Wade E's Chocolate Strawberry Port

[VRSCAman]

I am getting married in April. For a gift to guests I am going to make Wade's recipe, a triple batch. I tripled everything the recipe called for and used frozen sliced strawberries instead of fresh.

The strawberries are in three separate paint straining bags bound with zip ties and floating in the must. OG is right on at 1.110 so I pitched my yeast today.

Wish me luck!

 

[Woodbee]

VRSCAman.
Indeed, the very best of luck on your wine and your wedding. Also, welcome to the forum.
Not that you need more to do but, better start getting those labels designed.
Brad

 

[VRSCAman]

My fiance is in charge of the labels and bottles. I am thinking 375ml ice wine bottles seeing as how we need 150 of them.

Does anybody have any other suggestions?

 

[Wade E]

Are you getting married on the 24th as that would be my birthday and making this recipe for that occasion would be way to much fate!

 

[VRSCAman]

It's on the 16th.

 

[VRSCAman]

140 bottles corked

The first run of 140 bottles was corked this weekend. The recipe was a little sweet for me so I mixed 3 parts sweet to 1 part unsweetened and it is PERFECT.

I filtered it and bottled in 375ml bottles. My fiance LOVES it.

Now for another 24 gallon batch.

One question: Would you recommend filtering it with a number 3 filter pad to improve clarity? I used number 2 for the last batch.

 

[winemaker_3352]

You could sterile filter it (#3) but using the polish filter (#2) should be fine. Sterile filtering if not necessary may strip your wine of some body or flavor.

Usually sterile filtering is done to get rid of the leftover yeasties - but if you sorbated your wine - #2 should do just fine.

 

[Dugger]

I personally use #1 pads to filter a port - the coarser pad was recommended to me by Spagnols some time ago when I first started making ports.

 

[winemaker_3352]

I personally use #1 pads to filter a port - the coarser pad was recommended to me by Spagnols some time ago when I first started making ports.

Any particular reason why?

 

[Dugger]

My recollection, and that seems to be going south quickly these days!, is because of the thick viscosity of the port - the coarser pads allow a faster filtering process while still picking up any sediment that may be around.

 

[winemaker_3352]

My recollection, and that seems to be going south quickly these days!, is because of the thick viscosity of the port - the coarser pads allow a faster filtering process while still picking up any sediment that may be around.

I am not that familiar with making ports - but are ports thicker than normal wine? I know they are higher in ABV - but i didn't know they were thicker.

 

[Dugger]

Well I'm not sure how you measure thickness, but the mouthfeel sure seems thicker than normal wine.