GETTING READY TO MAKE THE WINE

The time is now coming to begin preparing for the brewing process of my wine, as the Black Hamburg grapes in the green house are virtually ready for picking, so will be joining the other grapes in the freezer, the Seyval Blanc and the Merlot, but only for a day or two, just to kill off any yeasts and bacteria.

I’ve sampled a few of the Black Hamburg grapes already and they are sweetening–up nicely, so perhaps a few more days yet.

I suppose I had best give you some idea of what I do with the grapes once they are picked.

All the grapes are washed, with all stalks and leaves removed, before being placed in freezer bags in various weights, and then frozen. This freezing action kills of any bacteria present on the skins, which is a no-no for proper wine making, and also breaks down the fibres within the fruit somewhat, making the action of the sugars and the yeast more easily accomplished when in the must.

So the first thing is to pull them off the hand, dropping them into a bowl or bucket of cold clean water.

The ripe grapes fall to the bottom, along with the unripe and the odd few stalks, while the few well dried currants float to the top. Anything that floats should be skimmed off and thrown in the compost bin.

The whole lot (in small quantities – around a couple of ponds) is then held under a fast running tap to remove the debris at the bottom, and then drained off, bagged and frozen.

Regarding the currants, these form as the grapes are growing and the vine cannot get enough water to swell them up to full size, as well as trying to evaporate moisture from within a greenhouse (trying to keep cool). So what the vine does is to restrict certain grapes (or even bunches) and give the water it does collect to other grapes, that way guaranteeing there will be full-fruited seeds (grapes) to continue its species – it’s that nature thing!

These currants tend to be sweeter than the grapes on the bunch, provided they have originally swelled to full size before the vines tap was shut off.

As a matter of fact, some winemakers only use curranted grapes to produce their wines, leaving the grapes to dry out a little once they have ripened, (but this needs very dry weather outdoors, and is not really suitable in a greenhouse owing to the condensation present at the back end of the season) and they fetch a good price on the market as the quantity of grapes (currants) needed is greater to produce a bottle compared to the conventional methods.

The currants that fall to the bottom can be added to the must, as the goodness within those dried grapes is still available for your use.

The idea is to not allow the grapes to go oversweet on the vine, otherwise they may start to rot (in the greenhouse) before the lower grapes and the inner ones within the bunch are ripe, and besides this a slight acid effect is needed to aid the fermentation process (and to give the wine some bite) from a small portion of the grapes being almost ripe.

The grapes at the top of each bunch on a vine ripen just a little earlier than the ones lower down the bunch, generally, so once the ones at the top are really ripe (with the body of the grape beginning to soften), then is the time to take your crop.

Another test is to simply pluck a ripe grape from the top of the bunch and eat it. The pips should be just starting to turn brown, rather than being green.

As I say, these will be picked and frozen over the next week, so then is the time to begin making our wine.


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Vineyards, generally use mechanical methods for crushing their grapes, leaving small pieces of stalk and odd leaves to go into the must, along with insects galore, and it is this extra material that gives the wines you buy from the local shops the awful and poor quality and harsh tastes found in some bottles – but they still sell it to you, don’t they?

And best of all, the view is that any bacteria (odd bodies) within the must are killed off by the higher levels of alcohol (pickled) and so do no damage to the purity of the plonk, provided it is filtered to extremes – but the poor quality and off-tastes remain just the same.

However, not all vineyards are so unscrupulous.

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In the meantime I need to get together my brewing equipment after its summer-long rest and give each item a good scrub, as the old adage ‘cleanliness is next to godliness’ is most important here.

There are a few items needed initially within the first week for a five gallon batch, being:

· The grapes.
· A six gallon brewing tub/bucket for the initial brew process.
· A press of some sort, unless you want to do it by hand or with a food processor, but making sure you crush all the grapes by hand is a bit awkward.
· A spotlessly clean fine meshed cloth to act as a cover for your tub.
· A hydrometer to test the initial SG of the mix.
· Your yeast and nutrient.

You may need to add some sugar, and you may also need to add either some precipitated chalk or on the other hand, some citric acid, but this all depends on the results of measurements taken from the original must (the grapes and their juice).

If the Specific Gravity (S.G.) of your must is no greater than 1.030, then sugar must be added initially, say a bag, that’s 1kg (2.2lbs).

This is to make sure the mix will ferment properly initially, that way allowing the yeast to develop strength and mix better throughout the must. This is one of the reasons for a wine getting stuck, and a stuck wine can sometimes be difficult to start again, so it’s simply a case of stopping this happening before it starts - or is that starting before it stops?

The test for the acidity is a very simple process and requires no fancy gauges or tests and will be explained next week, and beyond that, there is no other shopping to do, apart from buying more sugar, but that totally depends on the S.G. of your must.

Til next time,



George