Wine Home Brew Step by Step with Pics - Pinot Noir Phase 2

We have waiting for the fermentation to stop and are ready to proceed forward with our Pinot Noir!

We got a chance to taste our wine at this point and I have to say it is definately sweeter than we expected...the wine isnt done so the flavor will still change, but not too much. The chart told us that 8 cups of sugar would give us a semi-dry wine...I personally wouldnt classify this in the "semi-dry" category. It taste a lot sweeter than we expected. We are still happy with it because it is nice to have some sweet wine around but if you dont like sweet wine, be sure to go with less than 8 cups of sugar!

We already completed Steps 1-10 and are ready to start steps 11-12.
(alot of my pictures for this phase didnt turn out very good so we have limited pictures for the steps)
Step 11: After Fermentation is complete (approx 2 months). Dissolve acid package in 1/2 cup warm water and add to clean pail.

Step 12: Siphon wine out of carboy into pail containing acid solution. Take care not to transfer sediment off the bottom of carboy. (Our first batch of wine we did we did not follow this caution too well....it is really sad to work hard for several months on a batch of wine and then have a small layer of sediment at the bottom of every bottle :( SO we racked ours with a funnel and cloth that served as a filter just in case we picked up some sediment)


Step 13: Add potatssium sorbate to 1/2 cup warm water. Add to pail of wine.

Step 14: Clean out Carboy, siphon wine from pail into clean carboy making sure not to aerate. Wine should take about 3 more weeks to clear on its own. If you want your wine sooner than natural clearing process use SuperKleer fining agent at this time. (We did not use super kleer on our last batch of wine and thought it would be fun to give it a try just to see what all the hype is about...it was actually really impressive!)
For 25-30% greater flavor and some sweetness, add one pint extra concentrate at this time. Dissolve into wine. If wine is to dry oyu could use sugar to sweeten at this time. (We did purchase the extra pint of concentrate but we actually considered not adding it because our wine was pretty sweet...but we figured we already had the concentrate so we might as well add it instead of waste it!)

Step 15: When wine is totally clean (2-3 days with Super Kleer or 2-3 weeks without), siphon off any remaining sediment into clean pail.

Step 16: Degas wine by stirring vigorously.

Step 17: Prepare bottles by cleaning with One Step. Soak corks in sulphited solution, 1/2 teaspoon per gallon of water for 2 hours.

Step 18: Fill bottles using bottle filler.

Step 19: Cork them using cork driver. (We also apply colored wine bottle sealers so we can tell our various wines apart. We wanted to make labels, but after cleaning the labels off of so many different bottles we opted out of dealing with labels!!)

Step 20: Allow bottles to age 2 months if possible before consuming.

From this set we got 23 bottles of wine. We tasted it and it is pretty sweet...alot sweeter than what we thought. However, it still tastes fantastic! We used 8 lbs of sugar to get a semi-dry wine but as sweet as it is we decided to go with 6 lbs of sugar from now on to get a dryer wine. It really was a lot of fun being able to customize this wine!! Im excitted to wait a couple months and try it again...it gets better and better with age.
Since we had all the wine equipment out and sterilized we decided to start right in on the second set of wine we got from Home Winery Supply. The second set we got was the Sangiovese....more details to come :) Sangiovese is one of my favorite wines so I am really excited about this one!!