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El Draco

trainee
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Nov 6, 2013
Messages
134
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Location
near Mansfield
Being a novice brewer, the better half gave me a nice prezzie today.. cjj berrys first steps to winemaking :party: i'm going with that was nice of her instead of she doesnt want poisoning :lol:

Ive found it quite interesting and explained certain aspects to me i never thought of..
Any other good books to browse through or doesnt it really matter?
 
Just be warned, a few of his recipes are a bit heavy on the sugar.
Always do a sanity check: rule of thumb, 20g/l=1% aka 100g/l=5% aka 1lb/gallon=5%

Haven't used many of the recipes directly, but for sheer enthusiasm I love Leon Kania's "Alaskan Bootleggers Bible". Covers wine beer and more.
 
oldbloke said:
Just be warned, a few of his recipes are a bit heavy on the sugar.
Always do a sanity check: rule of thumb, 20g/l=1% aka 100g/l=5% aka 1lb/gallon=5%

Haven't used many of the recipes directly, but for sheer enthusiasm I love Leon Kania's "Alaskan Bootleggers Bible". Covers wine beer and more.
Click to expand...

yeah? id noticed on some recipes in the book were more sugar than what ive seen on here... i might have a bash at the plum wine
 
I was visiting an elderly reatives at the weekend and she showed me an old cookbook. It wasn't dated by the publisher but did have a handwritten inscription dated 1914 when it was given as a gift.

There was a whole section on country wines which was very interesting although I wasn't able to read it fully (I'll get that book out again when I next visit).

I was surprised at how detailed the knowlege on country wines was back in 1914, the different kinds of acids in different friuts was discussed.

There was one paragraph that stated foreign wines were totally out of the reach of poor people!

Not much help on your post but quite interesting.
 
It would seem that the author of 'First Steps' had a preference for sweet wines, and apart from that, the recipes are primitive, but I still use the book as a basic reference. A far better book is 'Winemaking in Style' by Gerry Fowles, published in 1992. That was over 20 years ago. A more recent book, 2099, is 'Award Winning Wines', by Bill Smith, is worth having, but even that is 14 years old.
I used to write technical books which never got published because they were out of date before they were finished, but at least they were based on direct experience rather than borrowed info.
That's the beauty of this forum. Ask the right question and you will get honest answers based on experience, including, 'I have no idea!', plus experiments which may never have been tried, and the results.
 
tonyhibbett said:
It would seem that the author of 'First Steps' had a preference for sweet wines, and apart from that, the recipes are primitive, but I still use the book as a basic reference. A far better book is 'Winemaking in Style' by Gerry Fowles, published in 1992. That was over 20 years ago. A more recent book, 2099, is 'Award Winning Wines', by Bill Smith, is worth having, but even that is 14 years old.
I used to write technical books which never got published because they were out of date before they were finished, but at least they were based on direct experience rather than borrowed info.
That's the beauty of this forum. Ask the right question and you will get honest answers based on experience, including, 'I have no idea!', plus experiments which may never have been tried, and the results.
Click to expand...


yeah.. ive been browsing the forum for techniques and recipes etc... real life ppl who have brewed :) it is interesting to read older recipes and seeing whats changed with upto date ingredients etc
 
130 new wine making recipes by CJJB is as good as First Steps, with great little comics in it as well, but doesn't have the indepth bit before. Booze for Free by Andy Hamilton is a good one for foraging and brewing, though a few bits in his recipes are slightly ambiguous for a new brewer (talking from experience). Making Wines Like Those You Buy by Bryan Acton and Peter Duncan is a brilliant one if you ewant to put a bit more effort and cash in but getting a country wine that tastes like the real thing (or so one sherry tasting said to me).
 
I tried a few of the Acton & Duncan recipes and the results were all good, but most require unrealistically expensive quantities. Opening a page at random: 10 pounds of peaches, 10 of ripe gooseberries, 9 of bananas, 2 of raisins and 3 pints of white grape juice concentrate, plus sugar,1 ounce of tartaric acid, 1 ounce of pectolase, yeast and nutrient. Cask maturing recommended. The cask alone would cost £90. One wonders how many of these recipes they actually personally followed and left for years in oak casks. There are 30 recipes for 4.5 gallon brews, requiring 2 years or more maturation in oak casks, involving vast amounts of ingredients. To say the least, it stretches credibility.
 
tonyhibbett said:
I tried a few of the Acton & Duncan recipes and the results were all good, but most require unrealistically expensive quantities. Opening a page at random: 10 pounds of peaches, 10 of ripe gooseberries, 9 of bananas, 2 of raisins and 3 pints of white grape juice concentrate, plus sugar,1 ounce of tartaric acid, 1 ounce of pectolase, yeast and nutrient. Cask maturing recommended. The cask alone would cost £90. One wonders how many of these recipes they actually personally followed and left for years in oak casks. There are 30 recipes for 4.5 gallon brews, requiring 2 years or more maturation in oak casks, involving vast amounts of ingredients. To say the least, it stretches credibility.
Click to expand...
That would be for a 5 gallon batch. The Sherry recipe I used was about 2 parsnips, 8 apples and a bag of raisins for 1 gallon. To be fair you kind of guess that it's going to be more expensive to make something more similar to the "real thing"
 
ive just started a gallon of wow original and plan to do some more in my novitiate stage :)
Im thinking of doing 4 gallon in my 5 gallon formentor so would i need to just times the ingredients by 4 then?
 
El Draco said:
ive just started a gallon of wow original and plan to do some more in my novitiate stage :)
Im thinking of doing 4 gallon in my 5 gallon formentor so would i need to just times the ingredients by 4 then?
Click to expand...
Yes, except for the yeast, a 5 gram sachet of yeast will do for any volume.
 
Brewtrog said:
El Draco said:
ive just started a gallon of wow original and plan to do some more in my novitiate stage :)
Im thinking of doing 4 gallon in my 5 gallon formentor so would i need to just times the ingredients by 4 then?
Click to expand...
Yes, except for the yeast, a 5 gram sachet of yeast will do for any volume.
Click to expand...

yeah? how come it works that way? :wha:
 
The first thing yeast does is grow more yeast. It need oxygen for this, which is why we aerate the wort.
The oxygen is proportional to the volume so the yeast colony automatically grow to pretty much the right size.
You _can_ underpitch though - a standard sachet would be a bit small for a batch of much more than 5 gallons.
Larger scale brewers put some effort into determining the ideal amount to pitch.
Overpitching isn't such a big deal - just a bit wasteful, though just maybe the ferment may proceed rather quickly which may not always give the optimum flavour.
 
oldbloke said:
The first thing yeast does is grow more yeast. It need oxygen for this, which is why we aerate the wort.
The oxygen is proportional to the volume so the yeast colony automatically grow to pretty much the right size.
You _can_ underpitch though - a standard sachet would be a bit small for a batch of much more than 5 gallons.
Larger scale brewers put some effort into determining the ideal amount to pitch.
Overpitching isn't such a big deal - just a bit wasteful, though just maybe the ferment may proceed rather quickly which may not always give the optimum flavour.
Click to expand...

learn something new everyday :) Im assuming that a 5g packet of yeast is a teaspoon then?
 
El Draco said:
Im assuming that a 5g packet of yeast is a teaspoon then?
Click to expand...

Uh, dunno. I mostly use various Gervin wine yeasts and Young's cider yeast, and when I open them they look like a bit much to fit a teaspoon, but I've never actually tried it. A teaspoon of water (at standard temperature and pressure) is 5gm, I think yeast is less dense, so bigger.

But it works like this:
If you're making 5 gallons or less, one sachet is fine; if you're making more, you might want to build that sachet up a bit by making a starter before you pitch it.
If you're only doing a gallon (not uncommon with, say, country wine), half a sachet or even a third is enough, but since you have to open it anyway - start 2 or 3 wines/ciders/whatever at once and split the sachet across them.
You could divide up the yeast and reseal and store what you don't need, but there's a slight risk of it not keeping well.
 
El Draco said:
oldbloke said:
The first thing yeast does is grow more yeast. It need oxygen for this, which is why we aerate the wort.
The oxygen is proportional to the volume so the yeast colony automatically grow to pretty much the right size.
You _can_ underpitch though - a standard sachet would be a bit small for a batch of much more than 5 gallons.
Larger scale brewers put some effort into determining the ideal amount to pitch.
Overpitching isn't such a big deal - just a bit wasteful, though just maybe the ferment may proceed rather quickly which may not always give the optimum flavour.
Click to expand...

learn something new everyday :) Im assuming that a 5g packet of yeast is a teaspoon then?
Click to expand...

a heaped one, roughly. :thumb:
 
A vineyard or orchard builds up colonies of yeast with it's own characteristics. I brew so much at home, that the air is full of yeast spores. I made a stock from chicken bones and leftover vegetables from a Sunday lunch on Monday with a view to making a risotto on Tuesday, by which time it had started fermenting! Most people would have thrown it away, but I used the liquid and made a delicious risotto.
I once adapted a recipe for cock ale to make chicken wine, which included bits of cooked chicken carcass, which turned out well, and I also have a recipe, as yet untried, for a wine which includes onions, which is intended for cooking, rather than drinking.
 
El Draco said:
Im assuming that a 5g packet of yeast is a teaspoon then?
Click to expand...
Teaspoons are **** measures of weight, yeah a (measured) teaspoon should always be 5ml and often that also works out as 5g, but that isn't always the case, for example a teaspoon of lead would weigh a lot more than 5g, whereas a teaspoon of coffee whitener would probably weigh less than 5g. Both would be 5ml though. So saying a tsp of yeast is about the right quantity if you're using a tub of yeast.
 

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