Agave Wine - Let's Make Agave Nectar Wine at Home

today we're going to ferment this that's right we're making agave one now derek is probably going to say something about this the thing i'm going to say that brian knew i was going to say is that i'm a little perplexed about this experiment because brian is notoriously known for not liking agave yeah i tried agave syrup um we were in st augustine or something it was actually a lovely vacation we were at a beautiful little mexican restaurant and he was gonna he had an option to sweeten his tea with agave he's like sure i'll try that he was disgusting he did not even finish his tea not no i did not like it at all so why are we doing this you know why because you wanted us to that's why now i'm not saying that i don't i won't appreciate it because i probably will um i just it's not something that i would have really chosen for myself so we are doing this because it's been asked for a lot now one thing i want to be really clear on though is this is not tequila tequila is the distilled product from agave wine but it's not really the same thing they tend to make it a little simpler a little different than what we're going to do and then they distill it so that is how tequila is made in a nutshell because there's a lot more to it than that but we're making just agave wine today it's probably going to be somewhere in the 12 to 15 percent abv range and you know it's going to be like perfectly drinkable and all that kind of thing but anyway we are starting with some of this and we're going to be adding some of this which if you're curious what this is it's not just a mysterious brown liquid in a cup it's actually tea and not just any tea but yorkshire tea and why is it yorkshire tea because we usually use pg tips and every time i use pg tips somebody tells me to use yorkshire and every time i use yorkshire somebody tells me to use pg tips or some other kind of tea so we're trying to give equal play to everybody and use all the teas today it's yorkshire so we have all of our stuff here that has been sanitized in [Applause] [Music] that's another one by audience request you guys have been saying hey we don't see turbos we want to see turbos so there's turbos and look what else there is the show the shelves are back we did some changes and it was done mostly due to feedback from you guys and you know what honestly this is a little bit of an easier setup for us so it's less work it's a little bit less breakdown and it's it's easier um might look a little bit weird but i like the intimacy of it and i can do stuff like this i couldn't do this before you know because the camera was like way over there it was like eight feet away so now the camera's up close we're a little closer to it so all of this stuff has been cleaned and sanitized and i'm moving it yes i have to touch it with my hands my hands have been in the sanitizer water too it's okay so i need the fermentation vessel yes so as you can see there's a little bit of foam in there and you know what don't fear the foam it's okay that's just from the sanitizer it's not a problem the small amount that's in there is not a big deal this is still very wet so i'm going to dry my hands the type of star the type of star the type of sanitizer that we use is star sand and it's actually made to foam so that way that foam can creep into any little nooks and crannies that may be a flaw in the thing you're trying to sanitize right so if you're using a plastic bucket a lot of time that's that's the case we were asked recently why we use glass instead of buckets mostly personal preference i don't really want to make huge batches one gallon is fine it's much easier we can show it on screen and move it around so much easier for us i also get bored really really fast i want something different all the time i don't want to drink the same thing over and over again does it bite me in the butt every once in a while yes the spice mesomethylene i do wish i had 25 gallons of that one but i don't but i can make it again sometime and that's okay so we have our fermenter that's the first thing we're going to do second i want to get the agave into here and i'm going to use about three pounds what i'm shooting for is somewhere between a 1.080 and a 1.100 original gravity if you're not sure what any of that means we have a video explaining what that all is so i'm just gonna move forward as you can see i've already added the funnel because brian is notorious for tearing it out and getting all set for just the fermenter and then we gotta put the funnel on there and that's gonna change the weight i have two bottles of this stuff now these are 36 ounces so it's like two pounds four ounces in each which guys packaging kirkland this is costco make it three pounds so much easier you know brewers we want three pounds at a time that's what we're gonna use so make it three pounds but i'm just gonna dump this whole thing in it's probably gonna have the seat it's gonna have the little seal i'm gonna yeah that didn't work at all okay just because i have to that's not bad okay it tastes like honey well good wow i just learned something see i'm like nectar all this time he's been avoiding agave you know what maybe we just had crappy agave nectar it is possible i mean it was a pretty hoity restaurant maybe we had crappy tea it might have been crappy tea yeah that's true i hadn't thought of it that way so i'm just going to dump this whole thing in it pours pretty easily now something else about agave is the ph is roughly that of honey it's about the same so that's why we're not adding lemon in this one now you might have noticed we did a maple wine now we're doing agave wine and i'm going to be doing a non-honey mead it's not really meat i'm going to put the meat in quotes because it's not really meat it's a bee-less honey that i'm working on and i just thought let's do some mead yeah there's gonna be a lot of air quotes you know let's let's do some like alternative to mead sweeteners because people have been asking like oh can i just use agave can i use this can i use that of course you can but we never did it so we thought why not just do it and that way we can get all these together at the end and compare them and try them next to each other as long as they all come out good if they don't then they'll only be like three instead of four the caveat to that is that we're calling these wines not meads because they're not made with honey and so they're not really a meat exactly and my understanding too is that it's roughly the same gravity as honey or a little bit less so that's why i'm saying i probably need three pounds to be like 1.080 or a little bit higher um i don't want to go too too high i don't want to stress the yeast or anything like that oh come on get in there i'm at 15.8 ounces i need 0.2 ounces come on you can do this there we go there we go now i'm going to do this it's really good i like it good that's funny all these years i mean it's been like oh yeah eight or nine years i've been literally avoiding any item that had agave it's true i've probably eaten some and not known it now we have a funnel with some sticky stuff in it but we want all that sticky stuff in our brew so we're gonna use this to clean this to make it go into this this being the yorkshire tea this being the funnel notice the pyrex rather than our city setting mug just because you know i got tired of spilling it all over the place as fun as it was to use our our city setting logo mugs you know i just need to get a city studying logo pyrex and i know that's probably making all kinds of noise that you're hearing in the audio i'm really sorry time for some water now that tea was hot i brewed it for five minutes by the way and that was 12 ounces um people have been asking but the exact amount that you brew is not that critical um i don't know that i'd go like a gallon of it or anything but you know a cup two cups is perfectly fine it did warm it up a little bit but i don't think it's going to put it past the temperature that the yeast can tolerate so that's important which you don't want to go past like 120 degrees and now water i'm just going to fill this about halfway which is a thing i like to do because that way it's easier to shake it to mix it up about oh right there looks good to me and i'm also going to put something else in now to help this along this is yeast nutrient also known as mermaid oh which is the organic version we like the organic version better just i have a thing about stuff that's manufactured and things like that so i'd rather something that's closer to a natural product or as close as you can get this is a nitrogen source it does help the yeast because there's not a lot in agave just like honey not a lot there for the yeast to chomp on they will do their job it's just how well how stressed will they be how will the taste be at the end that sort of thing so we're going to add some in i did measure this out and i'm using 1.5 grams which is the amount that i learned off of the internet on how much to put in for this exact amount and you know what i need the tiny whisk the tiny whisk what is it the whisk of unusually small size the worse it's the worst yeah the clumps bug me this is why i'm mixing it with water first and that's why i'm putting it in now so that when i'm mixing it up it'll actually break up some more of those clumps i'm trying to break up as much as i can in the past we've had issues with firmado and that some of it could be due to the clumpage because if it stayed clumpy it probably didn't do much in the brew to begin with and it may have actually added to the clarity issue that we've had a problem with when using fermento so hey you know what keep an open mind try stuff out see if it works i have whisked it as much as i care to whisk it so now i'm just going to dump this in the amount of water that i added is completely immaterial it was like a tablespoon tablespoon and a half don't even worry about it because he's going to fill it up to here eventually anyway so but what i want to do now is uh mix this really really good i want to make sure that all that agave gets mixed in with the water so i need the the thumb saver bone and look what's right there einstein we keep it in my einstein mug yeah there it is we keep this in my einstein mug my favorite mug but if you look on the back i think you can see it there there's a big crack and a chip in it and it's a little bit upsetting to me but you know this was my favorite mug i drank my coffee out of this every day for years so now he is the keeper of the thumb's saber bung and what am i going to do that put in turbos you want to sanitize that okay i'm also going to dunk my hands in there because i touched stuff see sanitizing all right so i'm just gonna put this in here and you know it's coming i'm gonna shake the bejesus off [Applause] okay agave mix is a whole lot easier than honey that's nice i just want to get it past the hump so to speak so that i get a full gallon out of this going to about there that looks good and i'm going to shake this up again just a little bit this time it's mostly just to mix the everything together because we still need to take our reading and if we don't have the water mixed with the rest of the ingredients thoroughly enough then our reading will be faulty so next we're going to take a reading and to do that we're going to use mega maid insert your own version of the joke here now the person who originally suggested that we call the todd actually wrote to me and told me more about why they suggested the todd and that was because our typical naming convention is rather grandiose and so he thought it would be it'd be funny to just have it be a damage a generic name yeah i assumed that's what it was about now it doesn't matter to add oxygen at this point because we are trying to oxygenate this a little bit we want some oxygen there beginning of a fermentation no alcohol present just starting to add yeast you want oxygen once the yeasts have been introduced and they've started creating alcohol you don't want oxygen i'm going to add a little bit more water to this came out to 1.118 just a little bit higher than i really wanted the yeast that we have can handle that but i want to make sure now i don't expect to drop it more than a few more points and i'm kind of taking a risk here by filling this up this much that foam should go away however if this becomes a very active fermentation there's a possibility of eruption and needing a blow-off tube and things like that we've had some people who have had an overactive fermentation and they got a little scared and some of them have actually dumped their brew please do not do this that's a good thing it's your happy yeast when when stuff is coming out of your fermentation vessel like a volcanic eruption that just means the yeast are super happy and going to town so yeah it's messy put it under a tray do a blow-off tube we have a video on that but don't dump it out they're happy this is a good thing well i think some of the worry is they were concerned because is something bad getting in there well here's the thing it's coming out so aggressively it's the one direction it nothing's coming back in trust me if i can get all these bubbles to go away i'm going to show you guys the reading so it's 1.094 so adding just that little bit more water dropped it from 1.118 to 1.094 that is a grand total of 26 points of gravity down which is perfect that puts it squarely in the range that i want it i have a question i may have an answer did we reshake it after you added this yes i did okay good phew let's talk yeast we're using this one red star premier classic and you know what this is a pretty decent yeast we've used it a couple times it goes up to 15 alcohol tolerance and it does a whole bunch of other stuff it's really good for like white wines and you know that's a thing but the one problem that i have with red star yeast is they don't have a tear i can't open it i need scissors yeast packet airlock scissors sanitizer open beast packet now see red star i hope you're listening they're probably not watching but if they were they need to pay attention because it's really annoying when you're in the middle of a brew session to have to go get scissors you're the only brand that does that as far as i know others probably do too now something critical here is you want to pour it very carefully so that you don't hit the sides because if you hit the sides it sticks because there's liquid there and it just becomes waste because it's not going to come off but i can watch the camera while i do this okay see i'm already getting it on the sides and now now that i did it it's just it's over you know it's all over the place now but thwack your packet there's more yeast coming out that's right i'm keeping a straight face because it's not even a joke it's for real you there's other yeast in there you want to get it all out this packet is now empty airlock now see it's not fitting in there it's coming out so you know what you got to do people hate it when i do this but these towels are clean and this one is actually it's been white it's it's been bleached it's been cleaned and my hands have been wiping off with sanitizer fluid but you gotta dry the bung because if you don't dry the bung it doesn't stay in i can't even say that with a straight face and i'm just gonna get the very lip of this okay i'm not really going in more than that far just where the bung is going to touch and now as you can already see it seals and stays in alternatives to that if you don't want to do that because there is some amount of risk there is a possibility that this wasn't fully cleaned or that something touched it or it is possible okay so if that worries you you can just put a rubber band on here you can use a bungee cord people do duct tape i mean all sorts of things it's all good please do not use super glue yeah don't do that somebody did that it was a bad idea i don't know what they were thinking when they did it but they did it and they asked if there was any way to salvage it and i said no now last tip piece of paper and a pen this is my label and my brew notes this is agave wine today is october 13th it's amazing we're still not over 2020 yet 2021 is almost over yeah yeah that's insane um so this was three pounds agave nectar yorkshire tea premiere classic yeast and our original gravity was one point zero nine four for me firmado 1.5 grams for those of you keeping track at home let me show you what i did that's my label that's it so a lot of people have asked for that this is an advantage of the new system see i can show you and you know what i'm all kinds of fancified on this good piece of masking tape on the side like that what's it gonna do now it's gonna sit okay okay so we are super close now and you can see the lava lamp in action and that's the term we call for the little particles of yeast joining together and floating up and floating down and floating up and floating down and that's because of all the activity that is going on in liquid is creating a bit of motion and this is just gonna sit it's gonna ferment out for a few weeks but hey if you like this video look up there's another video up there you might like that one too thanks for watching and have a great day

Channel: City Steading Brews

Views: 17,884

Keywords: agave wine, make agave wine, how to make agave wine, agave wine at home, make agave wine at home, how to make agave wine at home, agave nectar wine, make agave nectar into wine, fermented agave, how to ferment agave, agave wine recipes, agave wine recipe, Agave nectar wine recipe

Id: NHZfXCykCJk

Length: 18min 38sec (1118 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 12 2021