Elderberry Wine 2009. Part 3 – Fermentation

Continuing from: Elderberry Wine 2009. Part 2 – Making the Must

About twelve hours after pitching the yeast the first signs of fermentation occur, a fizzling effervescence is audible and the yeast cake starts to form. The yeast cake is a spongy foam with the texture of blancmange that forms on top of the Must at the initial stages of Primary Fermentation. It helps protect the Must from oxidation as the rate at which Co2 is produced and given off is great enough to keep any air out.

The Primary Fermentation is an Aerobic Fermentation (conducted in the presence of air) and the yeast quickly reproduces to a concentration which enables a speedier conversion of the sugars to alcohol. Technically, very little fermentation actually occurs as the yeast multiplies so a more correct term for primary fermentation could be Aerobic Growth.

During Primary Fermentation the Must is kept closely covered, not airtight as this will prevent the aerobic fermentation from happening, but just enough to keep the number one enemy of the winemaker, the Wine Fly, at bay.

The Wine Fly

I don’t know what it is about Wine Flies, you won’t see one from one end of the year to the other but as soon as you start to ferment some wine or beer, they mysteriously appear from nowhere and hover around your brew just waiting for you to slip up and let them at your wine where they can deposit their eggs. The larvae from just one fly is enough to acetify an entire wine batch. It’s always good practice to thoroughly check around the fermentation vessel for wine flies before opening it to take any measurements.

After about four days in primary fermentation or when the Specific Gravity gets to around 1.020 it’s time to proceed to Secondary, Anaerobic fermentation.

I took an SG reading of 1.023 so I removed the straining bag that contained the pomace (left over skins and seeds), hung it over the fermentation vessel and gently squeezed making sure I got every last drop of wine from the bag. With the pomace removed, the volume of wine was  just over 4 gallons.

To this I added a syrup at the right temperature (25 C) containing the last 750g of sugar, that I’d kept aside from making the Must and topped it up to a volume just above the five gallon mark, gently stirred it, syphoned the entire batch into my secondary fermentation vessel (carboy), added the oak chips (for those delicious vanilla flavours and tannins), sealed it up airtight and fitted the airlock.

Syphoning for Secondary Fermentation

Syphoning the wine into the carboy gave me the added bonus of getting an early taste of the wine. Tasting at this early stage can give some indications as to how it will eventually turn out but more importantly will definitely give an indication if anything untoward has happened in the process so far. A vinegary taste and acetification has occurred and unfortunately the whole batch will have to be dumped, or a bitter flavour could have meant that many of the seeds in the berries had burst, but the taste is intensely fruity and slightly sweet, exactly how it should be at this stage.  

Testing and Tasting

Secondary Fermentation (Anaerobic Fermentation) takes place in the absence of air and is a lot slower than primary fermentation. The carboy is sealed airtight and capped with an airlock which lets the CO2 thats produced during fermentation out but prevents the air from outside getting in and oxidising the wine. Fermentation activity is marked with the satisfying  and rythymic ‘blup…blup…blup’ of the water in the airlock as the Co2 escapes. During secondary fermentation as the yeast cells convert the sugar to alcohol they die off, sink to the bottom of the carboy and form the Lees.

Daily SG readings are taken, waiting for the moment when the FG (Final Gravity) stabilizes (three consecutive daily readings) at about 1.000-990 for a dry wine.

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Wine and Beer 101 – Specific Gravity

Hydrometer

Listen up, here come some Science bits.

The specific gravity or (SG) of a wine or beer is the density of the wine/beer in relation to the amount of dissolved sugar in it, the more sugar (less alcohol) the higher the SG and the less sugar (more alcohol) the lower the SG. Water typically has an SG value of 1.000. Specific Gravity is measured in degrees and the tool we use to measure it is called a Hydrometer. The Hydrometer is the single most important piece of kit in the amateur winemaker’s or brewer’s toolbox.

Regularly measuring the specific gravity of a wine will enable us to stop the fermentation at the correct time so that we can make a Sweet, Medium or Dry wine depending on the amount of sugar we decide leave unfermented in the wine. The specific gravity will also enable us to calculate the ABV (Alcohol by Volume) of the wine/beer.

Whether we’re making wine or beer, we always take a Specific Gravity reading  of the Must (wine) or the Wort (beer) before we pitch the yeast. This is called the OG or Original Gravity. This is our starting marker. When fermentation has completely finished or if we decide to stop the fermentation at a specific SG reading, we call this value the FG or Final Gravity. Alcohol by Volume is calculated by the following formula:

ABV% = (OG-FG)/7.36

Hydrometers are calibrated to a specific temperature (usually 20 C) so in temperatures above 20 C, the recorded SG will be lower than it actually is and in temperatures below 20 C the recorded SG will be higher. This is partly why keeping a constant temperature of around 20/25 C for the entire fermentation process is very important. Varying temperatures will produce varying and inaccurate SG readings however if the temperature remains constant throughout, the SG readings, while slightly out will produce more accurate results over the fermentation period.

Reading a Hydrometer

To take an SG reading of your wine/beer, syphon some of the wine/beer off into a trial jar and float the hydrometer in it. Spin it gently between your finger and thumb to remove any CO2 bubbles that may affix themselves to the hydrometer and produce inaccuracies and take the reading from the bottom of the meniscus.

Regular SG recordings are very important as they give a very good indication of what is happening in your wine/beer and can alert you to stuck fermentations, finished fermentations and the times to stop the fermentation.

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Blackberry and Apple Wine 2009. Part 1 – The Harvest

Funny that, you say to kids and teenagers these days that you’re going picking blackberries and they’ll automatically assume that you’re buying a new mobile phone for yourself.

As a kid, every September and the hedgerows would be busy with people foraging for blackberries to make jams and other goodies but, since the advent of the Celtic Tiger and people, myself included, gorged in their consumer lifestyles, the hedgerows have become devoid of activity and only the birds enjoy nature’s free offerings.  Who knows, now that we are deep in recession, we may see a return to the foraging ways.

On Sunday, armed with a couple of plastic sacks and nursing a bit of a hangover from too much Chateauneuf du Pape the night before, myself and Coll, our friends Morco and Vivienne and their five year old son Oisín headed out the fields to pick blackberries on, what is becoming more and more regular at this time of year in Ireland, a  beautiful sunny afternoon.

Fruit is best picked late on sunny days when the flavours are more intense, the sugar content is high, and we all know what more sugar makes don’t we?

'Best day Ever!'

A couple of hour’s stroll around the fields yielded over three kilos of ripe and juicy blackberries, enough for three gallons (eighteen bottles) of Blackberry and Apple wine. But, so that Oisín would have a suitable story for school, the next day, we told him that it was jam that we were making. A very worthwhile trip when Oisín, a kid who’d sit happily for hours in front of a TV, PC or Playstation, on returning home, exclaimed that he’d had, ‘the best day ever!’.

Composition

Blackberries are notable for their high nutritional content. They contain about 5% sugars, and rank highly among fruits for their antioxidant strength, particularly due to the presence of polyphenolic compounds such as Gallic Acid and Tannins.

One hundred grammes of blackberries contain about twenty one milligrammes of Vitamin C (35%RDA) in the form of Ascorbic Acid and are also an abundant source of the essential mineral Manganese (32% of RDA per 100g of berries). Other major constituents include, Folic Acid, Calcium, Magnesium and a high portion of Vitamin K. An ideal fruit for vinification.

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Presentation – The Labels

A huge part of the fun in amateur winemaking is the presentation of the wine. I’m of the opinion that if you go to a lot of effort to make the wine then a lot of effort should go in to displaying and presenting it. It’s all part of the fun and, at parties, there’s nothing like showing off a wine that has been properly bottled, corked, labelled and capped by you. It can be a good talking point as people sip on your wine.

Also, a sizable enough percentage of points goes towards your score for presentation if you decide to enter any amateur competitions with it. A few years ago a recipient of one of my bottles entered it into a competition, and what do you know, it won!

So, lets talk about labeling the wine. The general rule is, there are no rules, and you can have as much fun with the labels and names as you want. I had originally thought of going down the route that some commercial wine producers have gone in recent years and use a humourous name or pun for the wine like the New Zealand Vinyard Fairview’s, Goats Do Roam (GROAN!!!) or a really colouful label like Kiona’s The Vivacious Vicky.

Instead, I decided to let the wines speak for themselves and I plumped for a more traditional feel to the label. I used my family crest on the bottle in recognition of the fact that four generations of us have lived in the house. I blogged about the house before and under a different moniker. If you’d like to read the history of it, you can do so here.

So, what do you think?

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Elderberry Wine 2009. Part 2 – Making the Must

Continuing from: Elderberry Wine 2009. Part 1 – The Harvest 

Elderberry Iceblocks ready for the Pot

Now that I have all the ingredients prepped and bought it’s finally time to start the exciting process of making the Wine. A word of caution though, making Elderberrry Wine Must can be slightly messy and a tad smelly so a very understanding partner is required, especially if you’re using the home kitchen and, lucky for me, when it comes to my hobby, Colleen’s about as relaxed and understanding as they come. Well, she does like a tipple or two herself so she doesn’t mind the temporary mess.

First off, to make sure that all bugs on the fruit have been killed off , put the frozen berries into a large pot, pour over enough boiling water to cover the fruit, bring back to the boil and simmer for about 10 minutes. I don’t have a pot big enough to take nearly nine kilos of berries plus water so I had to do this in three stages. As the pot is simmering, wonderful deep red and purple colours erupt in the pot like lava pouring from an underwater volcano. Take care it doesn’t overflow.

Deep Red and Purple Eruptions – Fnaw Fnaw

After the boil, add the berries and water to the Primary Fermenter. I use a sterilised, large, fine straining bag held open and attached to the rim of the Primary Fermenter and I pour the berry mix into the bag. This saves the hassle of trying to strain the berry pulp and seeds out later on and also makes juicing the berries much more fun. Just pick up the bag, give it a squeeze, but not so hard as to burst the berry seeds and watch all that deep red lovlieness run through your fingers and into the fermenter.  

Pouring into the Straining Bag

Make a syrup of the sugar by dissolving as much sugar as you can in hot water and add it to the fermenter. To start with, I’m only adding three kilos of sugar out of the three and three quarter kilos as recommended in the recipe for the primary fermentation, I’ll add the rest of the sugar in a syrup when topping up the volume to five gallons after the berry pulp has been removed.  

Add a little water to the Spraymalt in a pot, bring to the boil and add to the fermenter. Add the Red Grape Concentrate, rinse out the tin with a little hot water and add to fermenter.

Now the tricky part, in order for the Yeast to activate and begin the process of converting all that sugar to alcohol the best temperature for the Must is about 20-25 C. Add water at the correct temperature to make up five gallons so that the Must falls in that temperature range. This was my downfall last night, having to boil the berries in three stages meant that I had far too much hot water in the must so that when I topped the fermenter up with cold water to the five gallon mark it was still at about 50 C.

Run us a Bath There, Luv

Not wanting to wait for a couple of days while the Must cooled naturally and run the risk of a bacterial or a natural yeast infection getting hold, I immediately dispatched Colleen upstairs to fill the bath with cold water (I told you she was very understanding). The next couple of hours was spent carefully stirring the Must in a bath full of cold water and regularly taking the temperature.

DISASTER!! Of sorts. In my eagerness to keep the thermometer sterilised during the Must cooling, while rinsing it under the tap I gave it a shake to remove the excess water when it shot out of my hand and shattered on the kitchen floor. So, while the fish were asleep, I nicked their floating thermometer from the aquarium cleaned and sterilised it and popped it in the Must. It’s not as reactive to temperature changes as my ex-spirit one but it sufficed and when eventually the Must reached pitching temperature, I took an O.G reading of 1.084, added the nutrient, pectolase and I pitched the yeast.

Done, Must made!

I removed the fermenter from the bath, dried it off, put the lid on, wrapped it in its blanky (to maintain the constant temp), and to keep the peace I cleaned the kitchen and bathroom and wiped up any Elderberry spillages from the floors, the walls, the chairs, the stairs, the bath, the cooker and the fridge. Oh, and ordered a new Thermometer from Brian.

Now we wait!

Continue to: Elderberry Wine 2009. Part 3 – Fermentation

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Elderberry Wine 2009. Part 1 – The Harvest

September can be a busy month for the amateur winemaker. It’s at this time of year that the Elderberries start to ripen and Elderberry Wine is, without doubt, my favourite Hedgerow Wine. Elder trees grow pretty abundantly in the Irish countryside and hedgerows and I am lucky enough to have a few growing in my back garden.

Elderberries, or ‘Englishman’s Grapes’, as they are affectionately known, have been used to make wine for hundreds, possibly thousands of years and have also been used as an additive to many fruit, berry and even grape wines to add colour, body, tannin and flavour complexity. However, as a main ingredient and in the right quantity, elderberries can make a rich, flavoursome wine full of body and character.

Composition

Elderberries contain roughly 8% sugars (sucrose, glucose and fructose), are rich in Vitamin C and contain lots of anthocyanins, which are antioxidants. They are also a good source of vitamins B1, B2 and B6 and contain anti-inflammatory agents. The main acid is Citric acid and they contain about 3% tannin.

Harvesting

Elderberries grow in umbrella shaped clumps. As the fruit begins to mature the clump starts to droop. When the clump has inverted the berries are absolutely ready to be picked however, to prevent soiling by birds, you may want to pick them slightly earlier.

For me, harvesting is a two stage process, that I call the ‘Pick and Flick’. In the ‘Pick’, the ripe berries and stems are plucked from the trees. My mate Morco helped and over the course of a couple of days (some berries were ripe while others weren’t) we had picked roughly eleven kilos of berries and stems. 

TheMerryWino ‘Flicking’ Elderberries

The most arduous and time consuming part of the harvesting is the ‘Flick’, where the berries (and only the berries) are ‘flicked’ very carefully from the stems using the back of a fork. Perfectly ripe berries should just fall off the stem without too much effort whereas slightly underripe ones may break off part of the stem with them. These stems will have to be fully removed before making the Must.

After many hours of ‘Flicking’, the help from Coll was very much appreciated, and a couple of glasses of young Elderflower and Rasin wine (made in June), we managed to get eight and a half kilos of berries (just enough to make 5 (6 US) Gallons of wine), which we weighed into one kilo bags and put in the freezer. Freezing the elderberries helps break down the cell structure of the berries and allows juice to be released more easily giving the wine better colour and flavour.

With the harvest complete, it was time to relax and open a bottle of red. This week’s red was Faustino I 1994 Gran Reserva. Mmmmmmm fruity!

 

Continue to: Elderberry Wine 2009. Part 2 – Making the Must

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