What does a homebrewer need to know about winemaking?

[metasyntactic]

I'm a reasonably competent homebrewer who's been asked to dabble in winemaking (specifically, a chardonnay). What skills and information do I need to be a good vintner that would not transfer from brewing?

 

[jamesngalveston]

First off...you need a could recipe/are kit for what you want to make.
If your a homebrewer you have the skills all ready.
The information you can get from here, along with sound advise and maybe some tricks and tips from something of the long time (older) vinters.

 

[Julie]

Hi meta syntactic,

Welcome to winemaking talk. California juice buckets are coming out, where do you live? It would be nice if you live where you could get a juice bucket of Chardonnay but if not get yourself a kit, it is pretty much self explanatory and with your experience with brewing this should be easy for you.

 

[jamesngalveston]

see, julie is one of the , umm more experienced vinters....and has very sound information.

 

[metasyntactic]

Hi meta syntactic,

Welcome to winemaking talk. California juice buckets are coming out, where do you live? It would be nice if you live where you could get a juice bucket of Chardonnay but if not get yourself a kit, it is pretty much self explanatory and with your experience with brewing this should be easy for you.

I'm up in British Columbia. I was looking at Winexpert kits because they're based almost around the corner from me.

The main thing that's made me shy of making wine in the past has been questions about the quality of ingredients available. As a brewer I'm very particular about that; I get my base malt from a local maltster (Gambrinus) and try to source local, unprocessed hops (usually via Hops Connect). I'm a bit leary about wine kits, because I wouldn't use kits to make my beer.

My googling has brought up that there seem to be higher quality juice available in the fall. How does that work? My preference would be for Okanagan grapes, but California would be a very close second.

Is there a canonical starter document akin to John Palmer's How to Brew?

 

[roger80465]

I suspect as a homebrewer you have 5 gallon fermenters. Consider Williams Brewing Chardonnay. Makes a 5 gallon kit and is pretty darn good. California fruit and pretty inexpensive. Great combination in my opinion.

 

[metasyntactic]

I suspect as a homebrewer you have 5 gallon fermenters. Consider Williams Brewing Chardonnay. Makes a 5 gallon kit and is pretty darn good. California fruit and pretty inexpensive. Great combination in my opinion.

I've got 6 to 6.5 gallon fermentor carboys, and a 5 gallon secondary for dry hopping. I don't really have much spare capacity there, so I'll need more vessels anyway.

What do people usually use to ferment 6 gallon kits, other than plastic? Demijohns?

 

[jamesngalveston]

for my 5 gallon batches i use a 7 gallon plastic pail, for my 6 gallon i have used a 10 gallon sanitary garbage can, a 52 quart igloo, and a 10 gallon sand bucket.I have no idea if it is correct, but it has worked for me.
My primary fermentation never last more then 7 to 9 days, so I figure I would be safe in using the above. Secondary, I use all glass carboys.

 

[DoctorCAD]

The hardest thing for a beer brewer is to just leave the wine alone.

Let it sit undisturbed for a lot longer than you would think is necessary.

Time and no intervention can only make it better, unlike beer.

 

[WI_Wino]

I also home brew and make wine. A big difference I have seen is most home brewers are ok with lots of headspace in a carboy/primary pail. You'll find that most winemakers are religious about topping off or racking down to smaller containers to remove head space.

Most wine is initially fermented in a pail w/ a loose fitted lid or towel covering it. Not under airlock. When fermenting with grape skins (red) or fruit, it is common to stir once or twice a day to push the fruit under. Wine appears to be less vulnerable to infections compared to beer.

Most home wine makers are not nearly as picky about yeast selection as what I have seen in the home brew community. Dry yeast is much more common than liquid yeast. And I think most of us just sprinkle it on the must to start fermentation (skipping the re-hydration step). Generally speaking white wines should ferment cool (say mid to higher 60's) and red wines fermented warm (mid/high 70s, low 80s).

Potassium metabisulfite (aka k-meta) is your friend with wines. It inhibits the yeasties, bacteria, and other nasty stuff since wine sits for months/years before bottling. In my experience many home brewers will not have heard of it or use it. Wine makers use it for both as a stabilizer in the wine (rule of thumb is 1/4 tsp per 5/6 gallons) and as a sanitizer solution (3 tablespoons per gallon) in place of star san. I buy it by the pound.

For what's worth I would recommend doing at least one wine kit. Did you start brewing from scratch w/ a complex all grain, stepped mash, and multiple hop additions recipe? If so maybe you can make decent wine from grapes right off the bat but there are a lot more steps to it, more points of potential failure, and it'll probably take longer. There are varying level of kits, the more expensive ones ($100+) will contain more juice/less concentrate, oak cubes/staves, grape skins, etc. and will yield a higher quality end product. White wine kits could be ready to drink in roughly 6 months, higher end reds usually take a year plus to become outstanding.