Wine diary and question time!

[user 31015]

Ok, for general note-taking and thought-clarifying, here's my thoughts on the future of my experiments - and this is thanks to the feedback you've all provided - ta!

The Plum
The f-pack has kicked off a ton of sediment. I'm going to bentonite and in a few weeks, rack, degas, and then wait/rack for a few months before tasting, maybe/probably backsweetening, and bottling.

The Pear
Needs to be degassed, have sorbate added, then an f-pack, wait a week, bentonite, wait a month, rack, add oak shavings for one month (maybe more), and then age/rack/age/rack/etc until backsweetening and bottling time.

The Dragon Blood
Needs to be racked pretty promptly, there's two inches of sediment down there! Should have used a nylon bag for those currants... Got plenty of top-up juice to add tho! From there, as per the usual instructions, but I'm not going to flavor-pack as I don't want to be doing these "Fixes" for every wine. There's enough fruit (2.5 times the recipe, I think) in there to provide the right flavour, I reckon, especially post-sweetening and aging. If not, I'll worry about it then.

 

[sour_grapes]

Not sure what to do with that. Fridge it for topping off the next racking?

Bingo! That is what I would do.

The plum has a good deal of sediment at the bottom due to the flavor pack. Rack and top off with the blackcurrant maybe?

Can you rack down to a smaller container? Or add marbles?

 

[user 31015]

I think it's going to have to be marbles. I thought I had filtered the flavour pack enough, but I guess not!

 

[peaches9324]

I think it's going to have to be marbles. I thought I had filtered the flavour pack enough, but I guess not!

I always use marbles! So I'm not skimping on the flavor well gotta get off my butt and get outside I could spend all day on this forum!! Have a good weekend!

 

[user 31015]

Tonight I racked the plum, topped it off with a bit of blackcurrant I had left over. It's still not full enough really, but it will have to do. Also added bentonite and gave it some drill action.

The blackcurrant got bentonite, k-meta, k-sorb and the drill. Here's hoping that will do the trick and keep it on track for a quick drinking DB!

 

[user 31015]

20kg of feijoas! Should be enough to make the wine I want. It is hard to know with this fruit. I will have to make it and see, I guess!

 

[user 31015]

Last night I added 700ml (a little more than a pint) of reduced pear juice to the pear wine. tonight I added pectinase to work on the bits that made it through my muslin. I'll give it a week or two and then degas and bentonite before leaving it until bottling time. I've kinda been "fiddling" with the plum and pear wine, but I think I've made up for their lack of fruit at the outset.

I've also chopped up about half of the feijoas (people at work keep giving them to me too!) and am close to having 10kg of chopped up feijoas - equivalent to about 20kg (40lb) of whole fruit. I'm wondering if 10kg will be enough to produce 23lt of good pear wine. It's such an unknown as the "best" recipe I've found simple says that 20kg of fruit was too hard to deal with, and 15 seemed about right. In particular this guy used 11kg of pulp, but I'm not sure I trust online recipes any more - they always seem short on taste (at least my pear and plum have been - perhaps they improve more in the bottle than I expect). I would love to avoid an f-pack as it adds at least another whole racking as well as more time clarifying. Rather want to get it right from the get-go!

 

[Turock]

The way we do pear is just on the pears alone--no water. We clean them and freeze them first. We're usually working with at least 100# of pears. It takes 3 days to thaw so we layer meta into the fruit to prevent spoilage. Then we get a good dose of pectic enzyme on the pears as soon as we get them in the vat. And it's better to use a GOOD pectinase that is good on viscous must, like Lallzyme C-Max.

However, another way to prepare pears is to get yourself a fruit crusher. They are around $225, but they work with all kinds of fruit--even grapes. E C Kraus has a wooden one for that price. Crushing up the fruit would be a big advantage with pears and apples if you do those kinds of wine all the time. Maybe someone will give you an opinion of a good fruit crusher or shredder. It's something I've long considered on buying and would like other's opinion of the best ones.

 

[user 31015]

I agree, that would be ideal, but this wine didn't start this way, and I will take it forward as-is.

I am also not sure I can afford the required number of pears just for straight pear wine, as much as I would love to! That gets quite pricey!

Are there any fruits which are just fine with water added rather than only juice?

 

[user 31015]

So jack Keller says the feijoas don't have much malic or tartaric acid and suggests adding both. Now, feijoas have plenty of citric acid, so why so we need to add the other two?

 

[Turock]

Regarding pears---Do you have orchards around you? If so, stop in and talk to them--tell them you're a winemaker and you would be interested in their seconds and trash fruit. This is the way to get lots of fruit for pretty cheap. We pay 25 cents a pound for trash fruit. Most orchards will always have seconds. We got a couple hundred pounds of seconds, one year.

I'm totally unfamiliar with that fruit. However, there are many fruits that have citric as their predominate acid. I would think that instead of needing more acid, it might need calcium carbonate to raise the PH. What PH were you going to use for this fruit? IF the PH needs to be lowered, you can use acid blend which all 3 of the acids in it. However, some blends have 50% citric. There are some blends out there that are more balanced in the 3 acids if you would prefer not to add more citric.

 

[user 31015]

It is between 3 and 4 - so I don't think it needs any adjustment.

And yeah, bit far from orchards, but there are local markets where I can get good, cheap fruit (got pears at 30c NZ for 2lb once!). I am wondering how many pears you need for a no-water brew though!

 

[Stressbaby]

TinyPirate,
I've only been at this a couple of years, I've got nowhere near as much experience as others...but I used to think that any pH from 3.0 to 3.7 was "good enough."
This simply is not so. I distinctly remember Turock saying once that unless one particular wine was adjusted to 3.4 it tasted "like dishwater."
So I started paying much closer attention to the pH, making an extra effort to get the 3.6 fruit wines down to 3.4 or lower, and with much better results.
As a postfermentation example, my second ever batch of wine, carambola wine, I uncorked not once but twice to tweak the acid and pH. At one point I was considering dumping this wine. But with a pH of around 3.2 instead of 3.6 it is really a lovely wine! You are better off doing this prefermentation I believe, but either way it can make a big difference.
Bottom line, just getting pH between 3 and 4 is not good enough. A change in pH of 0.2 can make the difference between and
That's just my 2 cents.

 

[user 31015]

Interesting, thanks! I remember that. I have only got ph strips, so I think the chance of getting the right levels from strips is slim (hence my "ish" estimate!). What sort of kit do I need to get a better reading?

As for what I should aim for... I have got NO idea, as no one seems to have taken and published a detailed approach to making wine with feijoa!

Anyway, tonight I worked through another heap of feijoas and hit the 11kg that was recommend by a recipe elsewhere. I added 16lt of water, 2.7kg of sugar, 400g of raisins, 25g of oak chips, 3 campden tablets, and 2 tablespoons of pectinaise.

Right now the SG is 1.060 (did I miss a 0 there?) I want to get it to 90-ish (or whatever the number is for about 12% - will check later). Tomorrow I will check ph as best I am able, check SG, add sugar, and the yeast starter, nutrient, booster, and sit back.



This has been fun, but hard work! It has taken about 30kg of feijoas to make 11kg of pulp, which would be, at best, $60nz to buy (half were given to me, fortunately). Also, the bag of fruit is hard to handle - I am wondering if I should have thrown all the fruit in a juicer instead.

 

[Turock]

You really need a PH meter for accurate PH measurement. When using strips, you should use narrow range strips instead of wide range. What does this fruit taste like? I'm debating if it should have a PH of 3.2 like a white wine or 3.4, and I agree with Stressbaby--you get the PH too high and it tastes flabby.

On the pears, we always consider 10# per gallon and use no water. For a light pear, you could use less poundage. The variety of pear makes a difference in the resulting wine because some are not as flavorful as others. Use pears that have good flavor.

 

[user 31015]

That's 5kg for about 4lt of liquid. Those are some juicy pears! I am wondering if next time I get some cheap fruit I should plan a wine from them after putting them through a juicer (thoughts?). This bulky must significantly complicates handling the wine.

What sort of pH meter would you suggest? I have never seen one at the local home brew shop so I am not sure what to look for. Might have to pick one up online.

When I swabbed the feijoas they were close to 4 in pH, I think. They are, obviously, fairly watered down in their current state. Might I need to test and lower the pH into the 3 to 4 range (I am speaking in generalities because I can't measure better) and how would I do that? Lemon juice? Citric acid? Malic acid?

 

[user 31015]

Oh, hey, found some vital stats on acid levels, what it tastes like, etc, etc:

http://feijoafeijoa.wordpress.com/facts/

I would describe the taste as a mix of a pungent pear (feijoas have a strong smell, even uncut), mixed with a pineapple and a guava or something tropical like that.

 

[Stressbaby]

Oh, hey, found some vital stats on acid levels, what it tastes like, etc, etc:

http://feijoafeijoa.wordpress.com/facts/

I would describe the taste as a mix of a pungent pear (feijoas have a strong smell, even uncut), mixed with a pineapple and a guava or something tropical like that.

That's what fiejoa is, right? Pineapple guava?

I had 2 in the greenhouse, since they are not self-fertile. I got sparse blooms and no fruit (what do you expect in Missouri, right?). One died this past winter so I may pitch the other one.

 

[user 31015]

Yup, you got it.

 

[user 31015]

Pitched the yeast in my feijoa tonight after adding a ton of sugar to push it up to 1.090. It tastes nice, I would enjoy more feijoa flavor, but it seems pretty good and I think some more taste will be extracted from the fruit during fermentation. Well, hope so.

You guys have definitely got me thinking about all-juice wines from now on. Just got to source the cheap fruit to not make it an expensive experiment.

Tested the pH - terrible strip sample photo below. I will try and find a better kit.



Also racked and backsweetened my blackcurrant DB. I think it is coming along quite well!