25 March 2008
[Epi 22] TintoTV - fermenting Amarone at home
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In this episode we follow up on the days after pitching the yeast to the Corvina-dominant juice in our primary fermenter; this Amarone from Mosti Mondiale is quite aromatic, I can’t wait to try it out when this wine is peaking (though that is far away). When we initially pitched the yeast, the ambient temperature was relatively low, around 65 deg F or lower. Slower fizzing did start, but I was worried that the fermentation would become “stuck”. To prevent that, Stephany and I turned on the heater, raised the ambient temperature to about 72 deg F, and in a matter of hours, we had some serious fizzing and foaming!
We’ve heard from other home winemakers that their primary fermentation buckets were overflowing with foam; luckily, that didn’t happen to us, and I think that low-foaming is a perk of the EC-1118 yeast used in this batch (in addition to the higher alcohol tolerance, appropriate for the Amarone).
One of the key steps and parts of this particular primary fermentation is the red raisins included in the wine-kit. One pound was included and it was pre-sulphited in its packaging, which means we didn’t have to sanitize the raisins before adding. Raisins will add body and mouth-feel to the wine while also raising your alcohol percentage by about 1%. I’ve heard some practices where it is recommended to cut open the raisins before adding, but since our instructions didn’t include that step, we decided to play it by the guidelines this time. In a future batch, we may cut open the raisins to see if this extra access granted to the yeast changes anything in the flavor profile. You’ll see that with the Amarone, the raisins become very big and plump, as if they reverted back to grapes! You won’t see it in this video, but in the next one, we have to squeeze out all the juice from these plump raisins, so that may have a similar effect as cutting the raisins open. Commenters???
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