Bottling Day and First Samples

Spent several hours this past Saturday bottling the Cherry Wheat Ale, Welch's Wine, and Hard Cider. We did the beer in the typical manner with corn sugar for carbonation. The Welch's Wine and Hard Cider we split between part carbonated and part still. Carbonation was done with Muntons Carb Tabs and all of the still was prepped with the addition of Potassium Sorbate. We also experimented with bottling some of the wine in growlers to save on bottles (still, as growlers are supposedly not suitable for carbonation).

I decided to pull a couple of bottles over the past few days to sample. I started with a bottle each of the cider and wine on Tuesday. It had only been 3 days since bottling, but because they are still, I wasn't waiting for carbonation to happen (really just aging and clarification).

Hard Cider: Very clear, looks very nice, tastes extremely dry. Slight sulphur taste & odor that could be off-putting to some people. That may have been addressable by allowing the cider to "breathe" longer after adding the crushed campden tablet, but I'm not exactly sure. Overall, it's drinkable. I'm thinking the next time I make a cider I'll use a heat pasteurization method and include some maltose for a bit of sweetness.

Welch's Wine: Not quite clear. You can tell that granulated sugar was used as a large part of the fermentables from the trademark "cidery" taste. Clarity will likely improve with aging, but the cidery taste probably isn't going away. Grape flavor is minimal. If I did this again, I would probably go for more of the grape concentrate and switch to corn sugar (not sure why I didn't use that initially).

I tried one of the bottles of the Cherry Wheat Ale last night, 4 days after bottling:

Cherry Wheat Ale: Mild haze. Good taste, but ends with an "extract twang". Cherry flavor would be hard to identify if I didn't know what it was. Carbonation was minimal, but expected after only 4 days. I expect this one to improve over the next couple of weeks.

I've been reading up on "extract twang" since last night, and most people seem to agree it has to do with the use of old extract or particular extract brands. What everyone appears to be all over the board on is how to avoid it. I've read about:

• Full boil
• Late malt extract addition (last 20 - 10 minutes of boil)
  
• Use of dry malt extract exclusively
• Use of "fresh" or "higher quality" liquid malt extracts from reputable manufacturers
• Use of LME in plastic bottles or jars, not metal cans
  
• Addition of yeast nutrient

I'm going to try some of these in my next batch, although probably not the full boil method since my kettle isn't big enough. The batch I just started last weekend used 9.9 lbs of LME, but the recipe called for 3.3 lbs at the start and 6.6 lbs at the end. It's also from Norther Brewer, who distributes in plastic "milk jugs" and moves a lot of product every week - both of which are supposed to contribute to freshness. We'll see. I can drink beers with this "extract twang" but I'd rather not have to if I can avoid it.

Project Update

Last night we racked the Welch's Wine and the cider into their respective "secondary" fermenters. I use quotes because rather than sourcing new containers to use as fermenters, we used a brew bucket (sanitized, of course) as a holding vessel while cleaning out the original container, re-sanitizing it, then racking the wine/cider back into the original container.

I also took the opportunity to taste both, but didn't have too much since there is still some yeast in suspension (drink too much of that and you'll regret it).

Here are some updates on our projects:

Welch's Wine: This tastes surprisingly good. It has a taste similar to a very dry white. If I bottle carbonate some of it, it could even pass for a cheap champagne. It also has a very strong (alcohol) taste.

Hard Cider: Still has a hint of that sulfur odor, but it's fading and I expect it to be gone soon. The flavor imparted by the champagne yeast is very strong. Not much apple taste left. I'm starting to wish I had used a cider or ale yeast instead of trying to use the champagne yeast. It'll still be very drinkable, but I think it's going to turn out more like a weak apple wine than a hard cider.

Cherry Wheat Ale: A small fermentation is still happening from the yeast eating the sugars in the puree. When I have a chance, I'm going to snap a picture to upload. I'm sure the way it looks is nothing out of the ordinary, but the appearance is interesting. It's likely the yeast proliferating then dying betwixt all of the cherry puree bits.

Orange Clove Mead: Primary fermentation is still going strong. Yeast cake is starting to form on the bottom of the jug.

I realized the other day that I intended to document the varieties of yeast I was using for each of these. I'll have to do that on another update.

Welch's Wine

Last Saturday I went a little crazy when it came to brewing. In addition to the hard cider and a batch of beer, I also started 2 gallons of Welch's wine fermenting. I'd stumbled across this recipe a few days before and was rather intrigued by what wine made from store-bought concentrate would be like.

Using the same type of 2.5 gallon spring water container that I used for the cider, we made a 2 gallon batch. I also borrowed the "balloon airlock" idea from the mead recipe, since I had run out of airlocks.

We followed the recipe at JackKeller.net. I've seen other recipes that mention the optional addition of tannin, but I didn't have any so we didn't do that.

If you buy concentrate for this recipe, be VERY careful to read the ingredients to make sure that what you're buying doesn't have and chemical preservatives. Welch's does make concentrate that is 100% juice, but also has preservatives. We found this out the hard way. When overcome with joy that we'd found a white-grape-and-raspberry 100% juice, we neglected to read the ingredients. I now have 4 containers of that in the freezer to drink at my leisure and NOT turn into wine.

We pitched a champagne yeast, so I expect this to be very dry. I may bottle carbonate some of it and stabilize the rest, just to see how the varieties turn out.

It's been a week and fermentation is still going strong.


Fermentation Start Date: 9/26/2009
Planned Fermentation End Date: 10/31/2009
Starting Gravity: ???
Projected Ending Gravity: 1.000

The recipe we used is reprinted here, originally found at JackKeller.net:

Welch's Frozen Grape Juice Wine

• 2 cans (11.5 oz) Welch's 100% frozen grape concentrate
• 1-1/4 lbs granulated sugar
• 2 tsp acid blend
• 1 tsp pectic enzyme
• 1 tsp yeast nutrient
• water to make 1 gallon
• wine yeast

Bring 1 quart water to boil and dissolve the sugar in the water. Remove from heat and add frozen concentrate. Add additional water to make one gallon and pour into secondary. Add remaining ingredients except yeast. Cover with napkin fastened with rubber band and set aside 12 hours. Add activated wine yeast and recover with napkin. When active fermentation slows down (about 5 days), fit airlock. When clear, rack, top up and refit airlock. After additional 30 days, stabilize, sweeten if desired and rack into bottles.