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???
Thanks again for visiting and watching, leave us a comment :-)
This wine looks like it will have a good thick body which will add to the experience of drinking it. I am intrigued with the matter of adding grapes like that. Hopefully they won’t interfere with the siphoning process. Probably they didn’t have you cut them initially because it would make it too hard to ‘harvest’ them later. This way, they floated but they may not have totally floated otherwise.
— Harry Hebert Mar 30 #
That amarone is looking good. We’ve yet to try one but it’s on our wish list. Keep up the good work.
— Darren and Laura Apr 2 #
Nice job! Did you guys have any Amarone while in Italy?
— Juan Carlos Apr 20 #
Hey looking forward to the next episode. Have you done anything else with the strawberry or blackberry wine. I was thinking about trying dandelion. Might be interesting experiment.
— Randy Apr 22 #