Homemade Merlot Wine - Easy Delicious Wine Recipe

and now we're low at home so we get this request an awful lot in the comments in our VIP pretty much everywhere and they want us to make a verital style wine and we always say well it's not the process that makes a Amarillo or a peonoir Cabernet or whatever it is actually the type of grape that they use and Those Grapes aren't readily available to your average homebody like us they don't grow here in Florida so we do know that you can get concentrates in our default saying was well it's always a larger amount and recently our VIP Drew thank you drew pointed out that hey on Amazon you can get enough for simply one gallon so so it's a quart of red red grape concentrate Merlot and we'll have links to this in our description but you mix this with water to make a gallon and boom you have Merlot concentrate it's not exactly the same as crushing your own grapes I will give you that but we have ways of making that work let's get started sister f you're going to want to sanitize all your equipment and there fore version that's right I skipped to the punch didn't even let Brian say anything about it or the sanitizing vessel of your choice not everyone has a red one some have blue some have green someone had pink people have black we don't discriminate oh okay all good color does not matter here um I think we're going to need a funnel ah yeah we now have a funnel okay so we're going to start off with the juice and I'm going to do what we like to do and let's mix this up because by the way it was chilled so it's sweating so I just got a shower but we can see that there is a bunch of goop on the bottom that goop we want in here we're assuming but it looks like Luke but it's not coming out so I don't know we'll see it is sealed for your protection tastes like jelly oh my God it really does well it's really good grape juice yeah that's why I didn't have you try it because you don't like grape juice oh I stick oh yeah they weren't kidding when they said concentrate now this is made sorry you can't see my face although for some of you that might be a good thing this is made to make one gallon okay it is meant to be three parts water one part concentrate but I do want to get all that concentrate out because she had a point there is quite a bit in the bottom of this and you know we had a hurricane come through so everybody buys bottled water during a hurricane right we did too and now we don't need it and there's a case of it sitting on the floor over there and Tigger one of our cats likes to chew on plastic so she's been chewing on it so it's driving me crazy so we're just going to use up some of these bottled water she hasn't been chewing on the bottle she's been chewing on the plastic yeah the plastic of the coating packaging yeah the packaging thank you words stuff and I'm just gonna you know pour some water in there shake the bejesus out there's a lot of bejesus that's why it wasn't coming clean before yeah because it was too concentrated yeah it well it's settled so you should never settle always go after what you want this is going to be a foamy mess because of that yes so speaking of fully messes yes this is going to go on a tray and not in the fermentation station learn from our mistakes so we can observe its chaos before we tuck it away in a cabinet and go why is there a mess everywhere ah I don't think I'm gonna get all this I don't think you are either but it doesn't but I want to get as much as I can because that's a lot of the Sugar's there probably Rascal found the bottle I just threw yeah when he did that I'm like hear that okay I'll be back you guys it's just a bottle it's getting there that there was a lot in there because that was just water and it's yeah it's very dark now so it was good to not waste it a little elbow grease you know there's a lot of bejesus in there it's almost gone I'm trying to do it swirly so that it just causes turbulence instead of shaking it that way I don't get as much foam because I don't I don't want the foam foam has caused us some serious problems around here people have said they want to want to see more of our cats on the show look at that specializes in our cats it wasn't really where I was going with that but yes you can totally do that what I was going for is I don't think they meant watching our two cats fight over my foot on the floor plus it's probably not the most sanitary thing to have our cats climbing on the table our cats are not allowed on the table by the way just just so you know doesn't stop them no but but they're not allowed it's verboten all right I'm gonna say I got out as much as I can get out you did an excellent job all right that's the thing of beauty now we need more water now in this stage we don't mind sloshing and pouring because we want to oxygenate The Brew so that way there's plenty of oxygen within suspension so that way when we add the yeast they have that oxygenated environment to be fruitful and multiply foreign at this point I would like to mix this up you need the solid bone I need the thumb saver bun okay so thumb saver bung is just a solid stopper and I just do that so that you know you can just keep your thumb on it and I can give this a shake see there's a lot of stuff in the bottom that's why I wanted to do this just to get it mixed through I'm going gentle because foam it's a thing I know the saying don't fear the foam I'm familiar with that it refers to sanitizer though this isn't really sanitizer and the foam can really get in your way and cause problems so that's why I'm trying to uh minimize it so to speak and still get some error in there yeah I think that's pretty good for now all right now I'd like to go on record as saying something this is a recreation of a commercial style or a varietal of wine and because of that we're actually trying to do the best product we can rather than the simplest method okay so we're going to be using a few things that we've used in recent videos but we don't necessarily use all the time and they aren't 100 necessary but for making this style or trying to make as close to a commercial product as possible it it helps okay so we are also unfamiliar with this particular product as this is the first time we're using it so we don't know how much nutrients are actually inherent in this concentrate if it's pre-tanned it is not information I looked it up this is not pretanned but it does have a lot of pectins as well so they do recommend some of the stuff that we're going to be doing so what I have here is fermato just about 2 grams and in some water and to make my life easy instead of trying to pour it in there I'm going to put everything right in here this is pectic enzyme now this is optional okay peptic enzyme is going to help break down some of the pectins that are in the juice itself and help it to clear down the road and I need half a teaspoon for one US gallon which is what I have here I'm going to pour that right into the water for the nutrients in addition to that I'm also going to be using some powdered wine tannin now you know if you don't want to use powdered wine tanning you can always use just a cup of strong black tea no problem we actually did a video on that where we showed the differences and they were pretty minor really in the grand scheme of things this is just easier so if you're going to use tea you want to stick to just black tea and not a flavor tea because we're only using this for its Tana aspect not a flavorant okay so that's very important because we're trying to replicate a Merlot a flavor tea is going to just alter that alter that and it won't really be a Merlot style beverage anymore it might be perfectly fine but it won't be what we're going for right I am using it says to use a quarter to a half teaspoon now I think Merlot what I remember of Merlot's I haven't had a store-bought one in a while they're very tannic they have a nice strong mouth feel so I'm going to use the half I'm airing on the side of larger and yeah you saw that I almost knocked it over mm-hmm and I'm just going to mix this up wow that's just it's that's gross muddy yep it's mud that is exactly what we made do you need the funnel again I'm gonna need the funnel again it's sitting right there right in front of the bottle hiding they can see it I couldn't and um part of the reason why I don't have all the water in yet is because I know this is going to stick all over that funnel when I try to pour it in there so you know but it's sticking sticking to the the Whisk of unusually small size also known as the wuss I mean come on how can you not love a thing like that it's just awesome so I'm just going to pour this right in oops see we got some goop so evens I'm going to uh add a little bit more water now this is something that I want to talk about is that a lot of these things are sort of optional um I mean you could just take the concentrate add water add yeast and probably make a pretty serviceable product notice I said serviceable I didn't say it would be great it may be but I don't think so there is the trifecta of flavors and balance which is acids tannins and sweetness that all add up to a better product in the end so that's why we're trying to adjust those things the acids are present already in the fruit juice so that's fine this sweetness is also already in the fruit juice so we just had to adjust the tannic level and I I guessed I'll be honest I I totally guessed went on the high side I don't think it's going to make a tremendous amount of difference and you can always add more if you really want to but I don't know that we need more in this case we tend to like tannic wines though we like that rich mouth feel okay so at this point now add more water [Music] okay we have foam so what we're going to do now is we're going to put in the yeast all right and we're going to do that so that I can use the water to rinse it off and that sort of thing today we're going to be using the Beast malvin 71b now why are we using 1171b that's a good question Brian the reason why we selected 71b for our yeast for this particular product is that we did search that's right we went online we Google food thank you very much Kenny and we figured out that there were some certain yeasts that were suggested for Merlot style wines yeah we didn't have some of them one of them was ec118 though as a nice rounded and I was like well you know we don't have that one but we do have the red star version but then I saw 71b on the list because of the uh it tends to make things taste more aged more quickly it prevents extra maturation being necessary how's that does that sort of make sense and it gave like a boldness with Esters and things like that I was like you know we have it we know it works well let's go for it um so I don't really know what the gravity of this is going to be yet that's one thing they didn't really specify but I just want to show you something look at how that tore so lovely without the use of an Implement such as scissors hey red star did you see that I love your yeast hate your packages okay and I'm going to use I'm using the whole package why because why not so I'm going to pour it right in touch the sides it'll also get rid of some of the foam rather quickly and what am I going to do bracket we make a joke on that but you know it's really true there's a lot of yeast coming out of here it just gets stuck inside Easton now now our yeasts are just kind of hanging out on top of the phone we want the yeast inside the Brew so we're going to pour more water in there hoping that is gonna help those yeast get down in there so they can get to work we also need more water because we're not there yet yeah one of the cats was playing with the plastic okay so now is when I always say how greedy do you want to be it's gonna be a little risky on this one because technically speaking we need this last one to be a full gallon here okay even though I know from a previous test that we did we're pretty darn close we're really really close to a gallon already so we're going to use some of it I don't want it to overflow it's going to anyway okay I happen to know that that is a gallon on this pretty much I mean it's that close so we're gonna go with that for now and let's take a reading on this now when I say a reading I mean a gravity reading specific gravity specifically and what that does is it gives us a an idea where we're starting at and B it tells me if I'm going to overpower my yeast since I didn't actually did you adjust the the top because I did okay beautiful got to be careful of the bulbs on the master basters because if they go crooked it doesn't suck properly and it just sucks it does have the Merlot color not surprising because it's Merlot grapes you know now our VIP Drew who recommended this he's already brewed his and he is head over heels in love with it so we're hopeful that we will have a similar experience it's a little on the high side do we need more water yeah it's a 1.154 uh no thank you I have to risk the phone we have to because 1.154 that's a little high I really don't like to start with gravity's that high granted we have nutrients in there it's a good concentrate that we used you know we have a good grape juice that kind of thing we have lots of good environment for the yeast I don't think 71b can actually go that high though let me let me do some checking on that part of the reason why we don't want the sugar level in their original reading to be very high is because in excess of fermentable sugars in a brew can actually stretch your yeast so if this went to dry which merlots are generally on the drier side that is 20 almost 21 percent um 71b on its best day probably can't reliably do that so I'd like to get this down a bit more I have a feeling we're going to have a sweet Merlot now one thing that I haven't considered too is I didn't mix this oh I threw in some more water let's just give this a little mixy mix or a shaky shake and this is a good lesson for you at home if you ever take a gravity reading and your preliminary math when you're creating your recipe or the recipe that was created for you if you use one of our recipes and your initial gravity reading is a little off like way off more than more than 10 points you need to shake it more because you might have an uneven distribution of the fermentable sugars in the additional water yeah there's nothing more terrifying than making a video where you put like three pounds of honey into a Mead and you take the reading and it's 1.040 that's happened and I hate to admit on more than one occasion but we're actually multitasking here it went way down see mixing that was the key 1.070 okay that's much more in line it's going to be a little bit on the weaker side for a wine now because 70 points is going to be well actually no that's that's about right um 7.7 times 135 it's going to be 0.07 times 135 it's going to be nine nine and a half percent that works it'll probably go a little bit below zero it's a wine range so that's fine it's wine like it's wine again no it's nine to fifteen percent is typical for one so and Merlot isn't known for being like a super high I think they range anywhere from like 9 to 12 or so in general so I risked a little bit extra and lowered the gravity just slightly just so you're aware not necessarily a bad thing but I could have probably got you know an extra half a percent of what percent of that not a big deal so let me start taking some notes because I haven't written down a thing and while you start taking down notes I'm going to prepare an airlock okay so airlock and stopper the easiest way is to dry these out but I see here's the problem if you start putting cloth or whatever around there unless that cloth was sanitized in which case it's wet you really can't dry that out properly so usually I just add a rubber band and it's not the end of the world it's totally okay eventually it will dry and then you don't need the rubber band anymore but uh I think that's all we need to do on this for today right so what are we gonna do with it now really that's it see in a week or two when this starts slowing down that doesn't mean it's done just means it's the next step it's been nearly two weeks bubbling has pretty much stopped so time to take the first check and see if this is done where it's at did it stall is it still going we don't know 0.994 now you might think oh well it went below 1.000 it's done well it probably is but there's no way to know for sure until you wait a week take another reading so I'm going to pour this back in because all this stuff was sanitized and I'm going to dump this right back in carefully we're gonna put the airlock back on I took a note we'll stick my note back on this goes back in the fermentation station for another week and we will see you then okay the Merlot has been sitting for like three weeks between its first reading and today why well you know life gets in the way we were both really sick and also I thought mistakenly that we had already racked and oaked this so it was because it was behind something I couldn't read the label so it's been sitting and just further proof that it doesn't really matter I mean it's totally okay we're going to take its second reading today and we're going to Oak it from here so really all we did is lost a couple weeks of process time take a reading just like we always do hydrometer graduated cylinder and the master baster okay last time it was 0.994 this time it is 0.994 so it's done which means we are ready to Rack this there's another step we're going to do after we rack it but let me take some notes first while I'm thinking of it and may as well do a calculation using the calculator teacher said I would never have handy that just happened to be right there in my pocket let's figure out the ABV of this wine so we started with a 1.070 because remember I didn't mix it well and then added more water and then mixed it and it went really low yeah I mean really low isn't is a relative term 1.070 is a perfectly fine starting point minus 0.994 means we used up 76 points .076 times my coefficient of choice which is 135 if you're not sure why I use that we do have a dedicated video explaining exactly why suffice to say it's a little bit more accurate and that gives us 10.26 percent I mean that's that's in the range for wine so I'm going to mark that as 10.2 percent works for me uh just so you know wine can range anywhere from like nine to about 14 or 15 percent so you know it's on the lower side but you know what that means have two glasses okay so let's move this from this fermenter into another fermenter which is called rocking and we have a video on that so I'm going to link that video in the description below and with the magic of editing will be done ta-da [Music] okay so we went there all right so what we did is we racked it and now we're going to be oaking this and I didn't even think about it there was no question French Oak without a doubt I mean Merlot French Oak just kind of goes even though Merlot is Italian so what whatever we're mixing our metaphors here I am okay with that so what we've done is we took our block of wood and we put it in some hot water if you're curious where we get our wood from it comes from Barrel char wood products Derek I can put a link below Ken over there is a great guy if you tell them what you're making tell them that we sent you he'll help you I mean even if you don't tell them that we sent you he'll help you out and tell you exactly what is the the right product for you all the wood that we used in the last what year maybe two has come from him phenomenal products fantastic customer service just an amazing guy love them give them all your money buy all the wood you can from them really really great stuff we actually have to warn him now when we're making a brew using some of the more rare stuff like he said the French Oak was not actually not a very popular one and we made it popular so I I think that's kind of cool Amber Ron is another one they have lots of that in stock he just told me in an email anyway today we are using French Oak medium plus toast they actually come in a couple different toasts so this is medium plus toast there we go are you going to use your fingers or do you want Tom I'm gonna use my fingers that was boiling water all right you ready for this do you want me to do it no I'm going to do it okay you let it sit in the water for about five minutes what that does it releases a little bit of the excess tannins and it's it sanitizes the wood so I'm just going to really quickly grab the wood further in there didn't even hurt that time much so the next thing you do is to put a lid on it with an airlock yeah dude we basically just put it into a different container now if you're wondering why we put it into a wide mouth mostly because well we didn't want some um extra headspace but also that wood doesn't fit in the narrow neck once you got to put it in this so I have my notes just going to stick it's wet it's wet it's a glass I didn't do that yeah you got to dry the whole thing this is where he puts it just to keep me on my toes if she dried one side I'd dry it on the other it's just I put it on the other that's just the way it is and uh put my note back on and what are we going to do with it now well that's it I don't really know how long I think we might let this go for a week and taste it I've heard varying reports people say a week some people say two some people say three now this is an interesting thing about wood aging it's very to taste first of all and it really depends on your Brew the amount of alcohol the temperature the type of wood you're using the size of the wood you're using and the shape of the wood you're using if you're using wood chips it's going to extract a whole lot faster um some of the spirals and things they have a lot of area they extract pretty quickly too by the way I'm not a huge fan of the spirals anymore I feel like they're a lot cheaper of a quality what happened is we started with the spirals I'll try to make this as quick as possible start with Spirals and we're like and then we found Ken and and Ken spoil this and now we're just like there's no looking back it's 109 Barrel jar yeah I've tried chips too and I think they just give two Woody of a taste whereas honestly Ken's stuff and he doesn't pay us or anything he sends us products sometimes but he doesn't pay so this isn't a sponsored ad or anything like that the products are just that kind of good I mean you guys know us by now if we like something we're going to tell you how much we like it and if we don't we talk about it kind of like that Scotch I know that you are noticing the activity here in airlines that doesn't mean that it's fermenting it means that it's degassing and it also means that the temperature change of the boiling hot wood that Brian put in here could be causing her a bit of reaction yeah it's steady acid um and I'm pounding on the table and making all kinds of easy look he's been obnoxious as he tends to be uh so yeah we will see you in a week maybe two not sure yet see you then okay so we lied we said A week it's been two life happens but we're gonna remove the lid given olfactory and visual examination it's dark it's very dark the question was how much wood is too much wood is it in there long enough so what we're going to do is we're going to do a tasting of this and try not to break any glasses I just want to put the lid back on just so nothing Falls in it is super dark clear it cleared out I can see it around the edges the color though it is like I mean it looks like a Merlot okay that that's what a Merlot is supposed to look like I can actually see my finger through it in the light so yeah okay she already smelled it so oh wow smells like Merlot I mean it really does it's fantastic this is what a high quality red wine should smell like it's got those really deep dark fruit notes yeah like almost a chocolate note too it's funny this actually kind of reminds me of our Mulberry yeah we did yeah the Mulberry wine yeah it's a stronger smell um a little more I get more sweetness off of it even though this is really dry this is 0.994 all right I'm going in foreign oh wow it is beautifully tannic there's like some potent tannin in there but it's not too much but it's beautifully so it's like just right yeah there are bottleness now it's got as it as it comes in there's like a lot of deep rich fruit in the mouth tons of body tons of uh it's not super viscous but it's got a good amount of viscosity a little bit of pucker but not too much so the tannins are definitely there it almost is like a warming effect oh yeah definitely and the Finish is nice and long there's a good fruit note throughout this is wonderful this is really good all right so here's here's what we need to do I drank all mine yeah we need more no the aroma is just yum if you are familiar with Merlot as a wine you'll love this right well not for me if you like Merlot as a wine you'll you'll love this I can see why Drew was so happy with it yeah one of our VIPs really turned us on to doing this and he's he's right he's made this three or four times now I don't blame him I don't think he Oaks it as long as we did I think he said like three days or a week or something he'll probably correct me because he comments here all the time but I didn't mean that in a mean way he'll probably tell me he'll keep us appraised in the situation but I I like perhaps the slightly over oat in this because I don't think it's over Oak I've had merlots before and this is this they are an oaked wine but it has a very distinctive tannic aspect to it that we we haven't noticed in our other Brews and it might just be simply this particular wood with the Merlot grape what what's the Bridle it's just blue it makes me want to see if we can get more varietal we can totally and I think we're going to this this came out so wonderful I love this we do have to put a score on it though you know what my favorite thing to do with Merlot is by the way I put it in tomato sauce for pasta it just because it doesn't add sweetness but it adds like this little bit of fruitiness and it's like almost an earthy yeah thing going on it reminds me of the earthiness and coffee and chocolate which is something yeah my brain yeah you're saying the chocolate like a dark chocolate oh yeah like 100 cacao dark chocolate good stuff yeah a lot of people think we're crazy but I actually eat that like like candy you know because it's medicinal yeah [Music] um a number okay I'm I'm all right our scoring system goes from one through ten ten being the highest one being the lowest one is probably complete crap and you probably dump it out and pretend you never made it 10 is the best of the best except for when you have an 11 which is like the best of the best of the best everything in between goes from ick to ah some and you know that's just the way it works also just remember one score doesn't necessarily compare well to another it's like the that Drew Carey Show Whose Line Is It Anyway we just make this up as we go however we do put a lot of thought into these scores but just because we gave one thing an 8.5 another thing in eight don't think that it's that much better they're probably realistically much the same right we can taste this today and give it one score and taste it tomorrow and give it a difference yes because your palate is going to change from day to day based on your mood [Music] be unbiased if we can but it's very very difficult so usually within a point or two is probably the right range so take that as you will so today we are judging this as we would a Merlot so we're putting it in the Merlot category I am judging this against commercial merlots that I have had right so we know that it should be dry so we're not going to take sweetness into consideration because there shouldn't be yeah this would taste weird if it was sweet yeah I mean I'd like it better but it would be weird right it wouldn't be Merlot anymore because Merlot has to be dry all right are you ready I'm ready one two three 9.5 she's so happy she's higher than me I like it yeah honestly this is fantastic why didn't I go higher than nine because Merlot is not my favorite kind of wine that is the only reason because for me from an enjoyment standpoint I'm not likely to pour a glass of this and just enjoy it which is fine by me because I will would I have this with a meal though yeah absolutely like one of these kind of glasses that's about as much as I really would want to have she'll drink a little bit more of it fantastic stuff though I mean compared to any commercial Merlot I've ever had this Stacks up if not better than so people are gonna be throwing stuff at us I can still see it but why I don't know why would they well it's hard to throw things at us because there's a camera there's a monitor between us and them so if they throw something it's probably gonna hit their own monitor we will never know but we were very hesitant to do this because we're like oh it certainly can't be that good and Drew's like it's awesome and we're like okay Drew we're gonna do it because she said it was awesome I mean don't get me wrong it's not the best thing we've ever made but it's very very very very very very very right it was awesome and I'm super excited to experiment with more varietal yeah yeah to me it felt kind of like working a kit even though it's not because it's just a juice we literally just used a type of juice to make this fantastic stuff I mean I wonder if you can get varietal apple juices to make ciders can you get Peri pear juice probably that see that's what we need to find out if anybody knows of sources where we can get this stuff in the U.S probably because shipping it overseas would be very difficult uh let us know what we're going to do with this now though is we're going to Rack this into bottles they're gonna put it away one of them will sit for a year one of them's gonna sit for two years and I have high hopes for both of those because keep in mind this was started October 27th today is December 15th this is six weeks old and it tastes that good already have we announced the ABV for this it's 10.2 that's fine yeah that's that's in the range for for Merlot Merlot's can range anywhere from like 10 to 13 or 14. something like that um yeah so we're going to say goodbye but if you want to see how to bottle we have videos on bottling I'll put it in the description below absolutely as always guys thank you so much for watching and have a great day bye-bye

Channel: City Steading Brews

Views: 44,050

Keywords: merlot, make merlot, homemade merlot, diy merlot, how to make wine, homemade wine, easy wine recipe, making merlot, merlot wine from juice, homemade wine recipe, red wine, wine making at home, wine making process at home, homemade wine from grape, diy wine, wine making, homemade wine making, homemade wine from juice, home winemaking, wine recipe

Id: l36oYlngO6s

Length: 31min 55sec (1915 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 01 2023