Winemaking!

Today we started our first batch of wine - using a merlot wine kit we bought at the new Hops and Berries store in town. Things went pretty smoothly, but the first time you do something like this it is always a litle slow and, for me, nervewracking! It seems there are a lot of different ways to clean and sterilize equipment, different ways to be sure your "must" (fermenting wine) stays at the proper temperature, etc. So, you get directions with the kit, then the guy at the store says he does it a little differently, then you get online and there is more advice than you can read. So, after all that you just plunge ahead and start! We will figure out what works best for us and keep notes and hopefully round two will be a bit easier.

After cleaning and sanitizing everything, you add some bentonite to hot water, as Mom is doing above. I need to read up and figure out what that is for, but it was in the kit so in it went!

Then you add the juice concentrate, and add warm water, keeping the temperature of the mix at about 70 degrees F. Here's Mom checking the temperature before we added the last amount of water to get to the 6 gallon mark.



After you top it up to the 6 gallon mark, than you sprinkle the yeast over the top, which I am doing here. It's funny, I was nervous about it - didn't want to goof it up, and it all seems so precise. We had to measure the OGR (as you recall from Nate's post, this is the original gangsta rap otherwise known as the original gravity reading), and it was 1.075, just about right, and indicated we could have an alcohol content of about 10%.

We are using a tub filled with water and an aquarium heater element to maintain the temperature at about 70 degrees. The wine will also heat itself up a bit as it begins to ferment, so we'll watch and see if we need to cool it down at all. But the water bath seems like a good way to keep a nice consistent temperature, because we turn our house heat down at night. Other things we read about include using a heating pad, a blanket wrap, a light bulb, etc! It is beginning to seem that this is just as much an art as a science, and not all that precise after all! Mom's checking the thermometer on the left photo. Time will tell, and speaking of which, we got the 4 week kit, so in 4-6 weeks the wine will be ready to bottle and then is best after being bottled for two or more months. So, given that we have to wait to so long for our reward, we're going to Coopersmith's tonight - but likely for a beer. They just made a double strength punjabi ale which is really good!