Syrah - Day 31 - Collecting Bottles

Just a quick reminder that even though bottling is still several months away, it's never too early to start collecting and saving bottles. Especially with holiday gatherings, there should be several opportunities over the next several months to bank up enough bottles to save buying cases of empty bottles when it comes time to encase our own wine in glass.

A few things to be aware of:
Save only bottles that are corked. Screwtop bottles have a different diameter neck and can't be stopped with a standard size cork. Just recycle screwtopped bottles. Champagne and sparkling wine bottles can accept a normal wine cork, so save these, they can also be stopped with a bottle cap, this makes these bottles useful for both beer and wine. Capped champagne bottles are great for doing ongoing tests or tastings as the wine matures without using an entire bottle, as you probably would if the sample bottle were corked.

Clear wine bottles are not as desirable. They let in light, which can damage the wine's flavor as it ages. Clear wine bottles are better for white wines or wines that will be drank without much aging. Our Syrah that is still undergoing secondary fermentation should be expected to age for longer than a clear bottle would make advisable.

Also remember to keep wine case boxes as you collect bottles. The bottles will need to be stored and transferred, both before and after they are filled with wine. It's no fun shuttling around bottles an armload at a time. Save your cardboard cases.

Wash the bottles you save soon after finishing their contents. As I learned from bottling several batches of homebrew beer: bottling is already a labor intensive project, don't complicate it by requiring a thorough wash and rinse of every bottle before sanitizing. It's pretty disgusting and time consuming to wash hundreds of bottles to clean out the little bit of bacteria and mold that inevitably grow on the dregs left in the bottle. It's much easier and significantly less gross to rinse the bottle two or three times right after emptying it of its initial contents.

For the record we will need in the neighborhood of 200 bottles to hold 38 gallons of finished wine. Time to start saving.

Syrah - Day 28 - Secondary Fermentation

Secondary fermentation is still underway for our Syrah. The airlocks still gurgle to release carbon dioxide every so often as the remaining yeast churn through the residual sugar in the wine. With the temperature dropping, biological activity in the wine is slowing down, the secondary fermentation probably will still take several more weeks due to the cool temperatures. The malolactic fermentation is also ongoing, though this does not generate the outward signs the yeast's fermentation does. The malolactic fermentation will likely continue until to first racking and even possibly beyond, depending on how slowly the temperature causes the bacteria to work.

Another passive process that's going on is the settling out of the sediments in the wine. These sediments are composed of dirt from the vineyard, yeast cells, grape pulp, grapes skins and other particles in the wine that weren't filtered out when we pressed the must. By letting the wine sit undisturbed for weeks at a time, these particles slowly succumb to gravity and settle out of solution at the bottom of the carboy. After weeks or months of quietly accumulating the sediments at the bottom of the carboys, we will be able to separate them from the wine in the process called racking. This process involves siphoning off the wine while leaving as much of the sediment as possible behind. The other goal in the racking process is to leave as little as possible of the wine behind with the sediments.

The settling and racking process will be repeated a few times over the coming months. We can also assist the process by adding agents that will attract the particles and help them settle to the bottom. This will allow us to have as clear a wine as our patience and continued rackings will yield. Racking often also minimizes the flavors of the sediments from carrying through to the finished wine.

If one of the rackings occurs during especially cold conditions it will also allow us to remove the tartaric crystals from the wine, since these acid crystals come out of solution in the wine at low temperatures. These crystals appear similar to broken glass and are considered undesirable in the finished wine. They can occasionally be found at the bottom of bottles of wine or in the last pour from a bottle. Hopefully for both the wine and the coming snow sport season, the temperature will drop to freezing and allow us to remove the tartaric crystals during one of our upcoming rackings.

Speaking of racking, the batch Cabernet Sauvignon we did prior to the Syrah should be almost due to rack for the first time, we might need to hop on that...

Syrah - Day 21 - Malolactic Innoculation

Despite the large emphasis we have been putting on sanitation up to this point, not all bacteria are bad for wine. There are some bacteria that have positive effects on wine. One such bacteria that is often used in wine making is Oenococcus oeni, or the bacteria responsible for malolactic fermentation.

This bacteria changes the harsh malic acid present in the wine into lactic acid. This transformation reduces the bitterness of the wine, changing sour apple flavors into smoother buttery flavors and adds to the wine's fruitiness. It also slightly raises the pH of the wine, since lactic acid is a weaker acid than malic acid.

Not all wine should undergo malolactic fermentation. Almost all red wines benefit from it, but some light varietals of white wine lose their crisp edge when the acids are reduced. Generally these are Pinot Gris, Sauvignon Blanc and German whites that suffer at the hands (flagellum?) of the bacteria. Those light wines are also unable to mask some of the other flavors created by the bacteria, such as diactyls that get tucked under the rug in most red wines.

Timing of the malolactic fermentation is debatable. There are a few vintners that add malolactic bacteria at the same time as the yeast, there are a few problems with this approach. If you add the malolactic bacteria at such an early stage in the wine making process, you severely hamper your ability to use sulfites to prevent unwanted bacteria from taking hold, since the sulfites would kill the malolactic bacteria alongside any undesirable microorganisms. Another danger of adding the malolactic bacteria too early is it can start competing with the yeast for sugars and then use those sugars to create acetate acid or the main ingredient in vinegar. Generally, from the sources I've read, you want to start the malolactic fermentation around when the sugar in the must/wine is near zero. This can be at the end of primary fermentation, during secondary fermentation or even after the first or second racking.

For our batch of Syrah, the malolactic fermentation is being started 8 days into the secondary fermentation. This is based somewhat on convenience and somewhat on the need to do malolactic fermentation before the temperature gets too cold for the bacteria to survive (With a 40 F morning today, that may be too late. Seeing as O. oeni thrive at roughly the same conditions as yeast [60-80 F]).

In order to inoculate some carboys with malolactic bacteria, first sanitize the measuring dish. Then calculate the amount of freeze dried Oenococcus oeni needed to add to each carboy: Our 2.5 g package was meant for a 66 gallon batch, that breaks that down into .12 grams of freeze dried bacteria for 5 gallons; .7 for the three gallon carboy; and trace amounts to the three 750 ml bottles. Then it is a simple matter of weighing the bacteria dosage and adding it to each of the carboys. Once added, it quickly dissolves and (hopefully) sets about its business. Ideally the cold won't put an undue stress on the bacteria and malolactic fermentation gets underway soon in our wine.

Syrah - Day 20 - Label Design

We're still many months away from bottling our wine, but it's never too early to start doing the design work for our label. Based on the little experience I have from bottling beer, paper labels can be a headache. In the past I've tried labels that can be fed through a laser printer and can be applied to surfaces like a sticker (such as the Avery brand labels). They are great when you are starting with new, clean bottles. But by the time the bottle comes back for a second use, the sticker become a problem. The sticker part is a little too effective and requires a lot of scrubbing and soaking to get off the bottle. On a single bottle this isn't necessarily a problem, but increase the scale a hundred fold and your talking about an all day project of cleaning bottles so you can use them again. Many of my beer bottles retain several layers of stickum and tattered label from various previous bottlings, not ideal. In order to avoid this headache we're exploring other options for labeling.

This time around, I'm planning on trying out a different approach of labeling bottles. Inspired by the Rouge Brewery Bottles, I am trying to design a stencil that would be easy to paint onto the bottles (read: not too many layers), but would still be interesting.

The other ideas I had for it would that there was a large enough section on the label that the particular details of the wine could be written on with a grease pen or other non-permanent writing. This would allow us to reuse the bottles, but still be able to distinguish different vintages, varietals or other differences in the wine. Especially since we are producing two different varietals this year and could further complicate the matter with opting to age some of each of the batches on oak, blend some portion of the batches together, blend oak aged with non-oak aged or other combinations as we get inspired.

So for the rough draft of the wine label, I created this 15-minute-mock-up for the stencil, via Microsoft Paint (note, the black portions are what would be cut out of the stencil and therefore painted onto the wine bottle):

Still needs some work. One advantage of a stencil over a printed label, is I can make up for lack of abilities as a digital graphic artist later on when I turn the computer printout into a cardboard or plastic stencil. So those rough edges will be getting smoothed out either by someone else on a computer or by me in analog.

Slightly more interesting than the standard, default label for home winemakers: masking tape.

Syrah - Day 13 - Pressing the Must

Pressing the wine is quite a flurry of activity after mostly just waiting around for the must to ferment its sugar away. After only doing a few punch downs a day and enough tests to keep abreast of where the wine is in its primary fermentation, it's time for some action. Specifically, it's time to remove the wine (you finally get to call it wine), from the seeds, skins, stems and other detritus from the vineyard that made it into the must. This is accomplished by use of a wine press.

A basket press has not advanced much from previous generations of winemaking. It's basically a wooden big sieve that allows you to apply pressure to the contents. There are more modern options out there such as a bladder press, but for a batch of 400 pounds, that's overkill, plus half the fun of using a press is trying to figure out how to operate the mechanism and taking long enough to enjoy a few beers with your friends.

The basket press works when you start placing the contents of your fermentation tanks into it. A majority of the wine freely runs out of the press. The skins that are left behind still retain lots of wine, so once the press is full of the seeds, skins and whatever else (referred to as pomace), you start to press the contents. The key for pressing is not to press too hard. If too much pressure is applied that seeds crack or break, the wine will pick up too many sharp tannins and taste harsh. The press is designed to get as much of the wine as possible, but not press so hard as to crush the seeds and extract the undesirable tannins.



After the pommace's been pressed once it's called "the cake." The cake is a relatively solid block of skins seeds and grape pulp. However there are still portions to the interior of the cake that retain some wine, so you should stir up the contents and give them another squeeze. You're applying the same amount of force, but your attempting to get the grapes that, for-whatever-reason, didn't have all of the liquid squeezed out, another chance to contribute their wine to the final product. This is where a bladder press really shines, since all of the pomace is squeezed directly against the sieve portion of the press, the pressing process requires fewer time-consuming stirs and represses.

After the wine has been separated from the must, it's time to store it in airtight containers. Carboys are our choice. They are nonreactive, so they won't alter the flavor of the wine like plastic can do. Many vintners go with oak barrels, but seeing as we're relatively new at this and oak barrels are expensive, we're going with glass. Plus if we decide later on that we need to oak our Syrah, we can add oak chips, blocks, staves or balls to our wine and achieve close to the same effect at a much lower cost. Plus there is also the danger of over oaking the wine, which leads to the flavors of the fruit being overshadowed by the flavors of the oak. Oak barrels are also not airtight, they slowly evaporate wine, and therefor need to be regularly topped off. If the barrels of wine are allowed to get too low, the wine can oxidize.

Ideally each carboy should be filled to its neck. This creates the minimum amount of surface area for air to oxidize the wine. Just be aware there needs to be some airspace, since a little more fermentation still needs to occur.

Transferring the wine into the carboys is a pretty straight-forward affair. Capture the wine as it comes out of the press into a bucket and then dump the bucket into the carboy.


The sieve that we have in the funnel is a back up to the

press. It catches many of the particles that we will try and rack out of the wine in the coming months making it so we, hopefully, lose slightly less wine during each rack. Just be sure to clean the sieve when it stops draining well, nobody likes to see their wine spilling from the funnel onto the ground.

Once the last drop of wine has been squeezed out it's time to cleanup and get the wine stowed away. A thorough hose out of the press is necessary if you aspire to avoid the cleaning fee from the brew store renting the press. Be sure to get all the individual slats of the press and all the little corners that grape skins inevitably linger.

Finally, it's time to reward ourselves with Mexican. And don't forget to snag a taste of your wine. It's always good to remind yourself what all the time, labor and expense are for. Plus it's a good way to track the progress of your wine as it ages and under goes further fermentation. Nouveau wines are a worth a festival in many European countries, you might as well have your own private version with the freshest wine you'll ever taste as you clean up. Just don't have too much, the wine's flavor is only going to improve from here, as long as you do things right.

All that's left is ensuring you have the right space to age your wine. Air, heat and light are the enemies of wine. Air oxidizes the wine and gives bacteria the environment they need to survive and possibly flourish. Light will break down many of the desirable flavors you are hoping to develop in your wine and also provide bacteria with a better environment to grow. Notice how most wines sold in the store come in dark brown or green bottles. The reason behind that is prevent light damage to the finished product. Heat also breaks down flavors, it also can help bacteria grown if it's too warm. On the flip side, if it's too cold, the yeast can get killed before it finished the secondary fermentation or the (good) malolactic bacteria before it can break down the harsher acid flavors (though after secondary fermentation is complete, there are some good reasons to chill your wine). My garage is a little on the cold side, but we will be monitoring the temperature and make adjustment as needed.

Data on the must at time of pressing:
32 gallon: 1 Brix, 65 degrees F
20 gallon: .5 Brix, 64 degrees F
5 gallon: .25 Brix, 61 degrees F

Syrah - Day 11- Preparations for Pressing

A little bit of prep is necessary to make the press go well. Last month, Luke and I had a good press day for our batch of Cab. The basis of that day was all the wine making steps leading up to the press day, but also securing the resources to make a press go smoothly. Nobody wants to be in the situation where you run out of capacity for your pressed wine and frantically find a stopgap solution.

Therefore, the past few days I've been trying to get everything in order to do our press. I've checked on rental rates for presses. I've purchased enough carboy capacity to hold our pressed wine, along with airlocks and stoppers. The garage space has been cleaned out. There are even beers chilling in the fridge to keep the labor refreshed. Looks like we're going to be ready to go as soon as the must drops below 1 Brix, though doubtlessly there'll be something I've forgotten along the way...

Syrah - Day 10

After a brutal commute home (waiting on the train platform for 2-and-a-half hours is not my ideal way to spend an evening) I was able to get another test of the must in. The numbers are coming along nicely:

32 gallon fermenter: 69 F, 6 Brix
20 gallon fermenter: 69 F, 5.25 Brix
5 gallon fermenter: 65 F, 5 Brix

I'm still zeroing on Friday morning for the press, but Thursdays numbers will be revealing. Either way, I'm picking up some malolactic bacteria and the carboys we need for the secondary fermentation and aging this week.

Syrah - Day 9 - Sanitation

One aspect of wine making that has been unremarked upon up until this point is sanitation. Making wine is surprisingly dirty business. The grapes come out of the vineyard covered in everything and anything that came into contact with the grapes on the vines. This includes leaves, stems, tendrils, dust, dirt, spiders, and mold. The crushing process attempts to remove as much of these as possible, but even the best crusher/destemmers leave a fair amount of detritus in the must.

The vintner is then stuck trying to make wine out of must that includes more than just grapes juice, grape skins and seeds. The simple way to do this to kill everything that entered the wine with a dose of sulfites. This (hopefully) eliminates all the rogue yeast, bacteria and fungus that are inevitably present on the grapes. From the addition of the sulfites onwards, a winemaker needs to treat the must carefully, only allowing it to contact tools and additions that have been carefully sanitized. There are innumerable means of sanitizing your tools and implements, heating them above 160 degrees F, using chemical agents or only using items that come from a sanitary packaging or environments.

Heating all your implements above the temperature that kills microorganisms is not usually practical for a vintner. Many of the tools are plastic and would risk melting if heated above 160 F. Further it is not very convenient to have boiling water or a autoclave near your fermenters. Heating is much more practical for home brewing, where the residual heat of the wort is used to sanitize several parts of the process before fermentation is implemented. Since heat would break down many of the flavors wine makers are trying to capture this is doubly trouble some.

Therefore the main method of sanitation for wine making is chemicals that will kill microorganisms. The two primary chemicals I use are citric acid and iodine based sanitizers. Both come in concentrate forms that are available from home brew supply shops. They are both food grade sanitizers that when used in the appropriate concentrations should not leave a taste and effectively kill of potential contaminants. Other chemical sanitizers are available, but should be used with caution in food applications. Bleach is exceptionally effective at killing microorganisms, but it is very persistent and can end up killing the yeast, the microorganism whose growth winemakers are trying to promote. It also has a harsh taste that does not wash out easily. It should only be used for situations when equipment needs a harsh was, such as after a carboy has been allowed to mold after a long period of disuse, even then care should be exercised.

The best way to work with concentrated chemical sanitizers is to mix up a batch that's large enough for your needs and keep it in a container that allows you to reuse it multiple times to save time and chemicals.

The other means of sanitation is keeping sanitary substances from coming into contact with non-sanitary substances. Things like yeast additives and tartaric acid are additives that should not be heated or subjected to chemical sanitizers. If you are purchasing these additives to the wine from a reputable source (what did your mother tell you about buying chemicals off strangers in the streets?), you need to work under the assumption that the chemicals are manufactured and packaged in a sanitary environment. To keep the additives sanitary you need to ensure all the tools and containers the additives come in contact with have been properly sanitized. So when you are measuring the additives, the spoon and the container the additives are weighed in all need to be kept sanitary. It might be a pain, but it's the only way to ensure you're not adding a bacteria or fungus alongside the desirable additives.

Syrah - Day 8 - Electrical Heating Solutions

I accidentally deleted my photos off my camera before I was able to download them, so this post is going to be somewhat visually impaired. The addition of an electric blanket wrapping around the 20 gallon and 32 gallon fermenters has helped keep the must in both those fermenters from falling as far during the evening. Hopefully the must temperature will continue to creep up. The 5 gallon fermenter is also benefiting from the electric blanket, though it is only been wedged in the crook between the two larger fermenters, so it's not getting the full embrace the other two are getting.

The electric blanket required a little bit of creative engineering to power up. Since our garage is not wired with any electricity, there's now a large extension cord running from the kitchen of our house, out the back door, through the security gate and under the side door of the garage. This does have the added benefit of letting me set up a lamp in the garage so I don't have to get by like a coal miner, with just a headlamp to see by. But that's another one of the fun challenges with making wine. Others that have occurred unremarked upon until now: needing a tool to punch down the must, Luke went to the hardware store and built one out of stakes, brackets and screws, needing to move a bucket full of 280 pound of grapes and juice, I had to recruit a few friends over with temptations of beer and dinner.

Based on the progress of the must, it's looking like Friday is the target day for pressing. Now all I need to do is figure out where we're going to rent a basket press.

32 gallon: 64 F, 11 Brix
20 gallon: 66 F 10.5 Brix
5 gallon: 61 F, 12 Brix