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Back to the Forum 2006
Archives This is my final essay on the science of wine making. In this, I will offer some notes on some of the details of winemaking. I will also give you the procedure I followed for making apple wine with some corrections. Finally I will give you the law on winemaking as it applies to us. The law was copied from the website of the Department of Justice, Bureau of Alcohol, tobacco, firearms, and explosives. I have realized that we can make wine from anything that has juice, flavor, and sugar. In fact, native sugar is unnecessary because we can add sugar. For sure, there are some flavors we might wish to eschew for winemaking, like okra. However, there are many good candidates, like all of the fruits. One way to make very inexpensive wine is to use local fruits in season. For me, that makes peaches, plums, cherries, wild grapes, and apples candidates, to name just a few. It is very important to be scientific about it if you wish to make consistently good wine, You may have noticed in some of these essays that I was unscientific at first and I had to scramble to make up for it. I was lucky to avoid a disaster. As in any other adventure, if you depend on luck, you will eventually lose. Winemaking may be an art, but it is also a science. Most important to this science are procedure, cleanliness, and sterilization. These are the religion of winemaking. You will always get good wine if you follow proper procedure and keep your equipment clean and sterile. Creativity belongs to the selection and blending of ingredients and not to the procedure. In Winemaking 3, I said we must make sure we have the right chemistry for our must. By chemistry I mean the acidity and the sugar content of the wine. For grape wine, the acidity will usually be okay, but we can test it using a litmus paper test. If it is off, we can add acid or water too correct it. We can also test for sugar content by testing the specific gravity (SG) of the must. This is where the hygrometer comes in. In most case we will want an SG of 1.095. We can raise the SG by adding sugar and lower it by adding water to the must. The best way to add sugar is to dissolve the sugar in water prior to adding it. This prevents the situation of having the sugar lie on the bottom of our fermentor where it may not be converted to alcohol. You can make a sugar syrup by combining sugar with water in a ration of 3:1. Bring this to a boil to dissolve the sugar and allow to cool before adding to must. Ad the syrup a bit at a time and stir in until you get the feel of what it will take to make the necessary change in SG. In the same way, we can use litmus test papers to test the acidity. In most cases we will want an acid content between .60% and .65%. If it is too low, we can add acid in the form of an acid blend. This will be available from your winemaking supplier. They will also have carbonate and bicarbonate products for lowering the acidity of your must if it is to high. As a final note. In the case where you make a wine and end up with a low alcohol content, you can raise it by adding unflavored Vodka. Now, here is the procedure I followed for making apple wine. What I failed to do with this is to properly adjust the must for acidity and sugar. I added sugar, but not enough. As a result I ended up with a low alcohol wine. Next time I will follow procedure and get a better wine. Apple Wine: 11/07/2005 11/08/2005 11/14/2005 12/07/2005 3/07/2006 Concerning the law on winemaking, you can make 100 or 200 gallons of wine per year without a permit. That's a lot of wine and more than I would use. Consider that one gallon of wine will yield 5, 750 ml bottles, 100 gallons would yield 500 bottles. That is more than one bottle a day. Unless you are an alcoholic, that is more than enough. That is for wine only. By law you cannot distill wine or any other brew. Distilling belongs to the big time operators, with deep pockets, who can pay for the necessary licensing and the other incidentals necessary to getting into a government controlled monopoly. That is not a problem for me, because I do not care for hard liquor. I am not about to start distilling legally or otherwise. I have better uses for my time, like, for example, cooking. I use such small amounts of liquor in cooking that buying it is not a problem. Her is the text of the law as copied from the website of the Department of Justice, Bureau of Alcohol, tobacco, firearms, and explosives. Sec. 24.75 (a) General. Any adult may, without payment of tax, produce wine for personal or family use and not for sale. (b) Quantity. The aggregate amount of wine that may be produced exempt from tax with respect to any household may not exceed: (1) 200 gallons per calendar year for a household in which
two or more adults reside, or (d) Proprietors of bonded wine premises. Any adult, defined in Sec. 24.75(c), who operates a bonded wine premises as an individual owner or in partnership with others, may produce wine and remove it from the bonded wine premises free of tax for personal or family use, subject to the limitations in Sec. 24.75(b). (e) Limitation. This exemption should not in any manner be construed as authorizing the production of wine in violation of applicable State or local law. Except as provided in Sec. 24.75(d), this exemption does not otherwise apply to partnerships, corporations, or associations. (f) Removal. Wine produced under this section may be removed
from the premises where made for personal or family use including
use at organized affairs, exhibitions or competitions, such as
home winemaker's contests, tastings or judgings, but may not
under any circumstances be sold or offered for sale. The proprietor
of a bonded wine premises shall pay the tax on any wine removed
for personal or family use in excess of the limitations provided
in this section and shall also enter all quantities removed for
personal or family use on ATF F 5120.17, Report of Bonded Wine
Premises Operations.
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