california connoisseur cabernet sauvignon 30 bottle 7.5l pack

old_git · Aug 27, 2016

Hi home brewers,

Started this wine yesterday (26th August) and pitched yeast yesterday at around 9am. I rehydrated the yeast in water about 26degrees as ambient temps were around that in my flat (this heat has been too much - it was 32 in the sun with high humidity) as was the water, drawn the night before standing at 15 litres. I calculated the remaining plus any rinse water from the weight of the pack.

Sadly I managed to spill about 50cl of concentrate when attempting to open the cap (note to newcomers to this range - they just pop off with appropriate pulling force so prepare the recoil) but after taking a hydro reading I measured 1.082 which is within range for the kit (whew)

Its now been going well since about 20 hours after pitching when the yeast poked up. Will let you know how the wine develops through secondary and degassing, plus campden additions.

I had a sneaky taste with the hydro reading, the cab sauv grape concentrate is lovely! I'd just drunk some vitafit grape juice fron lidl the night before and despite its qualities as a drinking juice, the flavour of the cab sauv far surpasses the store bought juice. Just so you know, these packs have been made well - at least from my humble opinion at the start.

Updates to follow but - slowly, slowly ' as wine making often is

chewie · Aug 27, 2016

I've made a couple of the CC wine kits, by far the best way to open the concentrate bag is to use the back of a blunt kitchen knife to pop the top of whilst it is sitting on a worktop/bench, i would certainly not recommend trying to open it by sheer force of pulling on it.

nigelnorris · Aug 28, 2016

Same here, I've made zillions of CC kits and a twist under the cap with a soft edge will get it off no issue. Your temps will be ok, if it gets any hotter the yeast used will stop at about 30C, but it starts again once the temperature drops.

old_git · Aug 28, 2016

Cheers chewie and nigelnorris,

Good thing this wine yeast handles higher temps - it goes like the clappers :-) I just had a look and the temperature strip was reading 30 degrees - that's on the outside of the vessel with ambient temperatures around 20c! The centre must be a few degrees warmer. I placed my hands around the vessel and the warmth of the must was incredible (as is the fizzing and bubbling action)

I figured a wet blanket and a fan might assist so used it for half an hour and dropped temps back to 26c. It will get hotter later so might need to do it again. This is only the second day of active fermentation after all.

Read about the effects of temp on the finished wine's flavour. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the higher the fermentation temperature, the less fruity the finished wine is. I want to keep it around 29 in the core to ferment a dry, less fruity red.

BeerCat · Aug 28, 2016

Best of luck. Interested to know how this goes as been wanting to do a kit for ages. After reading this i realised my Mead is in the airing cupboard and way too hot. Good job wine doesn't suffer from heat like beer does.

old_git · Aug 29, 2016

Cheers BeerCat. I'll keep this thread updated as progress is made - along with tasting notes. As I go through it I'll add as much technical information as I can.

You're quite right about temperature and beer. It's been far too hot to brew anything but a saison recently (or red wine) As far as I know, white wines and ciders should be fermented cool, along with lagers, while ale can be warmer but not higher than 22 c if you can help it. Temperature is a big part of the puzzle as yeasts produce/retain certain flavours based on the yeast type and its temp range. Mead is something I know very little about however!

Best of luck with your all-grain brewing! I haven't got that far yet.

Cheers,

Og

old_git · Sep 10, 2016

I racked the wine off the lees yesterday after 2 weeks primary fermentation (I didn't follow the instructions) but there was no need for secondary as the sg was 0.992! It fermented out dry at around 11.8% ABV.

There was not much fizzing/carbonation left but I degassed it after siphoning it into a new clean bucket with a campden addition and I did add keiselsol (silica dioxide) as a positively charged fining. I'll add chitosan next, maybe tonight - maybe tomorrow.

I'd like to say, it tastes brilliant. Although it does not have any fining agents to clear the small particles it still tastes miles better than a supermarket wine (I followed it with some tempranillo - mine was superior despite it being so young) I'm well impressed and I have 5 gallons here to bulk age in 1 gallon demijohns I have :-) not sure how many I will be able to put through the full aging process as dinner guests etc may well snag my plans. Just as well I just ordered a californian red to start after this one is through. Being a lighter wine it should require less aging, which will leave more of the cab sauv for later.

california connoisseur cabernet sauvignon 30 bottle 7.5l pack

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