Crafted wine

The full name of crafted wine is called pure hand refined home-made wine. In the last decade or so, craft wine has become very popular in the western developed countries and has become a fashion and hobby, a great drink for wedding and birthday parties, and a perfect gift for friends and family. There are also many important technical details of craft wine that are different from the factory production of wine, craft wine does not use any chemical additives, absolutely no use of sulfur dioxide, he puts more emphasis on the entire winemaking process in some specialized wine factories can not do the important details, highlighting the craftsmanship of the delicate, to achieve the step by step, the craft wine does not pursue the production of a number of bottles of wine, or even from 1 bottle of wine to start, quality is the most important. The quality of wine is the most important thing, and craft wines use much more manpower and costs than wines produced in an industrialized way, so the difference in quality between the two is obvious. Craft wines are made from the heart of the winemaker, like a noble and respected work of art. It reflects the respect and love of the winemaker for the wine, and contributes to the unique taste and quality of the homebrewed wine. Fine wine using special homebrew wine equipment, the entire winemaking process wine will not come into contact with the air, will not be oxidized, and will not be contaminated by harmful bacteria in the air, fundamentally guarantee the quality of the homebrew wine and the hygiene standards of the winemaking process.

The following is a simple case study of craft wine making:

One, the preparation of wine making equipment

First of all, we should prepare the special wine making barrels and wine making cabinets for craft wine making (see Fig. 1), one wine making cabinet can be equipped with a maximum of 16 barrels, and if you make more wines you can equip a few more cabinets, and you can prepare more barrels appropriately, the structure of the barrels is shown in Fig. 2. The structure of wine barrels is shown in Figure 2.

Figure 1: Preparing wine barrels and wine cabinet

Figure 2.

Specialized wine barrels for fine wine making

The important technical detail of fine wine making is to control the wine not to be in contact with the air because once the wine is in contact with the air, the wine will be contaminated by various kinds of harmful bacteria in the air, and the wine will be oxidized and oxidized, and the wine will be oxidized. The wine will be oxidized. The oxidized wine may not be able to see the change in the short term, but with the growth of time, the quality and preservation period of the wine will be seriously affected. In order to prevent wine from being oxidized and contaminated in the process of wine making and preservation, the technical measures taken by wine manufacturers are to keep adding chemical additives such as sulphur dioxide to the wine. Sulfur dioxide is a chemical that is harmful to the human body, and adding sulfur dioxide to wine is definitely not good. However, since the winemaking equipment and process used by wineries at present cannot guarantee that the wine liquid does not come into contact with the air, they have no choice but to add sulfur dioxide to the wine liquid during the winemaking process. Homebrew wine if you also add sulfur dioxide to the wine, this person's brain must be into the water, because homebrew wine is to get without any chemical additives, health, safety wine. There are a lot of home-brewed wine methods in folklore that do not use chemical additives, but because they use the wrong winemaking containers, resulting in the winemaking process, the wine will often be in contact with the air, which makes it difficult to ensure the quality of the wine. In fact, as long as every detail of the winemaking process can ensure that the wine does not come into contact with the air, you can effectively control the quality of home-brewed wine and the hygiene standards of the winemaking process.

Selecting grapes

The craft wine technology does not have excessive requirements for grape varieties, and craft wine technology believes that almost all grapes can be used to make wine, and there is no such thing as a good grape or a bad grape, but only the taste and style of wine that you prefer to make with that kind of grape. In addition to grapes, other fruits can be used to make wine, from blueberries to strawberries, lychees, even mangoes, sugar cane, apples, pineapples and so on.

When selecting grapes, in principle, you should use grapes with a high degree of ripeness. Grapes with a high degree of ripeness also have a high sugar content, which is conducive to the grapes' primary fermentation. Remove rotten, cracked, unripe grapes, clean the surface of the grapes, do not use any chemical detergent, and the surface of the grapes should not retain any residual moisture.

Three, the grapes broken skin barrel

The grapes will be squeezed one by one to break the skin into wine bottles, the grapes broken skin can be, can not break too broken. Do not fill the wine barrel too full, 80% can be, as shown in the location (see Figure 3).

Figure 3: Squeeze the grapes one by one to break the skin into the wine barrel.

There is a question that many beginner homebrewers often ask, should I add sugar to my homebrew? How much sugar should I add?

Wine made from grapes is a biochemical process of change, his principle of change is: fructose in the grapes and wine in the role of winemaking yeast into alcohol and carbon dioxide, alcohol dissolved in the liquid in the grapes into wine, carbon dioxide gas into the air. A rough calculation of the conversion of various sugars into alcohol is: in 1 liter of wine every 17 grams of sugar can be converted into 1 degree of alcohol, if you want to make more than 10 degrees of wine, each liter of wine must contain more than 170 grams of fructose and glucose in the raw material. The amount of sugar in grapes is related to the variety and maturity of grapes. If the variety of grapes is good, the sugar content is high; if the maturity of grapes is high, the sugar content is also high, and usually the sugar content of wine grapes is much higher than that of table grapes.

If grapes with very low sugar content are used for winemaking, the primary fermentation of the grapes (primary fermentation is also called alcoholic fermentation) will not be easy to start, and if the grapes are not fermented well, the wine during the fermentation process will be easily attacked by other harmful bacteria, and the wine will be easily spoiled. Therefore, sugar must be added when using grapes with low sugar content to make wine. For those who are new to homebrewing wine, you can add more sugar at the beginning of the winemaking process, and the ratio of 3 pounds of grapes to 1 pound of sugar is actually not too much, because more sugar is easier for grapes to ferment, and it is also easier to make wine. As winemaking experience continues to increase, the amount of sugar can be gradually reduced, after all, the added sugar is not as good as the fructose and glucose of the grapes themselves, and more sugar will affect the aroma and taste of the wine.

Fourth, sealed into the primary fermentation

The top of the wine barrel water seal will be filled with fresh water, covered with a water sealing cap to implement the sealing (see Figure 4) into the wine of the primary fermentation process, a few hours, the fermentation can be started.

Figure 4: Covering the water sealing cap and filling the water seal with water to seal it.

The faster the primary fermentation (i.e., alcoholic fermentation) is started, the better, preferably in the homebrewing wine equipment after sealing 1-2 hours fermentation can be started, and at the latest must be within 12 hours to start fermentation. If fermentation fails to start more than 12 hours at a time, the quality of the wine will be affected.

In order to be more conducive to the rapid fermentation of the wine, special wine yeast can be added before fermentation and more sugar can be added appropriately, but if too much winemaking yeast is added to the wine there will be a yeasty flavor, and more sugar will affect the taste and aroma of the wine, so the practice of fine wine is to start each batch of winemaking is usually fermented before the start of the first 1 barrel of wine, and then use this barrel as a primer to This is why it is common practice in fine wine making to ferment one barrel before each batch, and then use this barrel as a starter to start the fermentation of subsequent barrels. This way the wines fermented later have a better flavor because no artificial yeast is used.

The specific practice is: first ferment 1 barrel of wine, this barrel of wine to slightly more winemaking yeast and sugar, fermentation will soon be able to start. 48 hours later, the first barrel of wine has fermented very vigorously, and then use this barrel of wine as a primer to start the fermentation of 2 barrels of wine, and then every 48 hours with the previous fermentation of the wine produced by the wine as a primer for the fermentation of 2 barrels of wine (see Figure 5), and so on, so forth. The brewing process will start one after another, and you must keep a record of the brewing every day.

Figure 5: Starting the fermentation of wine barrels one after another

V. Turning over the barrels

The grapes in each barrel slowly and naturally turn into wine after a few days, and the bottom half of the bottle in Figure 6 is the wine.

Figure 6: After a few days, the grapes in the vat naturally turn into wine

Fine wine is fermented on the skins. In order to make the wine ferment better and to allow the nutrients in the skins of the grapes to be incorporated into the wine, the vats are turned over once or twice every 24 hours during the fermentation process, which is a unique technique for fine wines. Turning the barrels is to turn the special winemaking containers used in the picture above 180 degrees (i.e., head down), and each time the barrels are turned over, the barrels are turned over several times, so that the wine in the containers and the grape skins can be better blended, and the advantage of turning the barrels is that the grape skins are fully blended with the wine, but also does not let the wine come into contact with the air.

Sixth, pouring

Roughly 10 to 15 days of the wine of the end of a fermentation, to be timely pouring barrels (or called pomace separation). Decanting is the natural flow of wine liquid from the fermentation barrel to another empty barrel, where the wine will continue to undergo secondary fermentation. Figure 7 shows the wine after decanting.

Figure 7, the fermented wine should be decanted in time.

Secondary Fermentation

After the primary fermentation is finished, the skins and dregs will be separated in time, and then the liquid wine will be filled into another clean and empty barrel, and the wine will undergo secondary fermentation in the new barrel. Secondary fermentation, also known as malolactic fermentation, is the gradual conversion of the malic acid in the wine to lactic acid, a process that takes from 1-18 months depending on the winemaker's discretion.

Because the secondary fermentation has very strict requirements on the winemaking environment, the containers used for the secondary fermentation, and the temperature control of the fermentation environment, the secondary fermentation is a much more demanding job for the winemaking technology. Otherwise, the secondary fermentation wine will not only fail to achieve the expected results, but also with the increase of time, the wine will be more and more bad.

Figure 8, Place the secondary fermented wine in the upper part of the grid for storage

The wine wine which undergoes secondary fermentation must be aged in full barrels, and more on secondary fermentation will be published in the offering stage of craft wine technology.

In this way, all the homebrewed wines were converted to secondary fermentation one after another, filling 1 whole wine cabinet. See Figure 9

Figure 9, the primary fermentation of the wine brewed one after another to the second fermentation

Eight, other

The fermentation barrel will be residual grape skins, seeds poured out, cleaned and then continue to brew the next batch of wine. In addition to grapes, there are many other fruits that can be used to make wine using craft brewing techniques, from green plums to strawberries, lychees, pineapples, and even mangoes, sugarcane, apples, and citrus can be used to make fruit wine.

Fine-brewed wine, each grape is carefully selected, absolutely no chemical additives are used, and the entire winemaking process wine does not have contact with the air, so fine-brewed wine is the safest and healthiest all-natural health drink.

Figure 10: If you drink it yourself, you don't need to bottle it again, you can just put it out of the faucet.

Figure 11: If you are giving it to a friend, it looks better in a bottle.

Fine-brewed wine, every grape is carefully selected, every detail of the winemaking has stood the test, absolutely no use of any chemical additives, do not pursue the number of production, to ensure that every bottle is a good wine. Fine wine is more integrated into the winemaker's heart, like a noble and respected work of art. It reflects the winemaker's respect and love for wine, and achieves the unique taste and quality of fine wine.

Fine-brewed wine needs to be improved through constant and repeated practice, learning, summarizing and accumulating experience. 您还可以通过hunterxu53@163.com邮箱来咨询和获取更多的有关自酿葡萄酒资料, you can also take photos or videos of your winemaking process and send them to the above email address, and we will answer all the questions you encounter in the winemaking process in real time.