Red Wine
Step by Step guide to make red wines
Equipment
- Two Fermenters - Primary and Secondary.
- A large Potato Masher (or) a Wine Press
- A muslin cloth to strain.
- Airlock and a cloth to keep the bugs away
- Siphon or transfer pipe
- A stirrer, preferably steel (avoid wood).
- Log book to record all our observations.
- Bottles with matching caps/ corks
- Ornate Labels or stickers
- A hydrometer (1.0 to 1.2 SG or a triple scale) (or) Refractometer
Ingredients
- 1.5 kg About 1.5kg grapes per liter of wine. Try to get locally produced fresh grapes from the March harvest
- 0.5 gm Potassium MetaBiSulphate Campden a preservative to kill molds.
- 100 gm Adding some sliced raisins can help increase the sugar content 100g/L/ Sugar/ glucose/ jaggery/ DME to increase alcohol
- 0.3 gm Yeast Nutrients: for healthy fermentation
- 5 ml Sanitizer food grade rinse free
- 1 gm Red wine Yeast (1gm/liter)
- 0.25 gm Fining agents: Pectinase (0.5gm/L) Bentonite (0.5gm/L), Isinglass (0.01g/L)
- 0.5 gm Potassium Sorbate to kill yeast so that we can sweeten our wines.
Instructions
Day 1
- Buy ripest of the grape bunches from the market. A Refractometer will help to measure the sugar content by taking a few drops of juice (or) pulp about 250ml of grape juice and measure the density(specific gravity) with a Hydrometer.Note: wine grapes are supposed to taste tart, which tends to mask their sweetness. Therefore, for the untrained tongue, tasting a few grapes will not give them the right sugar levels. Good grapes have more than 18% sugar and their juice has a specific gravity of 1.074. (Which corresponds to ~10% potential alcohol levels).BRIX is the jargon used in the industry. Technically, it means percentage of sugar in the fruit juice. The Latin name for this is , “young wine".
- Clean the grapes thoroughly, remove any bruised or rotting fruit. Note: Remove NGM (Non-grape material) like insects, infected parts and remove as much woody stem as possible. It is outdated to see people stomping on the grapes but a more practical method will be to put them in linen, nylon or mesh bags and then squeeze them (or) use a potato masher (or) wine press. If the grapes have seeds, then avoid using a blender. The crushed seeds and stems release bitter off flavors. Inviting friends and kids over to help is something that will give everyone a nice group activity to bond over the course of the day.
- Collect the Must (fresh grape juice) in your Primary Fermenter. Note: The red color of grape wines comes from the exocarp (skin of the grapes). Depending on how deep a color we want, one might tweak the contact with the skin that releases red tannins.
- Hygeine and Sanitization - Most recipes will call for some Campden (or) potassium metabisulphate to kill the wild yeast and mold. Do not forget to sanitize your equipments.About ½ a gm of this preservative is good enough for 4kg of grapes and it has to be kept overnight in a covered place for the Sulphur dioxide to kill the microbes. Use a sanitizer to sanitize your equipments.
- Add some Pectinase to aid in clearing of the wine. It improves the extraction efficiency drastically making the wine more flavorful.
Day 2
- ~0.5gm of Yeast Nutrients per liter should be added to facilitate yeast to multiply and make a healthy culture. The goal here is to allow the yeast strains to grow and dominate the juice.
- Add some additional sugar to increase the wine strength. If using raisins, jaggery (or) cane sugar, my advice would be to dissolve and boil the syrup to get rid of the mold sticking on it. The goal is to reach about 18-20% sugar (fruit sugar + added sugar), so depending on the type of grape, we would need anything between 60 to 120gms of sugar per liter.
- Indian taste buds prefer a bit stronger alcohol with a sweeter finishing taste. A lot of Indian wine makers aim for a Brix of 24% (SG of 1.1 that typically results in 13.5-14% alcohol).
- Advanced tip/s: You may step feed sugar and nutrients, which means rather than putting all in one go, add 1/3 parts over the next 3-5 days. Do not add nutrients in the secondary part as yeast is not supposed to multiply in anaerobic conditions.Maintaining acidity is also important to prevent mold spoilage. Good wine grapes are very acidic (pH ~3.5).We can add some citric acid (or) mallic acid (or) tartaric acid to maintain the acidity. They are usually sold as acid blends in wine making stores.
- Primary Fermentation: Add Yeast nutrients, Sugar & Red Wine Yeast. Pour the Must in a wide mouth jar. Cover it with a cloth mesh. It will rise a bit so taking a jar of twice the final output of wine is the thumb rule.
Day 3
- The bubbling sound should start coming after 24 hours. Now, the most wonderful morning ritual of the winemaker will start. Sanitize a big spoon/ paddle and stir our fermenter every day. If we put our ears on the walls of the vessel, we can overhear vigorous bubbling sounds. It is like cooking without fire. No wonder Latin roots of fermentation is Fervere which means “to boil, seethe”.Maintain the temperature below 25oC and above 10oC (to avoid formation of substances that cause hang-over). Remember to measure the liquid temperature and not the room temperature.
- Advanced tip: A thermostat fitted refrigerator, chest freezer or air-conditioned room is ideal to battle the Indian summers. Amateurs/Beginners can keep the fermenter in a tub and fill it with ice before leaving for office in the morning. As the ice melts, the stress of noon peak temperatures is overcome. Swamp cooling can be achieved by covering the fermenter by a wet t-shirt.
Day 7
- Wait for the Bubbling to subside/stop no matter what day it is. Now, it is time to separate the seeds, skin and pulp from the Wine (Did you notice that we are referring to it as wine rather than grape Must?) . Hence, it is time to siphon the wine. Take extra care so that we do not disturb the sediment and floating debris. The clear broth in the center is what we want for our best wine.
- Primary fermentation is open to air, hence susceptible to oxidation. If the wine is not moved to secondary fermentation in time (7-14 days), it can get oxidized and even turn from red to golden color. Hence, we move to secondary fermentation.
- Advanced tip/s: You should monitor hydrometer reading frequently. When 70% of the sugars get fermented (from the brix level reading), it is time to transfer the wine to secondary vessel. This is important if we are using wild yeast or low temperature fermentation where the process can take longer than necessary.Small batch makers often discard the floating pulp. However, large batch makers want to focus on maximum yield. Hence they press the skin and pulp residue in a wine press or in any oversized potato masher to extract wine.
- Secondary Fermentation - Now that we have transferred our clean wine into a narrow mouth airtight fermenter (secondary fermenter) . In case you have a different fermenter, you would need an airlock and grommet/cork, it is time to wait for bubbling to settle (refill the airlock’s water barrier with a disinfectant). Temperatures now can be lowered to ~13oC to aid in clarification and mellowing of harsh flavors. Be mindful of the headspace or the air gap between the liquid and the airlock. Excess headspace could get filled with Oxygen and cause unnecessary oxidation, lack of it will create a mess due to over-flow.
Day 21
- Advanced tip: You can now taste the wine and improve flavors and colors by adding oak chips (1-3gms per liter), tannins (artificial red color extract), spices (peppers, star anise, cinnamon, cardamom, cloves etc. pairs well, few gms per liter is usually sufficient). If we plan to use fining agents, now is the right time to introduce some bentonite slurry or isinglass.
- In another week, the bubbling in the airlock should slow down drastically and the hydrometer would sink below 1.00 (indicating dry wine or completion of fermentation).
- Now comes the real test of patience. Allowing it to sit for another 2 weeks (total 4 weeks from grape pulping) would allow it to clarify, tone down the harsh flavors and make it palatable. The yeasty flavors of the fresh wine will also mellow down over time.
- Advanced Tip: Cold crashing (i.e. keeping the wine at 4oC would help slowing the Brownian motion and accelerate sedimentation. Beverages are colloidal solution with small solid particles suspended in it causing haze. Brownian motion is the term used to measure their suspension.
Day 28
- Bottling day - Now comes another hard working day. Clean the bottles, sanitize them and siphon the wine (without disturbing the sediments). Adding a bit of Campden (1/8gm per liter) would give it enough SO2 to preserve the wine. It might be a good idea to invite friends over to drink fresh wine as they help clean the bottles. Take a poll on what name should be given to the wines and what would be the appropriate artwork of the labels.
Back Sweetening: If we want to sweeten the wine, there are three ways:
- First, raise the alcohol levels to the extent that yeast can no longer metabolize. This strategy is used in port wines where distilled brandy is added to raise the alcohol to ~20% ABV.
- Some home wine makers would also add excess of sugar in primary to take the yeast to its alcohol tolerance limits. I will not recommend that as it can produce stressed yeast flavors. That being said, it is still widely used tactic in traditional recipes.
- Add preservatives (like potassium sorbate) at the time of bottling to stop yeast action. These wine stabilizers stop yeast from functioning and prevent the added sugar from being fermented and corks popping out. It is widely used in industry and is the most preferred method.
Aging Wine
- I always ferment my wine dry. It helps me detect off flavors easily (without sugar masking them) and gives me flexibility to convert the batch into a dry, sweet, cooking or cider vinegar based on the progress of transformation.
- It is a misconception that older wines are better, like any fermented food items, wines have an optimal timeframe where they taste best. Most winemakers will make one or two batches a year and it might be a good idea to store them in a cool place away from sunlight for one to three years. The above is a basic recipe that one can alter based on their style, heritage and availability of time & resources.
Notes
Winemaking is simple but needs patience.
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Hello Ankur, I really need a big help from you! I made my first wine finally. I tasted the wine on bottling day and i found it very very acidic. I am a person who loves wine made of merlot. The wine i made is no way drinkable as it does not have any fruity taste. I think if i can infuse some blue berry taste into my wine, it will do the trick. Just to check it out i took quarter glass of wine, and tried to add some crushed blueberries into it and infused them into the wine. Once i did that the wine got a fruity taste and it was much better than the original. But i am not sure whether it is advisable to do this. I also tried to add sugar solution to quarter glass of wine, but i did not like the taste. So is there any way i can back sweeten the wine with the dried blue berries? If it cannot be done, i plan to give away the wine i made to a friend. Please help.
blueberry will introduce sugar in your wine. this might restart fermentation and add another 3 weeks of aging.
If your wine is too acidic… then maybe adding some Calcium carbonate might help
Thank you! What if i add blue berry and Potassium Sorbate which will stop further fermenting? If that works, can you suggest me what is the best way to add blueberry? should i make a juice out it and add? or just add blueberry and keep it for some 3 weeks and then bottle the wine?
Alcohol is a good solvent so it can extract out all the flavors and colors from the fruits/spices and botanicals. Juicing or powdering the flavors is not recommended as that can hamper the clarity/clearness of the wine. If I would do it:
Option 1. Chop the blueberry. The idea is to expose the flesh so that the wine can exact the desired flavors/colors. Suspend it in a hop sock or any pouch https://www.arishtam.com/product/hop-bag-spice-bag/ give it 2-7 days for the alcohol to extract the flavors. After that remove the cloth bag and bottle. Add sorbate during bottling
2. Option 2: Making a tinture. Take clear vodka/brandy/gin or any flavorless neutral spirit. Submerge the chopped berries in it for a week. After that stain it and add the clear tinture to your wine along with sorbate (esp if sugar is present in the fruit)
Wow! great ideas! thank you. I just ordered the pouch. I will use that option. Thank you for the support 🙂
Ankur, I tried to test both options using small quantities and Option 1 turned out to be terrific! Option 2 changed the taste of wine. The wine got the berry flavors infused in it now 🙂 Thank you very much for that amazing tip.
cheers
Hi, do you know any graps seller sell Bangalore blue directly or online through courier or transport? I need it at 387001 pin code. 10kg quantity. And which time Bangalore blue harvest? I mean in which month it will available?
Hetal Indiamart should have a lot of sellers for wine grapes from Nashik and Bangalore. You can talk to any. Most of them pack the grapes in a carton and send it via a bus service (you will have to pick from the bus depot). Courier of fresh fruit is not advisable.
we as a Farming group plan to put one wine making plant.
500 lit/week capacity initially.
Can you help/ guide to start the plant. Technical and equpments.
pl.revert
sure there are tons of free tutorials at arishtam.com to help you get started. If you still face any difficulty please email at brew@arishtam.com
I am going to try making wine for the first time. I ordered few items from your website. As it is first time, I am going to try in a 5 liter fermentation jar. How much of grapes i should be using if my fermentation jar is of 5 liter capacity?
grape wine bubbles a lot. please use a 10 liter jar for 5 liter batch in primary
I got all the items delivered today morning! thank you. I have a five liter jar, so i think i should use only 2.5 liters of wine pulp? and to get 2.5 liters of wine pulp, how much of grapes i should buy? Also do you have a 5 liter secondary fermenter?
Sujith use about 4kg of grapes to make 2.5 liters of grape wine
thanks a lot!
cheers
Wonderful recipe and precise explanation!!
Indian home brewing market needs to grow so equipments and supplies can become less expensive.
Love how Arishtam is pioneering as one of the best Indian home brewing website.
Keep up the good work
Thanks Doctor. You made my day with your kind words
Good notes ! Other bangalore grapes and usual juice grapes do you suggest any good quality grapes for wine . Can we get Cabernet Sauvignon type varieties .
Mukesh Proper wine grapes are always better. howevever Bangalore blue has always yielded good results
https://www.arishtam.com/wine-grapes-varieties-india/home-brew-tutorials/ has a detailed writeup on various grape varieties grown in India
Hi ankur, i am just beginner and my doubt is when do we need to add oak chips (1-3gms per liter), tannins (artificial red color extract), and spices to the wine, day 1 or day 7 or day 21, if it’s day 21 then what about oxidation.
You can add oak chips after 3rd day or whenever you do the first racking. If you add them too early, they get covered with seeds and grape sediments
wow superb,,, step by step recipe..
Thank you
Yesterday I received my yeast. Can I use red / white wine yeast for rice wine. If yes then what measurement I shall use.
No rice yeasts are called koji and are totally different
we can make amazing wine with bangalore blue grapes