wine – Winemaker's Academy

How to Degas Wine

admin — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 01:42:29 +0000

Degassing your wine is a key step in the final stages of the wine making process. Simply put it’s the process of removing suspended carbon dioxide left over from fermentation. Before we talk about how to degas your wine let’s take a minute to talk about why it’s so important to get it done right. …

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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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Checking the Specific Gravity and Racking

admin — Mon, 29 Oct 2012 08:00:31 +0000

After the primary fermentation has slowed down (after about 7 days) it’s time to check the specific gravity. What this tells us is how the density of the wine compares to that of water. Grape juice is more dense than water. Thus before we fermented the grape juice the specific gravity was over 1.0. As …

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Pitch the Yeast and Make Some Wine!

admin — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 01:33:49 +0000

Check out this video on re-hydrating the grape juice concentrate and pitching the yeast to kick off fermentation.

Equipment Required for Making Wine from a Kit

admin — Mon, 15 Oct 2012 19:32:05 +0000

Once you’ve decided on what wine kit you’d like to make we now move onto what equipment you’ll need to get started. In this video I outline the minimum amount of equipment required to get going. You can always add more gadgets but this is an affordable place to start. In summary, you’ll need: a …

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Fermentation Has Begun

admin — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 22:39:34 +0000

Five days ago I began making a six gallon Shiraz wine kit. As I go I’m recording videos on how it’s done, here’s the first video on what comes in a winemaking kit. Today I wanted to share my first update on my wine. I’m four days into the wine making process. After the first day the …

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Bottle Aging Wine

admin — Wed, 26 Sep 2012 22:51:44 +0000

Once bottled wine needs to be stored in optimal conditions to preserve its life and keep it tasting as wonderful as possible. The three factors affecting wine being aged in a bottle are temperature, light, and humidity (depending on your closure). Red vs White Wine Bottle Aging Red wines benefit the most from long-term aging …

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Bottling Wine

admin — Wed, 26 Sep 2012 22:46:21 +0000

Bottling is the final step in the wine making process that requires any effort on your part. After this time takes care of the rest. The major considerations when bottling are what kind of bottle to use, type of closure, and to add gas or not Bottles The type of bottle you use is completely …

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Stabilizing Wine

admin — Sat, 01 Sep 2012 20:03:59 +0000

Closely related to the clarifying wine, is stabilizing it. Many of the same methods used for clarifying wine are also used to stabilize it, with a few additions. What is an unstable wine? By unstable we mean that the wine is susceptible to spoilage. The most common causes of spoilage are oxidation, unintentional second fermentations, …

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Clarifying Wine

admin — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 22:23:31 +0000

At this point your wine has aged a bit and its time to start thinking about bottling. However, before we’re ready for that we need to take care of a few things. First is clarifying the wine. No one wants to drink a cloudy or chunky-style wine. It looks bad and even if it tastes great …

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