Prologue

We have grapes.  Concord grapes.  About 100 feet of vines.  So what's a person to do?  Make jelly.  But, making jelly only goes so far, and it is so sweet.  What else?  How about wine?  Yeah!

We've lived in this home for 6 years now.  Some years I've picked the grapes and made grape juice and jelly.  My 'maker' nature wants to do more.  I've been interested in the art of wine making for about a year.  We set aside some money to purchase wine making equipment, and this is year to experiement.

The wonderfolks at Northern Brewer hooked me up with a basic winemaking starter kit.  The guy who helped me with the purchase let me test the various corkers.  I didn't much like the cheapo, so I upgraded to the mid-priced corker, other than that I stuck with the recommended equipment.  I also purchased a county wine recipe book containing 100 wine recipes, and "The Joy of Home Winemaking".

A week alter, after thinking about how this process works, I gathered a list of winemaking chemicals I needed and made another trip.  I picked up campden, potassium sorbate, wine yeast, wine nutrient, tartaric acid, an acidity testing kit (the titration one) some 1 gallon glass jugs, and few other items.  I was good to go.

Picking

On Labor Day I picked grapes.  All told, 24 heaping quarts from behind the garage, and another 24 quarts from the vines on the deck.   There is likely about as many remaining on the vine for jelly-making in a few weeks.  I laid the grapes out on the picnic table and sanitized the nylon bag and primary fermentation bucket.  

When I began stemming grapes, Evee was sleeping and the neighbor kids were over.  Everyone was excited, so I had some free help to stem the grapes.  Great fun!  Emmalee was particularly excited, going back to the vine frequently to get more bunches for me.  That was a blast.  I wish I had taken pictures.  Once the stemming was complete, I estimate that there was 4 or 5 gallons of grapes.

Crushing

After dinner, I sanitized more equipment (some gloves, a piking stick, hydrometer, titration equipment, etc) and crushed the grapes.  That was quite fun, squeezing handfuls of grapes through the nylon bag.  In my excitement I forgot to put on the sanitized gloves.  My hands had been in the solution for some time, so I hope that didn't contaminate the grapes.  This is a point I'm confused about.  They say sanitation is so important, but the grapes aren't sanitized!  How much more will my hands contaminate the juice than grapes that have been outside all summer?

Measuring / Testing

The hydrometer is a sealed, weighted graduated glass cylinder.  It is weighted in such a that by reading the level on the hydrometer it is possible to determine the specific gravity (% sugar) of the juice.  The grape juice needs to be a certain percentage of sugar in order to make good wine.  What I've read is that the juice for red wine should have a specific gravity of 1.090-1.096, which corresponds to roughly 20-24% sugar, give or take.

It turns out that my juice's sugar content was spot on.  It measured 1.090!  I was suprised.  Now on to the acidity.

It is difficult to use titration to determine the acidity of a dense red liquid which contains a lot of debris.  Especially using the little plastic cup came with the kit.  I shined a flashlight into the cup, which made the color changes slightly easier to see.  After two tests, I determined that acidity was around 1.3%.  That is very acidity.  They say a red wine should start at 0.65%, so this juice was twice as acidic as it needed to be.

After some research, I uncovered a few methods for removing acidity.  The first approach is to divide the liquid into two containers and add chalk to one of the containers.  This will cause it to bubble fericiously, and when finished the acidity should be down.  This approach requires two containers, chalk, and about a week's worth of settling prior to merging the two.  Otherwise the wine may taste chalky.  Well, I did not have a second bucket, I didn't not have chalk, and I did not have the time.

The second approach was to dilute the juice with water.  I found the following formula online, in a slightly "I don't really know math" form, so here is a better version:

[ ( current acidity / desired acidity ) * 128 ] - 128

That's 128 fluid ounces in a gallon.

So, for my juice, I this was:

[ ( 1.3 / 0.65 ) * 128 ] - 128 = 128

In other words, for every gallon of juice I need to add a gallon of distilled water in order to recude the acidity by half.

Enough for the day.  I don't have enough distilled water.