A Few Wine Questions

[thelastspud]

So it's just about time for the grapes to be picked around here.

I've never made wine before so I've got a few questions for the wine experts on here.

1. how many kilos of grapes will I need to make around 10 litres?

2. whats the best yeast for sweet red wine

3. Do I need to keep the fermentation temps down?

4.how long should I leave the grapes on the skins for?

 

[Muggus]

Hey Bradley, i'll see what I can do to help...

1. Alot of the yield - as far as L/kg goes - depends alot of your method of pressing.
Do you have some sort of press? Or do you plan to go "traditional" with you feet?
I made a Shiraz "el traditional" earlier this year...got less than 0.5L/kg. In that sort of instance, you'd want at least 20kg of grapes.

2. Not entirely sure about yeast strains. Most of the ones I deal with in industry tend attentuate fully, and if you want residual sugar you either have to stop the ferment - usually by crash chilling, racking off yeast and nuking it with a good portion of SO2 - or by back sweetening with juice or sugar solution after fermentation.

3. If you don't have a fridge or heat exchange of some description, i'd recommend filling a number of ice cream containers, or something similar, with water and freezing them. Throw them in with your ferment and replace when needed.
Just remember, a "cool" ferment as far as wine is concerned is generally between 15-20C, and will lengthen your ferment time but reduce the extraction of colour, flavour, tannins, polyphenols, etc, from the skins...assuming you're making a red.

4. You're making a red right?
Lots of schools of thought here...what you want from the skins is, like I mentioned above, extraction of colours and flavours. The longer they stay there, the more extraction you will get.
However you do run the risk of rogue infections after fermentation, so be mindful of that.
Also, you will need to turn over or plunge the cap of skins that forms during fermentation a couple of times a day to keep it moist and extract the goodies from the skins.

One last note, and yes, winemaking ain't as simple as most might think, is the presence of malic acid in the wine. Once again, nuking it with enough SO2 will probably eliminate most bacteria, but the presence of this acid (naturally) in the grape juice can lead to spontaneous malolactic fermentations in bottle.
To prevent this, the majority of red wine makers will purposely put the wine through a malolactic fermentation after primary ferment, where an innoculated bacteria will go through and ferment all malic acid into lactic acid.
This will soften the wine a bit, and also eliminate the chances of rogue malos happening in bottle.


Few things to think about...

 

[Tim F]

So it's just about time for the grapes to be picked around here.

I've never made wine before so I've got a few questions for the wine experts on here.

1. how many kilos of grapes will I need to make around 10 litres?

2. whats the best yeast for sweet red wine

3. Do I need to keep the fermentation temps down?

4.how long should I leave the grapes on the skins for?

1. Like Muggus said it depends on your methods but if its such a small batch it doesn't hurt to go a bit over and pick 25-30kg aiming for 10L of finished wine into the bottle. You might even end up a bit more than that.

2. CY17 is pretty good but there's lots of choices, depends on whats available in your area. Try googling vintners harvest yeast brochure if you can get that range. But wouldn't muscatel give you a white? Or do you have black muscat? I made a white muscat - thread here if you want to see the advice I got: http://www.aussiehomebrewer.com/forum/inde...showtopic=53902

3. Temp will be dependant on your yeast, CY17 doesn't mind it warm like low 20s.

4. Depends on the grape, for a white 0-16 hours, for a red, depends on the grape, how long fermentation goes for, what the tannins are like.

 

[thelastspud]

So I've been looking into it a bit more and for you wine guys here is a little bit of information about Malaga wines.
Malaga Wine

The Mlaga DO (Denominacion de Origen) covers a wine-growing region in the autonomous community of Andalucia, Spain. Its hub is the city of Malaga on the Mediterranean coast, with its famous beaches along the 'Costa del Sol'.

The name Malaga has been traditionally associated with sweet wines made from grapes dried on grass mats under the region's intense sun. Now the region's wines are produced by different methods, the most common of which involves stopping fermentation with grape spirit to retain natural sweetness. According to the local wine laws, the Malaga DO can be used for:

* Fortified wines with alcohol levels of between 15 and 22%

* Wines with at least 13% alcohol, produced from over-ripe grapes with no artificial alcohol added.

In addition, there are various styles which define the region's versatility. They are:

* Pedro Ximnez: wines made exclusively from this grape variety, also referred to as PX
* Moscatel: made from the Muscat of Alexandria grape variety. These are the most aromatic of all Mlaga wines.

* Vinos de Lgrima: made from the Pedro Ximnez grape variety. The name lgrima ('tears' in English) signifies that the juice used for this style is not pressed but is free run, obtained after drying the grapes briefly for one or two days.

Malaga's climate is heavily influenced by the Mediterranean Sea as well as the hot and dry conditions which prevail inland. Most Pedro Ximnez is grown on the warmer sites whereas Moscatel does well in cooler, hilly areas.
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I don't have a press but i have two fermentors where one fits into the other pretty well so I was planning on putting some plastic wrap on the bottom of one, sanitise it and use it to press the grapes into a carboy.

So I should be able to find the naturally dried grapes around here. I'm going for one that is naturally sweet so maybe there is some sort of yeast around here that they use that leaves a bit of residual sugar. I'll ask where I buy the grapes.

TimF about the colour, well I don't know I drunk this wine a fair bit and its not white but its not a really dark red either I'd probably say its closer to a rose but browner if that makes sense. Maybe the colour comes from the barrel?

Its a pretty sweet wine and you drink it cold.

I'm reading a guide form More wine on making red wines and it is a little bit more complicated than I thought.

keeping it in the low twenties shouldn't be a problem.

I was reading about malolactic fermentation, I'll keep reading to try and find out if its to style or not might do it anyway if I can find the bacteria over here.

 

[thelastspud]

So I'll be making wine mostly from these. I'll probably need heaps more to make 10 litres right?

 

[Muggus]

So I'll be making wine mostly from these. I'll probably need heaps more to make 10 litres right?

You'll need ALOT using raisined grapes like that. Especially without a press.

I'd almost be tempted to go something like 50:50 raisined and fresh grapes just so you have some sort of juice to macerate the raisins in, which will eventually hydrate the raisins, plump them up, and when you press the wine off its skins, you'll increase your yield somewhat...not to mention sugar and colour extraction.

Using dried grapes, particularly a larger portion, will bump your initial sugar levels up. So you may end up with a must somewhere up near 16-20B, and most wine yeasts tend to conk out around the 14% mark, which will leave you with a sweet wine anyway.

As far as the "browner" colour goes, this is due to oxidation more than anything else.
Whether this colour comes through oxidation during maturation, I can't be too sure. Don't quote me on this because i've never actually made a wine of this sort, but I tend to think that the juice extracted from raisined grapes would probably be a bit on the brown side as is...but that can often be the result of botrytis causing the berries to shrivel.

Either way, it sounds like an interesting sort of wine to attempt to make.
I've only ever come across one wine made with dried grapes - however it was Italian, and a dry wine - very nice though, unique characteristics.

 

[Greg.L]

The brown colour of dessert wines comes from ageing in barrels. They usually spend at least 5 years in barrels, by then they are so oxidised they can sit in an open bottle for months without oxidising further. In Rutherglen they leave the grapes to hang until they get 18-20 be, they are only fermented for a little while, so most of the sugar is still there (syrupy sweet) then pressed and the ferment is stopped with spirit.
The botrytised "stickies" from the riverina are made in a more normal way, without fortifying but they stop the yeast with filtering etc, hard to do at home. The easiest way to do it at home would be bottling then pasteurising and age in bottle like a vintage port. Pasteurising gives a cooked flavour, but not so bad for a dessert wine.