Cherry wine questions

[Flugel91_30]

Hello. As a preface to this, I'm new to both this forum and wine-making. I made 3 gallons of dandelion wine last year, but aside from that this is my first year making wine, and definitely my first year doing so relatively seriously. Anyway...

I'm working on a cherry wine right now, and have a few questions. I followed the recipe on Jack Keller's website for Morello (tart) cherries, using freshly picked cherries from a few trees nearby. I adjusted his recipe for five gallons of wine, and proceeded from there. However, after letting my must cool, I discovered that the 12.5 lbs of sugar the recipe calls for is FAR too much. My must had a SG of 1.130... I diluted it down to 1.110 (15% abv, 29 balling/brix, I believe).

So my first question is... if I am using Red Star Pasteur Red yeast, should fermentation proceed alright from here? I'm worried that the sugar concentration may be too much for the yeast to handle. I ran a Strawberry wine earlier, that is now aging/settling, that started with an initial SG of 1.112, and it fermented pretty well (11-12% abv upon transferring to secondary). Needless to say, I'll be checking the SG of my fruit juice before adding any sugar...

My second question is... how much will it hurt the action of my pectic enzyme to have added it and the yeast to the must at the same time? I was unaware of the need to let the enzyme work before adding the yeast (although I did this with my strawberry wine, but this was just following the recipe. I didn't know why I was doing this. Now, however, I know). I used 6 lbs of cherries per gallon (30 lbs total for 5 gallons of wine), so I'll still have a good bit of juice even without the pectic enzyme. Further, my grandfather kept an eye on the must as we brought it to a boil, and let it boil intermittently over a 1.5-2 hour period, so the cherries should be fairly thoroughly juiced. I still worry, however, about getting all the juice out and having a potential pectin haze.

Finally... does the amount of pectic enzyme added really matter? I scaled most aspects of Jack Keller's recipe up by 5, including the pectic enzyme. So I added 5 tsp of pectic enzyme, which seemed like quite a bit to me. I added 3 tsp, I believe, to my Strawberry wine, and I can assure you that the berries were thoroughly broken down. In fact, they were destroyed to such an extent that it took me about 2 hours to strain it into secondary, due to clogs (I don't rack into secondary to avoid loosing yeast in the lees, although I worry that adding in the appropriate campden tablets, 1 tablet/gallon, may have hindered or killed the yeast).

So... I'll stop there for now. I suppose I'll see in a few days whether the yeast is working or not, but I dont' want to risk loosing this must. It took me about 2-3 hrs to pick those cherries, and they've produced an excellent, and I mean excellent must. The liquid is dark red, even in a tasting spoon, and the cherry flavor is strong.

 

[saramc]

Welcome flugel!!

With an OG of 1.110, since you may be stressing any yeast strain, consider following a staggered nutrient addition, check the stickies sections, you will find it. I would recommend in the future if you know you want a high original gravity start around 1.090 & when you have dropped by 0.030 then add more sugar. By that 1/3 sugar break you are at the ideal yeast nutrient addition point plus you should have a good amount of established, healthy viable yeast cells circulating ready to handle an increase in fermentables. But, I think your Pasteur Red will chew thru your sugars, if you keep the yeast healthy and happy, and leave you with a wine that is pushing 15%, going to definitely need some age though, that will be one boozy cherry.
Do not worry about k-meta killing your wine yeast, it does not work that way. It is an antioxidant, antibacterial & will inhibit wild yeast strains from multiplying, but does not kill yeast. Will go ahead and break the news, sorbate does not kill yeast or stop an active ferment either, someone is going to tell you it does...it does not. Save yourself the heartache of bottle bombs.

On pectic enzyme, it is vital that it be a part of any fruit ferment. If you forget it preferment, just add as soon as possible, do not scale down the amount to add. If working with high pectin fruits, apples-pears-quince, do not hesitate to add more as any unused enzyme will settle in the lees. Same advice applies to any cooked fruits/juices, so since you 'boiled' your must you likely set those pectins, you need to be heavy handed on the enzyme. You can also add an amylase enzyme to boost things, and they even market an enzyme for those high pectin fruits called 'Pearadex'--awesome stuff. There really is no reason to boil your fruit in order to obtain juice, you could have frozen/thawed to rupture cell walls & increase juice yield, enzymed..... maybe try that next go-round. You will find that most must, even without cooking it, will break down to 'mushy puree pulp', the pectic enzyme plays a role but the action of the ferment itself will do it, so while you think you do not need to add enzyme, or can cut back of recommended dose, you will learn that you would likely end up with a hazy wine that even filtering may not fix.
Now your concern of not racking off lees for fear of losing yeast...rest assured you will still have plenty of live yeast swirling in solution, so do not hesitate to rack off gross lees when transferring from primary to a secondary container.

I think you have a good batch in progress & you asked great questions. Sorry for being long-winded, but I try to explain things, it is just who I am. *Sara*

 

[Flugel91_30]

Thanks for your reply; it was very helpful. It seems that I didn't have to worry too much about my yeast; I put it in at about 11 pm, and it was going strong by morning. I'd somewhat hoped that it would take a little while to get going, giving my pectic enzyme time to work a little, but I did have a very strong starter (started over 24 hrs before adding). I've noticed that the Pasteur Red foam much more than the 71b-1112. In fact, 71b didn't foam much at all, just fizzed. I'm having a bit of a problem with foaming from the Pasteur Red, however. At least it's working, I guess...

Where is that sticky thread you mentioned on staggering yeast nutrient, by the way? I looked, but did not find it. Do you just add in 1-2 tsp more nutrient halfway through primary fermentation? In my strawberry wine, fermentation hadn't proceeded to the extent that I would have wished at the end of primary (started at SG of 1.112, ended at SG of 1.030, about 11.5-12% abv, roughly table wine sweetness), and I would like to avoid this with my cherry wine. Of course, considering that I will likely have a bit of a hot cherry wine if I ferment to dryness, I wouldn't mind if it stopped at an SG of about 1.010 or so. I'd like to have a % abv of about 13-14%. I want the final SG to be about 1.010-1.020 after backsweetening anyway, as I don't like dry wines much. Granted, I am very new to wine-making and drinking, so it could grow on me...

I do have a couple more questions, if you don't mind. First, how should I expect fermentation to proceed in secondary? The airlock on my strawberry wine is showing some pressure, but there are not bubbles and little action besides this. Is fermentation still proceeding? I guess it could just be a slow fermentation at this point...

My other question is: How crucial is titrating for acidity? I don't know how crucial knowing your % acid (I'll probably stick with molarity/molality) is to wine-making. Of course, I'd imagine it matters considering others use it. And I would have no problem running the tests, I just wonder if buying sodium hydroxide and phenolphthalien is really worth it, especially considering that sodium hydroxide is fairly hygroscopic.

Thanks again for the information. I'm really new to this, and am still learning the ropes. Sigh... I need to get a good book on this...

 

[BernardSmith]

Hi Flugel, I guess I have one question and your answer may provide an answer to a second question. You say that you boiled the cherries. OK. I agree with Sara than this may create a pectic haze but be that as it may, you don't suggest that you chopped the cherries and more to the point - that you removed the pits. I wonder whether cherry pits enhance the flavor of the wine or may leach substances that are less than desirable and you would want to remove the pits sooner rather than later. And that leads me to the second issue. If the cherries are pitted then there is no reason why you could not gently squeeze them each time you stirred the must to introduce air into the wine during the first few days. I think you will be making available to the yeast some more of the fructose in the cherries but you will also be increasing the flavor of the wine.
As to questions of acidity - people on the forum with far more knowledge and experience than I have may want to offer a very different answer but I think the pH is quite important. TA is important for grape wines - I think - because of the specific acid blends in grapes but if you make wine from other kinds of fruit I don't think that you can assume that the balance among the various acids is the same. So my goal is typically to aim for a pH of between 3.2 and 3.5 and I let the TA take care of itself. And that said, trying to "read" when the color changes occur using phenolphthalien when I am working with red wine is not for me. My chemistry is high school (Scottish) and I believe that the color always changes at a pH of 8.2. In other words, a pH meter is useful whether you are measuring pH or TA

 

[Flugel91_30]

I wonder whether cherry pits enhance the flavor of the wine or may leach substances that are less than desirable and you would want to remove the pits sooner rather than later. And that leads me to the second issue. If the cherries are pitted then there is no reason why you could not gently squeeze them each time you stirred the must to introduce air into the wine during the first few days. I think you will be making available to the yeast some more of the fructose in the cherries but you will also be increasing the flavor of the wine.

I've wondered that myself, as well. I mashed the cherries by hand, but left the pits as I've heard from most places that they don't affect the flavor of the wine as long as they aren't cracked/crushed open. I don't know whether they will leach anything long term or not; I suppose we'll see on that. Granted, they will only be in the must for a week. We removed quite a few of the pits while the must was heated, though, as they tended to float on the surface. And I have been mashing the more whole cherries as I stir my must, which is providing a little more juice. The cherries themselves largely lost their pits in mashing them, so squeezing them is no problem. Even those that still have pits lose them readily at this point (not that they were difficult before, it just would have taken a ridiculous amount of time to pit 30 lbs of cherries...).

As for acidity, I never thought about the color issues. I suppose I could use another indicator, such as bromcresol green or bromothymol blue. A pH meter would be useful, but I don't have the money to spend right now.

 

[saramc]

You can source a pH meter for $15 on eBay, they work fine, and life is so much easier figuring out TA of reds, though you can use the 'white tile method' in the interim, http://www.bcawa.ca/winemaking/AcidControl.htm

Once you transfer to secondary container things should not be as volatile as the SG is winding down. I figure 15-30 days once transferred to secondary for those final points to drop, no hurries. Keep in mind that is not always the case, but a good reference but again so many variables come into play.
My apologies, I thought there was a staggered nutrient sticky, but HBT has one here: http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f30/sticky-mead-making-faqs-83030/
The principle applies for wine too.

 

[Arne]

The cherry pits seem to give the wine a bitter taste. I have been pitting the last couple of batches and the taste has not been there. The good news is if you let it age for a long time, the bitterness goes away. Think a year or so in the bottle and you wind up with a much better flavor than when it is young. Arne.

 

[Flugel91_30]

Things seem to be going fairly well so far. SG yesterday was 1.063, so it's at about 7% abv. That seems pretty good to me, for two days of fermentation. I have another question, though: if I added 5 tsp of Fermaid-K at the onset (I see not that it should be about 1/2 tsp per gallon, as opposed to 1 tsp per gallon. Oh well), would it hurt to add another 1-2 tsp once I reach the halfway point? I don't want to get a level of nutrient that is toxic to the yeast, but at the same time I want to facilitate good fermentation. It should be fine if I just let it go to completion, so it's no big deal. I'm just wondering.

The strawberry wine I mentioned is doing pretty well also. SG was at 1.003 or so after letting it sit in secondary for 4 days, so total alcohol is at about 14% abv. I'm assuming that my yeast should be about done by now, as I used lalvin 71b-1112. Still, I may 'nuke' it with 1/2 tsp of Potassium metabisulfite to ensure that nothing is growing/going to grow and/or continue to ferment. I definitely don't want a higher %abv. Next time I'll start at 1.090, instead of 1.110+. Oh well, I suppose you live and learn...

On another note, if a pH meter is only $15, I'll definitely pick one up. I was expecting closer to $100. pH is a better measurement for me, anyway; I can derive any other data on acidity that I may need from the pH.

The cherry pits seem to give the wine a bitter taste. I have been pitting the last couple of batches and the taste has not been there. The good news is if you let it age for a long time, the bitterness goes away. Think a year or so in the bottle and you wind up with a much better flavor than when it is young. Arne.

I thought about pitting them, but I decided that pitting 30 lbs of cherries wasn't something I wanted to do at that time. Of course, one often has to be willing to work if one wants something worthwhile. However... that is a lot of cherries... As I said, my grandfather fished a lot of the pits out of the must, so there isn't too many left. I'll just count it as a little extra tanning. I was planning on letting it age for at least 9 months anyway...

 

[Arne]

Keep your eyes open. Find a old cherrypitter. (Put the cherries in the top, turn the crank and the pits go one way, the cherries come out another.) Still sounds awful time consuming, but you can do 30 lbs. in a half hour or so. Have looked for new ones, but I don't think they make them any more. Have to find an antique one. Arne.

 

[saramc]

On the nutrient, keep in mind different brands use different doses; not interchangeable from brand to brand.
I think 1 tsp Fermaid-K weighs approx 4 grams, so your 5 tsp dose added 20 grams of Fermaid-K. You have enough nutrient for about 20 gallons already on board.

Scott Labs says add 25 g/hL at 1/3 sugar depletion or in two doses; 12.5 g/hL at the end of lag phase and 12.5 g/hL at 1/3 sugar depletion. 1hL is 26.4 gallons.

To be just 2 days in and already be approaching 50% depletion is zipping right along. What is the must temperature?

 

[Flugel91_30]

Wine was at 1.014 today, %abv down to 2% (so roughly 13% abv). I didn't have a thermometer handy to check the temperature, but the container feels somewhat cool (70 degrees-ish). I'd say about room temperature. Tomorrow I'll check it with a digital thermometer and let you know.

The taste is pretty good, considering its age. The cherry flavor is quite prominent but not overpowering. I find it lacking in body, but that may change with age (it's pretty rough right now). Next time I'll probably add some white raisins to the must during primary.

I'm considering stopping fermentation (with SO2) before too long, to avoid having too much alcohol. What would you suggest? Will doing so hurt the aging process of my wine? I don't know to what extent the effects of aging are due to active yeast, but I'd imagine they play at least some role. I'll probably leave it as is to ferment as much as it will; this is just a though.

 

[saramc]

Wine was at 1.014 today, %abv down to 2% (so roughly 13% abv)....

I'm considering stopping fermentation (with SO2) before too long, to avoid having too much alcohol. What would you suggest? Will doing so hurt the aging process of my wine? I don't know to what extent the effects of aging are due to active yeast, but I'd imagine they play at least some role. I'll probably leave it as is to ferment as much as it will; this is just a though.

You cannot stop an active ferment with SO2, or sorbate, for that matter. Your best option would be to cold crash, rack, & then pasteurize if you want to stop it in its tracks. There are many who will say to go heavy handed on the SO2, cold crash & sorbate it & you will be fine BUT that is very risky and there are so many failures. Even if you were able to absolute filter you still would not be able to hinder all of the viable yeast.
If you allow this to ferment on out, you could always make say 1 gallon of an 8% wine & blend with 3gal of your +/- 15% cherry, end up with 13.25% +/-.

Very handy tools can be found here, http://www.winebusiness.com/tools/?go=winemaking.calc&sid=8