cooltouch
Junior
- Joined
- Oct 25, 2012
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I ran across an interesting situation several weeks ago. I had a bit of leftover grape juice from some homemade wine I'd made, using baker's yeast. Which actually turned out to pretty good, but that's another story. What was interesting was, when I opened the bottle it gave off a woosh! of compressed air, and a white froth appeared along the top surface of the juice. I gave it a sniff, and sure enough. It was wine! I tasted it, and it was very dry, so I just dumped it into the jug of wine I'd previously made.
But it got me to thinking, and recalling articles I've read on fermenting wine using wild yeast. So for my next batch, I decided to deliberately ferment my wine this way. I started with a half gallon of grape juice, to which I added a cup and a half of sugar. Then I bought some grapes at the local supermarket, selecting bunches that had that "frosty" look, which I hoped would contain a decent amount of wild yeast. I crushed these grapes, added their juice to the mix, stuck a perforated balloon on the top of the jug, and then forgot about it for about a month. If the fermentation caused the balloon to inflate, I missed it, so I don't know how long it stayed inflated.
Last night I opened the jug and took a sniff. Yep! It smelled like wine. So I siphoned it off into a second, clean jug. There was quite a bit of sediment left behind. What I immediately noticed as I was siphoning the wine was that it had a brown, rather tawny color (I used some clear tubing). Hmmm, I was thinking. Might I have wound up with a sherry of some sort? I kind of doubted it.
So, I poured a glass. Wow. It actually tasted great! Definitely not a sherry. Somewhere between a cabernet and a merlot as far as sweetness/dryness goes. I don't own a hygrometer, so I don't know what the ABV is, but based on the buzz I got from a few glasses of it last night, I'd say it's at least 12%.
One of the things I was worried about was that the wrong kind of wild yeast would find its way into my fermentation. The other being that no fermentation would take place. Well, it definitely was not the wrong kind of yeast.
This first experiment with wild yeast was so successful that I think I'll just do it this way from now on.
If there's anything you might like to add or comment on regarding this process, I'd like to read what you have to say. I'm still a virtual newbie at all this, after all.
But it got me to thinking, and recalling articles I've read on fermenting wine using wild yeast. So for my next batch, I decided to deliberately ferment my wine this way. I started with a half gallon of grape juice, to which I added a cup and a half of sugar. Then I bought some grapes at the local supermarket, selecting bunches that had that "frosty" look, which I hoped would contain a decent amount of wild yeast. I crushed these grapes, added their juice to the mix, stuck a perforated balloon on the top of the jug, and then forgot about it for about a month. If the fermentation caused the balloon to inflate, I missed it, so I don't know how long it stayed inflated.
Last night I opened the jug and took a sniff. Yep! It smelled like wine. So I siphoned it off into a second, clean jug. There was quite a bit of sediment left behind. What I immediately noticed as I was siphoning the wine was that it had a brown, rather tawny color (I used some clear tubing). Hmmm, I was thinking. Might I have wound up with a sherry of some sort? I kind of doubted it.
So, I poured a glass. Wow. It actually tasted great! Definitely not a sherry. Somewhere between a cabernet and a merlot as far as sweetness/dryness goes. I don't own a hygrometer, so I don't know what the ABV is, but based on the buzz I got from a few glasses of it last night, I'd say it's at least 12%.
One of the things I was worried about was that the wrong kind of wild yeast would find its way into my fermentation. The other being that no fermentation would take place. Well, it definitely was not the wrong kind of yeast.
This first experiment with wild yeast was so successful that I think I'll just do it this way from now on.
If there's anything you might like to add or comment on regarding this process, I'd like to read what you have to say. I'm still a virtual newbie at all this, after all.