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Back to the Forum 2006
Archives We have already had a brief look at winemaking equipment and discussed the winemaking process in a general way. Now I can get into more of the details of the equipment and consumables to see how they fit into the process. I have already discussed the book on winemaking. Nothing more need be said on that. Next we have the airlocks. These are just little devices that we use to prevent air from getting to the wine while it ferments. In the second stage of fermentation the wine goes into a jug with a bung on top. The bung has a hole that accommodates the airlock. The airlock has sterilizing solution in it so it lets the gas of fermentation bubble out, but prevents air from entering. Air is usually laden with wild yeasts and bacteria. This is all stuff that is deadly to wine. A hygrometer is a device used to measure the specific gravity of a fluid, in this case wine. The one I use is a long glass sealed tube weighted at one end. We use our gravy baster to suck some wine out of the carboy and put it in the test jar. We should notice that some wine recipes call this gravy baster a wine thief. It is one of the beauties of the romantic French language to make ordinary things seem exotic. Whatever we use, we get the wine into the test jar so we can float the hygrometer in the test jar. It will float at some level depending on the density of the wine. Density is proportional to the SG of the wine. The hygrometer is calibrated and marked in degrees of SG such that the SG will be indicated at the line between the wine and the air. In our case the SG is an indication of the amount of sugar or alcohol in the wine. Sugar is denser than water so the SG will be higher than one when sugar is present. In fact, before fermentation begins, the SG should be 1.095 or higher. Alcohol, on the other hand, is less dense than water so the SG will decline as sugar is converted to alcohol. When all sugar has been converted t alcohol, the SG should be 0.995. A good fermentation will produce an alcohol content of 12 to 13 percent assuming there was enough sugar to do that. To get a higher alcohol concentration requires the addition of alcohol reinforcing, or distillation. Distilling of course, is against the law for homebewers. We use funnels in winemaking for the same reason we use them anywhere else. They help tp avoid making a mess. The carboys and wine bottles need no explanation. 750 ml is a standard size for a wine bottle. I gallon of wine will fill five of these. Rubber bungs come in an assortment of sizes to fit various sized carboys and jugs. They are drilled to accommodate the vapor lock. There is a tiny rubber bung which can be used to plug the drilled hole in a drilled bung. It lets us seal the carboy for storage after we have washed it. The plastic bottle corker is just a device that allows us to force corks into wine bottles to seal them after filling. The stirring spoon is just that, a long spoon for stirring the wine. The syphon tubing is used to rack the wine from one container to another. At first I was using 1/4 inch tubing and a rack took forever and a day to do. I quickly decided 3/8 tubbing was the ticket. I also discover the trick to starting a syphon is to plug or clamp the output end of the tube. Then the gravy baster can be used to fill the tube with wine from the source carboy. I then attach the tubbing to the racking tube at the source and clamp the other end to the destination carboy. Once it is in place, the plug or clamp can be removed and the wine in the tube will pull more wine through as it falls into the destination carboy. The only trick is to make sure the output end of the tube is below the bottom of the source carboy. That means having the source carboy on the bench and the destination carboy on the floor. The racking tube is a handy device used to prevent syphoning the sludge from the bottom of the source carboy. It has a dohickey on the end that keeps it above the bottom of the carboy and keeps big chunks from getting into the tube. The tubing clamp is just a pressure clamp that lets me clamp the tube shut. The racking tube spring clip allows me to fasten the tubbing to the inside of the neck of destination carboy. It cannot flop out an make a mess on my floor. The spring tip bottle filler is a neato tube with a spring tip at the output end. When you push the thing into the bottom of a bottle, wine is allowed to flow. When you lift it, it shuts off the flow. The cool thing is, you can fill a bottle with wine and when you pull out the filler the level goes down just the right amount, ready to be corked. The blast bottle washer is another super neato thing. It fastens to a hose or a laundry tub faucet and points up instead of down. When you push a bottle or carboy onto it, it shoots a blast of water that just blows the sludge and muss out of the bottle. I was surprised at how well it worked. It eliminated a lot of scrubbing and scraping. The 7. 9 gal. Fermenting bucket is used for the primary fermenting. When I first worked with the Baco Noir grapes, the harvest was upon me and I was forced to use regular 5 gallon buckets for the primary ferment. That meant I had to divide the must into two buckets. With the 7.9 gallon bucket, I don't have to do that. In addition, this bucket has a drilled lid so I can use the lid with a vapor lock for the primary ferment. I used the big stainless steel strainer to make the first rack from the primary fermentor. It was easier than tying to syphon from the must with all its skins and seeds floating around. The heat mat, I have already explained. Now we can get to consumables. For sure, the fruit is the main one, whether we use grapes, plums, apples, or rhubarb. The best deal is to get whatever fruit we use from our own harvest of free from out neighbors harvest. That is my situation with my Baco Noir grapes. Probably the most expensive way is to by kits, but they avoid the real messy part of the process and the final price is still very reasonable compared to commercial wines. Also, we are less likely to fail with a kit. Unless you are really sure of your water, distilled water is a very good inexpensive investment. It's less than a buck a gallon. Yeast is another consumable that is very inexpensive. While you may get away with using bakers yeast you don't really save anything and you run the risk of mucking up the flavor of the wine. Wine yeasts are cheap and are grown especially for the winemaking process. Sodium metabisulphite is a necessary consumable. It too is cheap and easy to use. In the form of Campden tablets it is added to wine in the amount of 1 tablet per gallon two or three times in the process. This kills off any contaminants that might get into the process. It is less expensive in powder form where we use it to make a sterilizing solution by mixing 2 oz. Per gallon of water. If put in a sealed jar, this will keep six or more months. We use this solution to sterilize everything we use throughout the process. I cannot over emphasize the necessity of this. Clarifiers or fining products are used to remove tiny suspended particles from the wine in the final step before bottling. Litmus paper is just what it is. These papers change color when dipped in a solution based on the acidity of the solution. The ones use in winemaking come with a color chart to tell us what they mean. We can also buy various acids to adjust the acidity of our wine. This is more applicable to wines other than grape. Grapes are usually good enough as we get them. The final consumable is corks which can be bought in quantity from you supplier. That's all. In the following essays I will discuss the Chianti kit wine
and detail the process I have used so far in making Baco Noir
wine. After that I will discuss the apple wine which I have in
process and review the law governing home winemaking.
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