You may laugh at me for my methods but this is my story and I'm sticking to it.
For the last few weeks, my aging wine has been siting in my living room and is in desperate need of cooling. It ranges from 65 to 71 degrees but need to be steady between 50-60 degrees. I've searched craigslist and other avenues for either a cheap refrigerator or a mini fridge. I've actually checked out 2 people mini fridges but have come to realize that a mini fridges won't fit my carboy. There is a small indentation on the bottom rear (for the cooling motor) which won't let a carboy sit in there with the door closed. I also don't have a truck to get a fridge into my garage and there is no way in hell I'm renting one to move a $100 fridge.
Since my last post (March 5th), I've wrapped my carboy in foil, sat it close to a window and added a fan. The fan did absolutely nothing. Therefore it has been sitting there looking like a scene out of Signs... foil prevents aliens from reading your thoughts.
But NOW, I have stumbled upon something GREAT. Something of EPIC proportions. Something FREE99. My Boss first gave me the idea to insulate my wine when I started this adventure. He said to get either a foam or large igloo cooler and put my wine in there with bottles of frozen water to regulate the temperature. And what to my surprise did I find at my wife's mom house? A big ass igloo cooler!
WahBAM
KAPOW
It snug as a bug in there. I'll keep you posted on the difficulties of temperature regulation with frozen water bottles.
On a side note, I cracked the bottle of Rideau Sangiovese we bought in Santa Barbara. Got damn it was delicious! Best Sangiovese I've tasted thus far.
The wine is doing fantastic... from what I can tell. I moved my wine out of the kitchen and back to the living room. I need to keep the wine stored at 50-60 degrees which takes me on the hunt for Mini Fridge October. According to my calculations, the diameter of my wine vessel is about 12.63" with a height of 26" (including the airlock) which most Mini Fridges should hold. I originally was searching for a kegerator but $300 for an old beaten up kegerator just sounds silly to me. An inexpensive Mini Fridge will have to suffice. Craigslist is where I've started my search but it looks like I will have to expand to costco and other 'for sale' websites due to the lack of mini fridge availability.
The wife and I went to Santa Barbara this weekend. One of the places we visited was Santa Ynez Valley for WINE TASTING! We stopped by 4 wineries: Sunstone, Rideau, Buttonwood and Gainey.
Sunstone is very cool and had a great atmosphere. $10 for a regular tasting 5 and $5 more for their reserve tasting of 3. Definitely opt for the reserve tastings. Their white and rose were okay. Their reds were very decent but not worth the 45+ dollars per bottle. The reserve tasting is where it's at. We tried their Reserve Pinot Noir and let me tell you, the best Pinot I've tasted thus far. We ended up buying a bottle. This will go next to our Opus One Overture to be opened on a special occasion. The other 2 reserves were very good, including their award winning Eros.
Rideau is a New Orleans inspired winery. A fun atmosphere. The wines were good. We kind of went through here fast. Lots of grass to have a picnic.
Buttonwood's wines were just okay. There are on the more affordable side. But their cab was very drinkable. This was our least favorite of the 4. I swear, there was one white wine here that smell like manure. I think I just threw up in my mouth a little.We poured this one out after the first sip. I have no clue why you would buy this.
Gainey - Second favorite place. The tasting room has low light atmosphere and lined stacks of barrels adding to the ambiance. I found out there were just for show and all their wines aging is done at their sister location. All the wines here were by far consistently good. The only reason we didn't buy a bottle was because we have a strict rule of not buying any wines after the 2nd winery; this rule does get bent from time to time ;)
Overall, we had a blast wine tasting in Santa Barbara. Going in a big group here would be fun.
Here are the wines we bought
This is the inside tasting room at Gainey
I've never seen such large wooden wine containers. These things are over 6ft tall - Gainey
Well everyone, the majority of work is done. Now it's time to hurry up and wait. Let me back up for a moment and tell you how Sunday went because there was a definite learning curve.
Sunday March 28th, 2010
After talking with Advintage on Friday, I felt a little more comfortable with how long the degassing stage was taking. I finally had some free time on Sunday so I popped the airlock and gently stirred my wine (5 days into degassing). I made the mistake of stirring the wine too vigorously which caused all the wine foam shown in my previous posts. If you gently stir in a circular motion, the residual C02 will bubble up similar to soda in a glass. I was creating a water tornado :). When I stirred it this time, the amount of bubbles was negligible. Now it's time to add the remaining ingredients and top off my wine.
I first added the Metabisulfite to 1/2 cup a warm water to dilute. Okay, what they don't tell you in the instructions is that adding Metabisulfite to water produces Sulfer Dioxide. So with me being curious by nature, I decided to see what Metabisulfite smells like. BAD IDEA, Don't breath this stuff. My nosehairs were singed and I was coughing for a good 10 minutes. NO BUENO! As I add this stuff to the wine I thought to myself, why am I adding this chemical to the wine I'm going to DRINK? Metabisulfite is a stabilizer and basically helps to kill any harmful bacteria and yeast in the wine. It also helps prevent oxidation. I then add packed #5 - Kieselsol. This is a fining agent that is negatively charge to help with clearing the wine. It acts like a big sponge and attracts any large particles then sinks to the bottom. After 15-30 mins, I add packet #6 - Chitosan - This is positively charged clearing agent and works the same as the Kieselsol.
Now it's time to top off my wine. I pop open the 3 bottles of cupcake cab and start pouring them in. I soon start to realize that these 3 bottles isn't going to be enough. CRAP! I run to the store to buy 2 more and guess what, they only have one cab left. Quick thinking draws me to the merlot section where I spot Cupcake Merlot. I go home with haste, open and pour the two bottles in. Yeah, I'm still about a half gallon shy from the top. At this point, there's no way I'm buying any more wine just to add to my wine. I do the unthinkable... add water. I ended adding a little less then a half a gallon of water. Adding water to wine, Blasphemy! I know, I know, but it had to be done.
After I finished up, I thought about the cost of topping off my wine. I just invested another $50 to a $90 wine kit with a $200 overhead of winemaking supplies. Doing the math, my first batch of 30 bottles will have a cost of $9 EACH! If I do another batch, it then it drops the cost down to about $4.3 per bottle not including the wine to top it off. The next time I do this, I'm thinking about buying a 6 Gal glass carboy (which I can use for beer making - $40) and not use any wine to top off. This hobby, as well as my others, is starting to get a little expensive.
Now my wine needs to chill out for a 22 to 45 days at 50-60 degrees F. My apt is about 72 degrees ambient which means i'll have to buy either a kegerator or refrigerator off craigslists and store it in my garage.
I'll keep you posted.
Here are the remaining 3 packets with the wine making instructions.
This is before adding any bottles
This is after adding 3 bottles
This is after adding 2 more bottles - 5 total - $50, WTF
This is after adding water to top it off. Stage 3 COMPLETE. This better be AMAZING ;)
Oh Degassing process, you sure are taking your sweet a$$ time. I called Advintage today and asked them about why my wine is taking so long to degas. They confirmed it could take 3-5 days. Awesome. I had been concerned about the amount of stirring I was doing. I didn't want to hurt the wine by introducing new air in the mix. They said as long as you stir it and don't splash it, you'll be fine. I also asked them about the lack of oak taste even though the oak chips that were soaking in the PF during the first stage. They said the oak chips are optional but if you want more oak taste, add more oak chips. What a concept huh? I'll remember that for next time.
Anyways, the lady is spoke with had french accent. Yeah, French Canadian to be exact; Quebec. She said this was one of the best wine kits they sell. DING!
I plan to top my wine off with 2007 Cupcake Cab Sav - Central Coast.
And BTW, thank you wife for dipping into the bottles of cupcake I was planning to top off my wine with.
I walk in the door after a long day and get to work.
I clean the hydrometer and drop it in. KABOOM, .992. We are ready to rock!
I wash my hands, clean and sanitize my tools and the PF (Primary Fermenter).
I set the glass carboy on one of my dining room chairs and start transferring the wine to the PF on my kitchen floor. It took about 10 minutes total.
The top of the red is .990 - This reads about .992
That's me with my tickets... It's transfer time!
All transferred over. Time to retrieve the hydrometer and clean the Carboy
Here is the left over sediment. It's almost like a wine sediment sand barge in a ocean of purple goodness.
Kitchen Sink Murders
Back into the Glass Carboy ever so gently.
Now it's time for the degassing process.What do I do in the degassing process you ask?
Well let me tell you, I have to Move it, Move it. The wine has residual CO2 levels left over from the fermentation process that must be removed before bottling. So I've been stirring the wine with my big ole plastic spoon per the instructions. I swirl it one way making a whirlpool (similar to the one seen in Pirates of the Caribbean 3 at the end of the movie when they are pirate ship fighting), then switch directions and swirl it the opposite direction. It creates wine foam and releases CO2.An hour or so later I'm still degassing... and degassing... and degassing. I only expected this to take an hour or so but it's been taking FOREVER. I've been yelling "UNLEASH THE CO2" at my wine.... it doesn't appear to be helping. I seal the carboy up and let I chill out a bit to dissipate the wine foam overnight. I've been at this stage for a few days now.
Here is my big plastic stick.
And here is me stirring the wine with my big plastic stick.
I would also like to mention, for those of you who actually made it down this far, I tried my wine and it is pretty damn good. It tastes like a very decent bottle of something off the shelf. I can't wait to try it when it ages a bit. The neighbors wanted a glass of it right then. I thought about it myself.
Temp: 72.3, Check. Today is the day I take my third hydrometer reading. If all goes well, I'll be proceeding to stage 3 tonight; Degassing and Clearing.
Here is what the wine looks like as of this morning.
This is how the wine looked on day 11.
This is how the wine looked this morning - Day 16 - No Bubbles.
Here is a shot of the sediment that has accumulated on the bottom, hence necessity for the clearing stage.
I've been keeping a watchful eye on my bubbling purplish liquid. It's very cool to be able to see the wine in action but underwhelming at the same time because the fermentation process has slowed down. I love the reaction I get from people when they see my 6.5 gallon glass carboy sitting ever so calmly in my kitchen... and yes, it's still in the kitchen. I'd say the most popular response is - "What is that? What's in there?", then they say "Wow that's a lot of wine. Call me when it's done."
Like I said, I've been keeping a watchful eye on my wine. Every day I check the temperature in the morning and when I get home from work. Then I stare at the airlock and watch it go bloop. I've noticed that the frothy wine bubbles sitting on top of the juice have been disappearing. For minute I though about calling Captain Nemo and asking him to head up a search party into the depths of the unknown in order to find these lost bubbles, but lost his phone number. This morning there were practically no bubbles; no blooping in the air lock. The airlock initially was off gassing every few seconds but now it few minutes. I so wanted to drop in the hydrometer this weekend but am holding strong to the instructions of 8-10 days. Tomorrow will be the 8th day and when I drop in the hydrometer.
If any of you are interested, here are the wine making instructions from the distributer: in PDF format:
http://www.advintage.ca/english/instructions/celebration.pdf
Now I was thinking about the logistics of my next hydrometer reading. Once I drop it in, I won't be able to take it out because the carboy has a small opening at the top. So if the reading isn't between .998 and .990, it's staying in there. I'm also starting to think about what wine I'm going to use to top this off the carboy with. I love blended wines such as a Meritage so I'm thinking of using a sangiovese or malbec. I'll keep you posted.
