I was given a wine kit for Christmas to make 6 gallons of Cabernet Sauvignon. So far it’s doing very well I must say. I’ve extended the 28-day kit schedule to several months and added a few more ingredients and extra steps that professional winemakers employ to help assure a reasonably good wine. Hopefully next year I can begin with crushed grapes and get a fuller more robust must to work with. As it sits quietly in my basement thinking about what it wants to be when it grows up, I’ve now begun label designing. I decided my Cabernets will be called The Fifth Humor™, seems to me the ancient Greeks overlooked a vital element.
So how does yeast figure here? You may ask - good question. Feeling fairly confident the Cab was doing well and that I had learned a bit from it I decided to make my own cranberry wine for next year’s holidays. You can ferment just about anything so why not make cranberry wine? I mixed the must, added sugar to get the specific gravity (S.G.) high enough to allow the yeast to create alcohol, then some tannin to help it attain some astringency and avoid a light fruity wine. So far so good - or so I thought. I started the yeast culture in a Pyrex glass and pitched the foaming yeast into the cranberry must. Next morning – nothing; not even the slightest indication there was a fermentation supposed to be occurring in the jug. I read up on fermentations and waited patiently for a few days. Nothing.
I created a new yeast batch using a more robust yeast strain, added some yeast nutrient and slowly added it to the must as directed by a few home wine makers. Again nothing.
The following week I could see the lazy yeast at the bottom of the jug but it wasn’t doing a darn thing. So deciding not to let my investment of time and organic cranberry juice be a waste I tried one more time. I mixed up the remainder of the original RC212 yeast pack, added some nutrient and slowly added some must to the Pyrex holding the foaming yeast. It worked! The foaming continued, so over the next day, a few ounces at a time, I added more of the must to the yeast mix until the whole 1.5 gallons were happily fermenting. I so totally rock.
Fermentation has now ended, I racked the wine to a clean jug and topped it off with the extra wine and sealed the gallon. I’ll watch it and in a month or so I’ll re-rack and take another S.G. reading to calculate the alcohol content. Now I just need a name...
Flash forward 10 years or so... I have the bug again. I want to make my own wine, but not just make my own wine, but make it well. Well enough to satisfy myself and whatever harsh, unrealistic standards I decide to impose upon my endeavor.
So armed with my notebook of printed resources and many years of drinking good wine under my belt I set off. It’s been a while and I have learned that the same precision that I used to mix darkroom chemicals and develop prints would have been a good discipline in winemaking too. So to get my feet wet again I was given a wine kit for Christmas to make 6 gallons of Cabernet Sauvignon. So far it’s doing very well I must say. I’ve extended the 28-day kit schedule to several months and added a few more ingredients and extra steps that professional winemakers employ to help assure a reasonably good wine. Hopefully next year I can begin with crushed grapes and get a fuller more robust must to work with. As it sits quietly in my basement thinking about what it wants to be when it grows up, I’ve now begun label designing. I decided my Cabernets will be called The Fifth Humor™, seems to me the ancient Greeks overlooked a vital element.
So how does yeast figure here? You may ask - good question. Feeling fairly confident the Cab was doing well and that I had learned a bit from it I decided to make my own cranberry wine for next year’s holidays. You can ferment just about anything so why not make cranberry wine? I mixed the must, added sugar to get the specific gravity (S.G.) high enough to allow the yeast to create alcohol, then some tannin to help it attain some astringency and avoid a light fruity wine. So far so good - or so I thought. I started the yeast culture in a Pyrex glass and pitched the foaming yeast into the cranberry must. Next morning – nothing; not even the slightest indication there was a fermentation supposed to be occurring in the jug. I read up on fermentations and waited patiently for a few days. Nothing.
I created a new yeast batch using a more robust yeast strain, added some yeast nutrient and slowly added it to the must as directed by a few home wine makers. Again nothing.
The following week I could see the lazy yeast at the bottom of the jug but it wasn’t doing a darn thing. So deciding not to let my investment of time and organic cranberry juice be a waste I tried one more time. I mixed up the remainder of the original RC212 yeast pack, added some nutrient and slowly added some must to the Pyrex holding the foaming yeast. It worked! The foaming continued, so over the next day, a few ounces at a time, I added more of the must to the yeast mix until the whole 1.5 gallons were happily fermenting. I so totally rock.
Fermentation has now ended, I racked the wine to a clean jug and topped it off with the extra wine and sealed the gallon. I’ll watch it and in a month or so I’ll re-rack and take another S.G. reading to calculate the alcohol content. Now I just need a name...
posted by Anthony at 1:58 PM
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