winemaking – Winemaker's Academy

3 Keys to a Creating a Useful Winemaking Log

admin — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 01:37:33 +0000

Keeping a winemaking log is critically important to your growth as a winemaker. However, if you’re not logging useful information it won’t do you much good. Short and Long Term Benefits of Keeping a Winemaking Log In the short-term a well-kept winemaking log can help you keep the timing of each step straight. It also …

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How to Pick a Wine Making Yeast

admin — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 11:26:48 +0000

Yeast is the most critical ingredient in the wine making process. When you pick a wine making yeast you are, in effect, choosing the destiny of your wine. The right yeast or yeasts can transform a good grapes into a great wine. Where do The Differences Come From? These tiny organisms are truly amazing. Not only does …

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How to Evaluate Your Wine

admin — Thu, 03 Jan 2013 04:30:12 +0000

Being able to evaluate your wine objectively is vitally important to successful winemakers. You should know how to discern whether your wine is of good quality or not. Whether you like your wine or not is much less important. It’s possible to make a high quality wine that you just don’t like personally. I for one am not a …

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Where to Set Up Your Wine Making Operation

admin — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 10:56:15 +0000

Making wine takes not only time but also space. The right kind of space. Finding The Best Wine Making Area With all the sanitizing, racking, and testing you’ll be doing it’s easy to see how wine making can get messy. Without the proper area you’ll definitely be leaving your mark. Let’s look at what sort …

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The Anatomy of a Grape

admin — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 11:06:22 +0000

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 …

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Using a Hydrometer for Making Wine

admin — Mon, 19 Nov 2012 10:38:44 +0000

The hydrometer is the testing instrument you’ll use most when making wine. While it looks simple enough it does take some practice to fully understand both how to use it and what it’s telling you. I’ll show you how to use a hydrometer as well as what the results mean in this three and a …

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First Impressions of My Shiraz and the Mistakes I Made

admin — Thu, 15 Nov 2012 10:24:41 +0000

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 …

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Bottling Your Kit Wine

admin — Mon, 12 Nov 2012 10:51:02 +0000

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 …

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The Epic Rise and Tragic Fall of a Yeast Empire

admin — Thu, 08 Nov 2012 12:09:28 +0000

The unfermented must is a vast and plentiful breeding ground for yeast. Food in the form of dissolved oxygen and sugar abounds. For the right strain of yeast this is the perfect place to establish a thriving empire. The winemaker sets the yeast in motion. They hydrates the yeast, preparing them to conquer this new-found …

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Degassing and Clarifying Your Wine

admin — Mon, 05 Nov 2012 10:37:59 +0000

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

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