Tag: making wine

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How to Remove Wine Labels

It's best to remove wine labels well ahead of time. This can be a time consuming process so you want to start early.

Reusing wine bottles is the perfect way to save some money when making your own wine. The problem is how do you remove the labels?

I’ve found there are mainly three types of labels, paper, plastic, and plastic coated paper. Paper labels are easy as they’ll come off after only a few minutes in water. Plastic labels peel off but leave a mess (more on that below).

The toughest labels to remove are the plastic coated paper labels. They don’t peel off and water can’t penetrate the plastic so you can’t soak it off.

After a bit of practice, however, I stumbled upon a method that works really well for paper and plastic coated paper labels. Check out this video to see how I do it. Continue reading “How to Remove Wine Labels”

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The Anatomy of a Grape

Knowing and understanding grapes is absolutely essential to making good wine. After all these little berries are what it all starts with right?

By their very nature grapes are the perfect winemaking fruit. No other fruit contains the perfect amounts of sugar, acidity, and phenolic compounds to create such an amazing beverage. Any other fruit requires additional sugar or other ingredients to even produce alcohol.

Let’s get to know our little friend a little bit better. Shall we? Continue reading “The Anatomy of a Grape”

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First Impressions of My Shiraz and the Mistakes I Made

You’re really supposed to wait six months after bottling a red wine before you taste it…but I couldn’t resist!

When I bottled my Shiraz I wound up with 29 full bottles and about a half bottle left over. Needless to say I couldn’t store the half bottle for any length of time without oxidizing it. So, the only thing left to do was drink it!

I wanted to taste the wine as bottled for two reasons. First, I wanted to know what it tastes like in the beginning so that I have something to compare it to as it ages. Second, I wanted to see if I made any mistakes that I could learn from. Here’s what I found when I tasted my wine. Continue reading “First Impressions of My Shiraz and the Mistakes I Made”

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Bottling Your Kit Wine

The final step in the wine making process is to bottle your wine and insert a cork. You’re ready for this step once you wine has been stabilized and is clear.

If your wine has not been properly clarified or degassed you shouldn’t move on to bottling.  Sediment and trapped carbon dioxide cannot leave the bottle and will remain suspended in the wine until you open it. So be completely sure you’re ready for this step.

In this video you’ll see the steps involved to take wine from a carboy to the bottle including an extra step required for long-term bottle aging.

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Degassing and Clarifying Your Wine

After a seemingly eternal fourteen days since racking it’s time to degas and add a clarifying agent to the kit wine.

The wine whip degassing tool.Degassing is a brut force method of removing suspended carbon dioxide. I purchased a Fermtech Wine Whip to help with this process and it saved me big time. More on that later.

Check out this video on degassing and adding a stabilizing agent to the wine. This is the final step before bottling. If this step isn’t done correctly your wine won’t clear and you won’t be able to move onto bottling! Continue reading “Degassing and Clarifying Your Wine”