ART
BEAUTY & WELLNESS
CRAFT
CULTURE & HISTORY
ENTERTAINMENT
ENVIRONMENT
FOOD & DRINKS
REVERSE ENGINEERING
SCIENCES
SPORTS
TECHNOLOGY
WEARABLES
Red Wine: Dark Grapes Fermented on Their Skins
Red wine gets its colour from the skins: dark grapes are destemmed, lightly crushed and fermented with their skins, the floating cap pushed back down several times a day, at about 25–35 °C. Near the end the wine is pressed off the skins, left to finish (the malolactic change), and racked off its lees.
The picture: a glass of red wine (photo by Sam Howzit, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0).
Intermediate
Weeks
Instructions
1
1
Destem and crush
Destem and crush
Pull the dark grapes off their stems (stems make it bitter) and crush them lightly. Skins, juice and seeds together are the must.
Materials for this step:
Ripe Wine Grapes10 kgTools needed:
Fermenting Bucket
Potato Masher
Digital Kitchen Scale2
2
Ferment on the skins
Ferment on the skins
Cover and let the yeast on the skins start it. The skins rise as a cap: punch it down into the juice several times a day.
Tools needed:
Fermenting Bucket
Wooden Paddle3
3
Watch heat and sugar
Watch heat and sugar
Keep it at 25–28 °C for a fruity wine or 28–35 °C for a firmer one, never over 40 °C. Check temperature and density once or twice a day; density falls as the sugar goes.
Tools needed:
Thermometer
Hydrometer4
4
Press
Press
Near the end of fermentation, run off the free wine and press the skins for the rest.
Tools needed:
Wine PressFermenting Bucket5
5
Finish and rack
Finish and rack
Let it finish under an airlock while the malic acid turns to lactic. Then siphon it off its lees into a clean vessel.
Tools needed:
Carboy
Airlock
Racking CaneMaterials
1- 10 kgPlaceholder
Tools Required
10- Placeholder
- Placeholder
- Placeholder
- Placeholder
- Placeholder
- Placeholder
- Placeholder
- Placeholder
- Placeholder
- Placeholder
This blueprint makes
Related Blueprints
These blueprints share knowledge with this one — techniques, materials, or principles that connect them in the learning graph.
CC0 Public Domain
This blueprint is released under CC0. You are free to copy, modify, distribute, and use this work for any purpose, without asking permission.
Support the Maker by purchasing products through their Blueprint where they earn a Maker Commission set by Vendors, or create a new iteration of this Blueprint and include it as a connection in your own Blueprint to share revenue.