First try with fresh grapes - muscadine

[hobbyiswine]

My wife has a friend that has red muscadine grapes on their property. Not sure but i assume they are wild. I am going to pick some tonight. Hopefully they are ripe. I live in Central Texas. This will be my first crack at fresh grapes. I wish I had more equipment but will make it work with what I got. I don't have a pH meter or a press which would sure be nice. Guess I will just get them fermenting and go from there, hopefully making adjustments along the way after ferment is complete, etc. depending on how many grapes I get I would like to try a couple different styles. Maybe a rose', a dry oaked, a port style...who knows. I only have EC1118 yeast on hand. Any suggestions for other yeast? I could go pick some up tomorrow. Any comments or suggestions are welcome. Like I said this is my first crack at fresh grapes. I hope to add some pics as this thread moves along.

 

[jswordy]

Yep, they should be ripe where you are. They generally ripen up first week of September here.

Put your grapes in 5-gallon paint strainer bags you can buy cheap at Lowes or Home Depot. Then tie off the bag and squish them over your fermentation vessel to break the skins. Drop the bag in. You can use several bags of grapes in the same must.

When your fermentation is done and you want to rack to secondary, grab the bag with your sanitized hands and start squeezing it, twisting it, whatever to get the juice all out as much as you can.

That's a redneck way of doing it without any equipment, and it works.

EC1118 will guarantee you a ferment, though I always use RC212 with grapes. You do not need a pH meter. You do need a hydrometer. Do not use any water in your must. Test some of the free run juices that will come from squishing the grapes for sugar with the hydrometer. Muscadines often only test 1.060-1.070. Add granulated sugar directly to the must until you get it up to 1.085-1.090. Then continue on from there just as you would with concentrate or a kit.

If you want to look at an old-timey muscadine recipe with modern-day twists, look in my sig for the link. Adding the cornmeal and potato is something I will never fail to do after making it once. It is excellent.

Keep us updated!

 

[hobbyiswine]

Jswordy great tips. I read through the moonshiner's muscadine thread. I am considering using the potato and cornmeal. I figure it can't hurt I will check into the strainer bags. Depending how many grapes we pick tonight I might wait until tomorrow to crush and put into bags, etc. I think I will get some 212 yeast also. I really like the idea of using the pressed skins for another batch so maybe I can get that going too.

 

[hobbyiswine]

I could use some advice so feel free to chime in...

The grapes are wild mustangs, not actually muscadine. I took some pictures and will try to add them to this thread. We had a GREAT time picking them. The vines are all wild and wrapped up in trees so my son and I went up in the bucket of the tractor and picked from about 10-15' high. We got about 5 gallons in about 45 minutes and alled it good.

The grapes seem ripe. Had a bitter, tart, tannin bite to them. Definitely not fit for the table. I crushed them with a potato masher and put in a big strainer bag. There is not a lot of juice in them. What I have created seems like a huge grape pack, not really anything to make wine from. My initial SG has the grape juice at only 1.018 which is of course very low. I probably have less than half of a gallon of "juice" and a couple gallons worth of "grape-pack-sack". So....what to do?

I think at this point I need to make about 3 gallons of "something" and add the mustang grape pack to it and see what I can come up with. Any suggestions? The grapes are crushed and I hit them with a dose of kmeta and pectin enzyme. I need to whip something up fairly quickly so the ingredients will likely have to come from the grocery store. Any suggestions???

 

[hobbyiswine]

Well I gotta get this thing cooking. I am going out of town next week and need to get this thing into a secondary before I leave. I looked online and the majority of the mustang recipes I found basically just have you add sugar and water to increase the must volume and SG so that's what I am gonna do. I have EC1118 and gonna go with that. Figure it is a bulldozer and can get a good ferment in the primary going so hopefully and I can squeeze the grape bag and leave it unsupervised. Not sure how this one is gonna turn out but I will make notes in case it does so I could repeat for next year.

 

[olusteebus]

I made a muscadine Blackberry combination that is great. I used one jar of smuckers seedless jam per gallon. A jar of jam will raise your sg somewhat.

 

[hobbyiswine]

Wine is fermenting strong. I squeezed the grape bag and gave everything a stir and then...OUCH! Must be the high acid in the mustang grapes. Made my hands burn. It stung for quite a while. Better where gloves next time.

Also, I noticed it when I crushed the grapes and again as I squeezed the bag but the juice has a very "slimy" texture like gooey snot.

So...the grape slime is literally burning my skin. Makes me wonder, is this stuff even going to be safe to drink?

 

[JohnT]

I am no expert on wild mustangs (I thought they were horses)

I find that "slimey, burning, snot" not a great description for grapes or grape juice. Are you sure that the grapes were clean and that nothing else got in there?

I would test the PH level. Could be that these grapes were rather under-ripe and rather high in acid (which could explain why the SG is so low).

johnT.

 

[hobbyiswine]

This batch continues to mystify me. I gave the grape sack a good dunking with the spoon. No squeezing tonight since it felt like my hands were on fire after yesterdays bag squeezing. The color is getting very intense! I am a bit surprised since I am just using EC1118. It looked like rose two days ago at crush and tonight is like pinot noir! Biggest surprise...it tastes surprisingly good. Very good. It is still very sweet, full of chunks, but if this is a sign of things to come that would be GREAT. Gonna give it two more days on the skins before I press (squeeze the bag I guess or maybe use a colander since I don't have a real press) and rack to secondary. First crack with fresh grapes even if they are mustangs is a huge learning experience and so much fun!

 

[hobbyiswine]

Here are a few pictures of the grapes on the vine and in the bucket.

 

[hobbyiswine]

My crush helper, the must with the crushed grapes in the mesh bag and the yeast starter.

 

[LAgreeneyes]

Wow!!! Simply beautiful!

 

[hobbyiswine]

My "press" helped me get a few pints more juice. Put it into a six gallon carboy to finish up fermentation.

 

[hobbyiswine]

Oops. Double post.

 

[jswordy]

That's looking fine. It will darken some more as the yeast settles out of it. My only concern is that you have too much headspace in that carboy. Might consider downsizing to a 5-gallon. But maybe you are just concerned it is too active right now yet.

 

[hobbyiswine]

First racking. The picture makes it look a bit darker than it really is. Yes I know it has some head space. I hit it with the vacuum pump and there is a nice layer of CO2 sitting on the wine. I am going to need to reduce the acid a bit and wanted some space in the carboy for additions, stirring, etc.

 

[jswordy]

Very nice and dark. You will be pleased. Great job.

 

[hobbyiswine]

Racked the wine tonight. Have a full 3g carboy plus a gallon jug and two 750ml bottles. Wine dropped quite a bit of tartrates but still way too acidic. Need to drop the acid then going to oak it a good while. Flavor is pretty good just with the acid its kinda like a dry fruity sweetart candy. The color is pretty cool.