Tasting the Merlot

As intented, with today’s Sunday lunch, I had a glass of the Merlot that I bottled yesterday.

As you can see, it looks the part. Tastes pretty good too 🙂

I am really pleased to report that this is definitely a decent quality Merlot. I’m very pleasantly surprised. It already has a complex, fairly deep flavour with a pleasant oaky after taste. There is a very very minor chemically taste right at the end, but I’m sure this will fade completely as the wine matures. If the flavour improves further it really will be a great wine.

Advertisement

Read Full Post »

Bottling the Beaverdale Merlot

After yet more bottle cleaning, I was ready to bottle the Merlot that had been clearing. Having had issues when syphoning the Strawberry, I bought a new syphon from the homebrew shop. I also attached an extra length of tube to the tap, so that this could be fed to the bottom of the bottle, as well as meaning the tap was no longer the last part of the syphon.

I followed the same method I used for the Strawberry, and I’m pleased to say that with the new syphon, it went very well. Again I had knocked up some labels to imprive the bottles appearance, as well as to identify the wine.

With the win bottled, corked and labelled I placed it on the rapidly filling wine shelf in the brewery. I only managed to get the equivalent of 5 full sized bottles of wine, which is one whole bottle less than i should have done. This is quite a hit on such a small amount of wine. I did actually get a further quarter of a bottle, which I am looking forward to having with my Sunday lunch today 🙂

Read Full Post »

Adding the Chitosan to the Merlot

Just a quick post to confirm that last night I did add the second part of the finings – the chitosan – to the Merlot. The sachet for this was slightly larger than for the kieselsol. I shook the contents for 10 seconds again, before replacing the airlock and returning the demijohn to the brewery room where it will sit for at least 2 or 3 weeks before I bottle (hopefully) nice clear wine.

Read Full Post »

Adding the Kieselsol to the Merlot

Following the instructions, I took the gromit out of the demijohn and poured in the small sachet of clear liquid labelled kieselsol. I took the airlock out of the gromit, replaced the gromit in the demijohn and with my thumb over the hole, I shook it for 10 seconds. I then replaced the airlock and returned the wine to the brewery for another 24 hours before adding the second sachet, this time of chitosan.

Read Full Post »

Shaking up the wines

24 hours after wracking the Strawberry, and a couple of days after wracking the Merlot, I was continuing to shake the wines as often as I remembered. This involved simply removing the airlocks and covering the hole with a cleaned thumb and shaking until it stopped fizzing when I removed my thumb (or until I got bored, which ever came first).

Following the instructions, this would be the last shaking of the Strawberry, and given my busy weekend, tomorrow would be the last shaking of the Merlot. The Strawberry will now sit for a few weeks until it is completely clear, where the Merlot will tomorrow have the finings added before also being left to clear.

Read Full Post »

Racking the Beaverdale Merlot

I decided the time had finally come to rack the Merlot – the first home brewed wine I had tried. I decided to take a hydrometer reading, even though I expected to see little or no movement and would wrack it anyway. I took a picture for future reference:

It was hard to get a reading as I couldn’t see through the glass clearly, and the opening of the demijohn was very tight. Zooming in on the photograph was actually the best way of deciding on a reading. I put it down as 0.995.

Day	Time per bubble (secs)	Gravity
0	infinite	1.078
3	2
5	9
9	15
12	18
15	30
21	55	1.000
24	infinite (after hydrometer reading)	0.998
27	infinite	0.997
34	infinite	0.996
44	infinite	0.995

As I said, I was determined to wrack it anyway. Its had a long time in primary now and I don’t think the gravity is going anywhere now.

Having sanitised some tubing, a gromit and an airlock, I placed the full demijohn on the work surface, and a freshly sanitised demijohn on the floor in the washing up bowl (to catch any spillage). I had a couple of different bits of tubing, with and without taps, but having had a bit of a play with syphoning earlier I decided that I couldn’t find a way of starting the syphon without sucking anyway, so I went for a basic tube connected to a stiff tube with a hole a couple of centimetres from the bottom. This stiff tube goes into the full demijohn and the hole allows the clear wine to be syphoned off while leaving the sediment at the bottom.

The instructions actually didn’t mention transferring to a secondary container, but given the next steps were to help with clearing the wine, it seemed sensible to rack it at this point. I committed the sin of starting the syphoning by sucking, and quickly putting the end into the demijohn. It worked perfectly, sadly so well I didn’t even get a taste of the wine. The only problem I found was that I left a little more wine in the original demijohn than I wanted, but after a second attempt to collect a little more failed, I decided I would rather lose a glass of wine than ruin all the wine so left it alone.

Returning to the instructions, I poured the contents of the sachet labelled Stabiliser into the demijohn, placed the sanitised grommit in the opening, and with my cleaned thumb over the opening I shook the bottle for several minutes to release the co2. Whenever I removed my thumb, there was a strong hiss of co2 escaping, so I continued shaking until no fizz occurred. I then placed the airlock into the grommit.

I will repeat the shaking several times a day for the next 3 or 4 days as instructed before adding the ingredients that make up the finings.

Read Full Post »

Merlot check…

With the prospect of a free weekend on the horizon, I wanted to take a reading of the Merlot to have something to compare against at the weekend to see if it has finally stopped fermenting. Hopefully it will have done, so that I can transfer it to secondary and begin the final stages before bottling. I have taken to storing the hydrometer in a bottle containing water and sanitising powder so that I can take readings without any further sanitising hassle. I rinsed it and gently dropped it into the wine, and as mentioned previously, I took a picture:

Day	Time per bubble (secs)	Gravity
0	infinite	1.078
3	2
5	9
9	15
12	18
15	30
21	55	1.000
24	infinite (after hydrometer reading)	0.998
27	infinite	0.997
34	infinite	0.996

I think this has gone down a fraction more in the last week since the previous reading, but I’m hopeful it will now have finished. The target gravity of 990-994 is close enough for me to be fairly happy, but only time will tell whether this is close enough to still make a great wine.

Read Full Post »

Merlot still going…?

I took another reading of the Merlot with a hydrometer, having convinced myself it must have stopped fermenting and I wanted to get it into the secondary demijohn. The hydrometer dropped to a level where only the very top of the yellow section was visible, and none of the digits of 1.000 could be seen. Given the results of my hydrometer test showed I should be taking a line from just above the actual level of the liquid (not the level of the bell), this is a reading of about 0.997. I didn’t take a photo as I didn’t want to expose the wine to a bright flash, but I wish I had so I could look at it again.

I have tried to be very descriptive about the reading this time, so that I have something to compare against next time I take a reading. The reading does seem to be below the 0.998 from last time, but now I am doubting my reading from last time. Hopefully if I leave it another 5 days or more, if I can see any of the yellow section, fermentation is over. If I can’t, I should leave it longer.

I should add that I have still seen no bubbles at all from the Merlot recently, and not even any sign that pressure is moving the water round the airlock at all.

Day	Time per bubble (secs)	Gravity
0	infinite	1.078
3	2
5	9
9	15
12	18
15	30
21	55	1.000
24	infinite (after hydrometer reading)	0.998
27	infinite (after hydrometer reading)	0.997

Conclusions:

• From now on, I will photograph my hydrometer readings. Any exposure to the flash will be worth it I think, given it will save me doubting readings, and making extra readings because of it.

Read Full Post »

Merlot Impatience

Since taking the hydrometer reading 3 days ago, I have been keeping an eye on the airlock on the Merlot to make sure it got going again. In 3 days I hadn’t seen a single bubble. I put the first day down to it needing to fill up the remaining space with co2 before it started coming through the airlock, but after 3 days I was worried it had stalled.

I decided my best bet would be to try to get a bit more of the yeast suspended back into the wine, so I removed the airlock, placed a clean thumb over the hole and very slowly and carefully turned the container upside down so as to get some of the yeast off the bottom, while trying not to let the wine splash or bubble.

Having done this, I decided to take a hydrometer reading just to confirm nothing had changed. (Yes, I know I should have done this first.) I was surprised to find the reading was 0.998, though now I’m not sure if this is because of the extra yeast suspended in the wine, or if it really has been fermenting, despite the lack of bubbles. I will try to do some research to see if yeast would decrease the gravity and post an edit back here.

Day	Time per bubble (secs)	Gravity
0	infinite	1.078
3	2
5	9
9	15
12	18
15	30
21	55	1.000
24	infinite (after hydrometer reading)	0.998

I think this is the first time since I started brewing that I have let impatience affect my brewing. Hopefully I haven’t done any damage, but I will be sure to leave it a while now before taking another reading.

Read Full Post »

Checking the Merlot

It is 3 weeks to the day since I set the Beaverdale Merlot going. the results of another bubble check are below:

Day	Time per bubble (secs)	Gravity
0	infinite	1.078
3	2
5	9
9	15
12	18
15	30
21	55	1.000

As you can see, the wine is now getting close to the target of less than one bubble a minute. I decided to take a hydrometer reading in order to see for certain the state of the wine. As shown in the table, the reading was exactly 1.000. The instructions state that the target is 0.990 to 0.994. I’m pleased to see that the wine has made it a long way down from 1.078. I hope it can make it down just a few more points now. Hopefully by recording the bubble rates and gravity with this, my first wine, I will have a better understanding for future wines of whether it is likely that it will drop further points now that its almost at just 1 bubble a minute.

I also had a little taste (just the juice off the hydrometer). It didn’t taste unpleasant, but it had a very alcoholic taste – like a very cheap wine. I was a bit disappointed, but hopefully it will just take time for the flavours to mature.

Read Full Post »