Bust'n Out the Vieux Chateau Du Roi

While making these bottles of wine we have been alternating red and white wines. But that has been ruined and now two reds have been done consecutively. i've never had this grape before but i'm sure it can't be that bad. i mean, with a fancy name with that it has to be good. Right?

Mixing the benonite i used the fancy degasser. Made the job a million times easier. Well, taking pictures while stirring was still kind of a challenge.
i sprinkled the yeast in and put the lid on. Though when i put the air lock on top i pushed the seal through the lid so there was a leak that i was unaware of until a couple hours later...but now everything is good and its bubbling.
How could i forget brent, oh yeah...because he slept the whole time while i was starting the wine process. He snores too. i woke him up with the degasser, so that made up for it. The degasser has so many uses...

The Mix-Stir

i finally gave in. i told myself i didn't need to buy a fancy stirrer for mixing the wine and that if i need one i could make my own and attach it to an electric drill, but alas i am lazy son and i never got around to doing it. As a stirrer i've been using this glass rod from the siphon, which probably is not that safe.

While on a run to the post office, we stopped by the Brew Store and picked up this bad boy, the Mix-Stir. i'll be able to see it in action tomorrow, if the fermentation is done, when i add the fining agents to the wine and to degas it as well. i'll just attach this bad boy to a drill and BAM! Instant whirlpool of wine.

Here is a pick of the instructions and the Mix-Stir in action...i'm almost excited to use it.

Racked The Merlot

Six days have passed since i started the primary fermentation of the Merlot and was time to rack it into the carboy. No one was around today so i had to do everything myself but it wasn't that big of a deal. Probably could have racked the wine the day before but i got home late and i was too tired to do anything other than sleep.

First thing i did was take a specific gravity reading. It was 0.992, which is kind of low and probably won't get any lower as the yeast has probably killed itself off from all the alcohol it has produced. Not sure if its a big deal how fast the yeast does its thing, i guess i'll find out in 4 months when its ready to drink.


i can't stand cleaning everything, i wish i could just befriend someone that just likes to clean and invite them over when i need the wine junx cleaned. Alas, i haven't found anyone yet...Oh well, now just another 11 days until the clearing chemicals are put in. Woot.

The Merlot

Since the Shiraz that i brewed is ready to drink it won't be long until we give away those bottle or consume so might as well start another batch of red to add to the 'wine cellar'. This time we decided to do something boring and make a batch of Merlot.

Brent messaged me and told me he would be over so i would have some help making the junx. Which is always a good thing...its kind of boring if you do everything by yourself. Plus it lets me take these sweet action wine making shots.

Here brent is rinsing the juice bag with some water to get as much juice into the primary fermenter as possible.

Topping up the bucket to the fill line...Here brent is trying to be funny and look like he's taking a sip of the juice. But when he up the spoon down some juice actually splashed in his mouth and he then had a sour look on his face...jokes on him.Here he have just added the yeast and put the bucket in the warmest room in the house to help the yeast do its thing.The specific gravity of this batch was 1.080. i found a website that will convert your first and final SG reading to the alcohol by volume. Of course i have no idea how accurate it is. They site gave me totally different values than the ones that i calculated. Whatever, as long as i get a buzz with my meal.

i miss calculated the number of days that the wine will be fermenting and turns out i won't be around to further the wine process when it needs to so it'll ferment for an extra week before i come back. Oh well, the reds have been fermenting slowing anyway, might do it a little good.

After the wine was all done and i cleaned a few things brent said he was going to bounce. What?? You can't just wine and dash in this house. We decided to watch a movie. i was even kind enough to nuke brent some hot dogs. The movie of choice was Grindhouse Death Proof. It was a pretty ridiculous movie. Of course with Quentin Tarantino being the directore there were several references to Pulp Fiction. Brent can't be away from a computer for more than 5 minutes so during the whole movie he was typing away on his eeepc. Its no power house pc but for the price and its size its a good second laptop to carry around. Overall Death Proof was a good movie. Now i'll have to watch Planet Terror just so i can say i watched Grindhouse.

The Cellar

Well three days have passed since Brent and i have bottled the Pinot Blanc and it was time to store the bottles on their sides in the wine rack. Looks pretty fancy if you as me when the rack is mostly filled up. The wine in the right most columns are read to drink. So far i have about 96 bottles of wine. My dad said something about buying another rack to stack on top of this one...if only the wine tasted good it might be worth it.

i was bored and though i'd color the white walls purple...

Bottled the Pinot Blanc

The time has finally come to bottle the Pinot Blanc. Before the bottling had to stop over at the Home Brew store to pick up some bottles and the floor corker. i'll never use the hand corker again, even though it can cork a little bit better than the floor one, the floor one is a million times faster. Plus its free to rent the floor corker from the Home Brew store.

Had an assembling line going to clean the bottles, i filled a tub in the sink with water and the cleaning solution and then rinsed all the bottles and brent dried them. Before bottling, we racked the wine into a 3 gallon carboy again to add the blueberry flavoring. The bottle the flavoring came in says you just need to pour a couple ounces into 3 gallons of wine to flavor it but i don't think that's enough to change the flavor...i guess i'll find out in a couple months.Here is brent showing off the clean bottles...what a dork.
We actually ran out of bottles. We bought 24 today thinking there were some empty bottles around the house somewhere but i could only find four when we need maybe one or two more than that. Oh well, no big deal...i guess 28 bottles will do. i had a sample of the wine, it wasn't horrible but should definitely sit in the bottles for a good two to three months.

Here is a blurry picture of brent corking the last green bottle....

Clearing the Pino

Time for the fun chemicals to be added to the Pino Blanc. The specific gravity was 0.993. Probably will only get 11% alcohol with this batch. While mixing the chemicals and junx there was a lot of CO2 coming off, a lot more than the other batches. But i'm not bottling anytime soon so i won't have to worry about making champagne or explosive bottles of wine.

This one kid i know was bottling beer with his dad. They ran out of beer bottles so they decided to use Appletise (best apple soda ever) bottles. When he was putting the bottles in the fridge, the Appletise bottle exploded and a shard of glass went through his lip and chipped his tooth. Now that sounds horrible, but it was also two days before the Dive Trip to the Red Sea so he missed that...lemon.

Anyway, had manthan over to help out with the mixing. We're heading to Stowe, VT today. Should be a fun 8 hour bus ride...at least this time i'll be able to drink on the bus, woot!

Pinot Blanc'n It Up

Five days in the primary fermenter and time to rack into the carboy. The specific gravity this time was 1.004. Pretty good to see, plus the thing just reeked of yeast and CO2 and whatever else is produced kicking my nostrils in the nuts.

Woot, just 26 days until bottling now! Ugh that seems like a long time. i'll probably have to buy another wine rack if another batch is done.

i'm waiting for the day i really half-ass the cleaning and some bacteria just ruins my wine and turns it into vinegar. Thankfully that hasn't happened yet. i really do hate cleaning everything but looks like i've been doing a good job so far. Well, i guess i'll just have to taste the wine to really know.

Pinot Blanc!

Had another box of juice lying around and decided to start its brewing process. This time the grape is Pinot Blanc. Not sure where these grapes are from, i'm too lazy to look but it will probably be a dry white wine.

The previous grape juice boxes were 3 gallons that produced 6 gallons of wine. But this box is only 2 gallons but says it still produces 6 gallons of wine. Must be really concentrated stuff.

Brent was over again to help out. He was dressed pretty fancy. Had his shirt tucked in too! Which has been unseen for years.
This batch went really fast in setting up since there were only 2 gallons to poor in the primary fermenter and there were no elder flowers or oak chips to add to the wine. Plus i'm pretty much a wine making pro now which can just be seen my my sweet stirring abilities. i'm like a human blender. i'm pretty much a big deal when it comes to stirring, not anyone can pick up a spoon and make a vortex of juice in seconds.
Brent spent most of his time on his lame HP laptop. Did some stuff for work since he got out early because of the ridiculous freezing rain we've been getting. i guess he didn't really do anything, oh wait...i asked him to get the air lock for the primary filter but he dropped one of the pieces and spent 5 minutes looking for it in the kitchen.
Evenly sprinkled the yeast on top and wait. Ugh, posting about all these wines have gotten pretty boring...i need to spice them up a bit. Maybe implement a German light show while brewing. Get some blow your socks off wine making like you never seen before. That would do it, with some glow sticks and smoke machines. Throw in some lasers and strobes...possibilities are endless.

Essential Oils

Time to bottle the Cabernet. Well, its actually two days early...but i was impatient and already rented a corker from the store for 24 hours. No more of this silly red plastic wannabe corker that is advertised to only need one person to operate when really it takes 2 to 3 people.

i have to admit i was pretty excited to use this huge thing. It has a spring on the base to hold the bottle against the cork and locks in place when the handle is pressed down. You can also adjust how deep you want to push the cork in. Pretty sweet. i might even buy one. i guess i really shouldn't because you can rent them for free, but you have to return them the next day and that is just more gas money...

Well, i'm no math major...but if the distance to the store is 7.2 miles, and my car gets 24 mpg, and gas prices are 2.80 bones per gallon...it would cost me 84 cents one way...$1.68 there and back...it costs 56 bones to buy a corker...so i'm looking at 33 trips to the store to make the investment worth it...and that's not even taking in a count of how much my times is worth! I'm going to to say my time is worth 33 cents per minute...and the time to the store and back is 32 minutes..that's 10.56 plus the 1.68...$12.24, divide and round up. 5 trips break even. : P

And i have just done a math problem equivalent to problems done by 6th graders...woot.
Here are the bottles, decided to go all green this time. Oh and one blue bottle because the store left a bottle out of a box the last time...
Its kind of boring making 30 bottles of the same flavor. Here is a bottle of crazy blueberry flavoring we added to 3 gallons of the wine. Pretty lame i know, but can't really ruin the wine doing it this way.

Cleaned the bottles...

Here is the wine and the new 3 gallon carboy, kind of looks like a glass grenade...i got cousin brent to come over again to help bottle. But once we started to bottle he broke out his work laptop and tried starting a VPN to his work...no reason, just because he could...lame.

Racked the wine into the 3 gallon carboy so we could mix the blueberry flavoring without stirring up any sediment.
Filled up the bottles, and corked them in no time. So much better than that other corker. Didn't figure out that you could adjust the cork dept until the second bottle, so the cork is like a half inch in the bottle...
i believe there is another another box of concentrated grape juice waiting to be started around here. At the home brew store i saw that they have stills for sale. But not to be used to make alcohol because that's illegal. Only used to make essential oils and to distill your own water...but its like 450 bones for a still..i didn't even see if it was a reflux one..if it was then maybe it might be a good investment...but i know i could find them or make a better one for less. Some day, i'll make some sweet essential oils...and get crunked.

Finishing the Wine Rack

Sure enough, my uncles were up at early this morning and finished painting the rack. There wasn't too much to do but they touched up on some spots that they had missed the day before. The paint can said to wait 6 hours for it to dry before doing anything with the wood...but i believe i only waited 5 hours.


For some reason i thought it was a good idea to assemble it myself. It was pretty tough attaching the shelves to the cross pieces...i ended up getting a vice and squeezing them together with that because the pieces barely fit together. Of course when i'm 1/4 into assembling the wine rack i realize i used the wrong cross pieces for the top and had to take it all a part. Luckily i didn't screw anything together yet.

Back to square one.

Didn't take me too long to get the right pieces together since some of the varnish had been scrapped off from the first attempt.i then asked my dad for a little help screwing all the pieces together, but as soon as my dad came to help...so did my mom's youngest brother. Then after a few minutes my mom's other brother comes down to help. It was a little confusing because my uncles would ask me something and i would just look at them blankly...and in the event that i did have an idea of what they were saying...i had no idea how to answer them. So with the three of them working on the wine rack i then got the role of a supervisor/camera man. i never really liked using a screw driver anyway so it all worked out for the better.
While they were doing all the hard stuff, i decided to clear out the closet to make some room for the shelf. Of course the floor isn't level nor the rack itself so a piece of cardboard was wedged under the left corner to level it out a little bit.
After everyone left, i was left to put the bottles in the rack. For some reason i thought it would look more full. Or maybe more empty...and now i know why, the rack is suppose to hold 110 bottles, but looking at it right now...it can only hold 100...because i put it together upside down....@#$#@&)$@ Great...i guess i have another project to do for tomorrow...stupid directions not directing what goes where...

Something Different

The first batch of wine i made i labeled with these silly Avery labels that are suppose to be used for envelopes or folders. Then i got those printed labels from the wine store but they were kind of boring and its a pain to put them back in the printer to print the date and alcohol on them, but i might use a few of them for some of the bottles.

i searched around for a bit looking for ideas on how to label the bottles. At the wine store they have some programs and special paper...but its like 60 bones and just adds to my costs. i then found this one website where they mentioned to just print your own labels with some crazy software (which i don't have) and use rubber cement to stick it to the bottle and with a little bit of warm water it will come right off. There is also some spray you can get at a craft store to spray the labels so that the ink doesn't run when it gets wet. But hairspray works just as well so i'm just going to use that.

For a trial run i made a really crappy label, and since i only have 2 different colored sleeves...nothing really matches. Looks like this is the way i'm going to do it. i just have to make a nice label now.

Mmmm, Sorbate De Potassium...

i forgot to check the gravity yesterday, so it sat in the carboy for an extra day doing nothing. But today i remembered to check it and it was 0.991 again. Time to add the delicious sorbate de potassium, metabisulfite de potassium, and weird goo of shellfish shell...

Once everything is dissolved, you have to make the wine is stirred well and drive off any CO2 that may be lingering. i stirred it for an extra two minutes, mostly because i forgot to watch the time...and it was cool to see the wine swirl around...Now just have to wait another 14 days for it to clear before bottling.

Silly Cabernet

Well its been 10 days since i racked the Cabernet into the carboy. It was time to take another reading. The specific gravity was about 0.991. 10 days ago it was 0.992...looks like the yeast didn't do much in the carboy. i probably could have started the clearing process early but i guess i'll just do it by the books.

i'll check the specific gravity again tomorrow and if its the same its time for all the sulphites and shellfish liquid junx. Then wait 14 days for it to clear before bottling. We're going to try something different with this batch. My dad picked up some blueberry flavoring, and we'll just bottle half of the Cabernet, and then add the flavoring to the second half before bottling it. Hopefully doesn't ruin half our batch of wine. We were going to use real blueberries but apparently you have to also filter your wine...and when you filter you also get a lot of oxygen in your wine and sets it up to just taste nasty after a few months.

Also purchased a wine rack, it holds 110 bottles. Should come in on Thursday. Its made out of Fir wood, we'll probably seal it and stain it with something so it looks nicer and help the wood last longer. Right now we still only have 48 bottles of wine, and with this next batch we'll have 78....of course we'll consume some of the Shiraz so it'll probably take another two batches to fill that rack up.

The Cabernet

Left the wine in the primary fermenter for a day longer than it needed to, 6 instead of 5. The specific gravity was well below 1.010 but that should be alright. Racked the wine into carboy and put the bung and airlock on top. Should set for another 10 days before adding the sulfite and potassium to stabilize it.

Not sure what i'm going to do for labels, don't feel like dishing out 50 bones for some silly software that probably is a hassle to get the what you want.
Took too long to rack with it on the chair, didn't take that long with the other wines...so we moved it to the floor...