Malolatic Fermentation

Yesterday, I talked about different acids in wines and cider, such as malic acid and lactic acid. It is actually possible, using bacteria, to convert malic acid to lactic acid. The process is called malolatic fermentation (MLF), and the result is a smoother, less sharp tasting wine with a higher pH, sometimes tasting mildly of butter.

MLF is a secondary fermentation that happens with wine and cider. However, it is caused by bacteria instead of yeast, and it does not make alcohol. Instead, the bacteria eat malic acid and convert it to lactic acid and carbon dioxide. Lactic acid bacteria eat or break the bonds with one of the two acid components that malic acid has, AKA the carboxylic acid COOH. The COO is released as CO₂, and the extra H is redistributed into the remaining molecule. The result is a milder lactic molecule with only one set of COOH acid compounds, raising the pH. In turn, it tastes less sharp and smoother than the previous product.

There are several different bacteria that will cause MLF, including prefered Oenococcus oeni, though others can also cause MLF, but they can also create other infections as well.

MLF processes will happen naturally unless sulfites are regularly used to prevent it, or if the pH is too low. If a winemaker harvests in the fall and starts fermentation, the MLF process usually begins in the spring when things warm up again. However, in a controlled environment, lactic acid bacteria are sometimes introduced to start the winemaking process sooner to ensure that it happens, that there is no alcohol to kill the bacteria, and to create a more shelf stable wine.

The results of MLF in wine is that it tastes a little smoother with less bite than the original wine because there is now less acid. However, because lactic acid is associated with dairy products, the increased lactic acid can give a dairy like taste. Also, once a wine goes though MLF, the yeast reproduction inhibitor potassium sorbate cannot be used to stabilize the wine, or it will cause the wine to have an unpleasant geranium odor. If MLF happens after bottling, the lactic acid can cause the wine to taste like cured meats.

Wine makers always do MLF on red wines, partly because red wines are also stored in oak barrels. The oak barrels start to have a little bit of lactic acid bacteria living in the wood after being exposed to them in the wine, so the next batch of wine will become exposed to the bacteria from the wood. Also, red wines can still create a puckering sensation with a higher pH due to having more tannins from being allowed to ferment with the grape skins. White wines, because they are more delicate and can be overpowered in taste, usually do not go though MLF or oak aging, or in the case of Reisling, it tastes more refreshing from the sharper malic acid. The exception to not doing MLF on white wine is Chardonnay, which are sometimes described as tasting buttery as a result of the MLF. It is becoming easier to find Chardonnay aged in stainless steel without MLF, which are described as being more green apple flavored. Must be the malic acid.

Cider makers have the option of doing MLF. It can enhance the flavor, especially if it was too acidic, and it can create a more stable product from having to worry if MLF will happen. However, the MLF bacteria and the conditions in which MLF likes to occur – high pH and low sulfites – is the same conditions in which some cider sicknesses such as rope. Andrew Lea describes rope like this, “When the cider is poured, it assumes the consistency of a light oil or of a slimy ropy texture like raw egg-white, although the flavour is not much affected. This is due to the slow growth of certain forms of lactic-acid bacteria which produce polysaccharide gels (similar to those formed by related bacteria during yoghurt-making and which provide its texture).” When it comes to making perry, MLF is usually avoided because the citric acid in the pears can be converted by the lactic acid bacteria to acetic acid, the acid of vinegar.

MLF can not be recommended in these cases:

• In general, fruit wines and most white wines should not go through MLF unless put in an oak barrel.
• It is not recommended for sweet wines, especially if potassium sorbate is to be used.
• Because MLF converts a strong malic acid to a weak lactic acid, the pH raises. This can also allow bacteria to start growing.
• The sulfite level needed to do MLF is low. This can allow bacteria to start growing, and low sulfite level would allow some oxidization.
• It increases the cost to make wine as it requires more time to make the wine.

So really, sometimes MLF really enhances a wine, and sometimes it can make a wine spoil.

Further reading:

• Purdue University: The Joy of Malolactic Fermentation
• EnologyAccess.org – The Malolactic Fermentation
• Buttery bacteria: Malolactic fermentation and you
• An Introduction to Malolatic Fermentation in Wine
• Pictures of malic acid molecules and lactic acid molecules

Acids in Wine & Cider

I have mentioned before that pH is important when making wine and cider because it helps protect the wine from bacteria and it tastes better. A wine or cider low in pH is high in acid due to the pH scale. Different fruits have different types of acids in them that come into play when making wine and cider, and they do not have the same affect on pH.

First and foremost, when reading any wine making book dedicated to grape making wine, remember that there are three acids – tartaric, malic, and lactic. Tartaric acid is an acid specific to grapes, and so anything written about it can be ignored if working with other fruit. In fact, Peter Mitchell told us a story in his class about lab work that came back on cider reporting the tartaric acid, and since this is a grape acid, he made them retest the cider as he thinks they really didn’t do the test. Apples only contain malic acid and lactic acid.

Malic acid is actually named after apples, whose Latin name is Malus domestica. It is the primary acid in apples, but it is also in other foods and credited for giving a sour or tart taste, more so than citric acid. This is what is most commonly used to make sour candy.

Latic acid is a milder acid than malic. It is found naturally in animals, especially when exercising or digestion. In food, it is found in sour milk products and in sourdough bread.  In wine, it gives a kind of buttery creamy taste.

Some other fruits such as citrus and pears contain citric acid. This is also a sour taste, and is sometimes used as a preservative. For instance, some citric acid on avocados, apples, and bananas keep the food from turning brown quickly.

Part of the reason all these acids are so different is that they contain different amounts of the actual acid component in their molecules, the carboxylic acid, COOH. For instance, malic acid contains twice as much COOH in their molecules as latic acid, which is why it is more sour tasting. This in turn has an effect on pH testing.

Carboxylic acid, where R is the rest of the molecule it is attached to.

There is a laboratory method of testing for total acid (AKA – titratable acid) in wine and cider, but the big flaw in the test is that the test cannot tell the difference between the types of acids, so it assumes that it is all the same kind of acid. Mitchell supplied us with these formulas to show us the difference:

• 1 g/L sulphuric acid = 1.4 g/L malic acid
• 1 g/L tartaric acid = 0.89 g/L malic acid

Also, because each acid has a different strength, there is no correlation between the total acid and pH of the product, though it can help you get in the general area.

Thanksgiving Wine Tasting Weekend

I don’t participate in shopping on Black Friday. Too many frantic people and the sales require me to be up too early and are usually over by noon. What’s the point? Instead, an alternative to work off the large turkey dinner is to go to the Thanksgiving Wine Tasting Weekend tours!

• Thanksgiving in Oregon Wine Country
• Clark County Thanksgiving Weekend Wine Tour
• Thanksgiving in [Yakima] Wine Country
• Rice Harvest Festival Thanksgiving Weekend – Sake and dim sum

Two years ago, I went to Wandering Aengus Ciderworks Thanksgiving weekend, as it is one of the few times their tasting room is open.

Happy 2010 Thanksgiving!

I’m taking the day off from writing to eat, but to tide you over on a wine review, I recommend reading the Oregonian’s Holiday Wine Guide.

Chutney

Grand Central Baking Company has this turkey and chutney sandwich that I absolutely love. When we go there, I always get it and encourage others to do so. Once, my father got the Turkey Deluxe, but he agreed the chutney sandwich was much better. So, every year when Thanksgiving rolls around, I make sure to have good bread, good lettuce, tomato, and some chutney so that I can make this sandwich at home.

What is chutney? Chutney is a spiced pasty sauce in Indian cuisine. However, I’m talking about a more Anglofied type of chutney as being a kind of spiced fruit jam sauce. I think the best one for turkey is cranberry chutney, but a good apple chutney does quite well, too. I usually find chutney over with the Indian sauces in my grocery store, but there are lots of recipes for it on the internet as well.

So if you are tired of turkey sandwiches after Thanksgiving, try changing it up with chutney!

Record Keeping for Cider

When I got to making cider from apples instead of buying juice, I found that my records were not condustive for this process because I was actually making the juice rather than buying it, which added another level of complexity. Let me walk you though it.

First off, there is the orchard and tree that I picked from on a given day. I then shred and press the apples into juice. The juice has a given specific gravity and pH.

However, maybe I only got 3 gallons of that juice, or maybe the pH was such that I need to blend it with other juice. Maybe I did start fermentation, but didn’t have more of that juice to top off when I racked.

Basically, I needed two sets of records – one to track the juice when it was pressed, and another to track the fermentation batch. I settled on a excel document to track everything, including lab results, but it is way too complicated to share with you as each batch is kind of ends up with a slightly different record. Some people suggested I just keep a notebook, but I decided that excel was better for me.

So with two sets of records, I realized I needed a kind of serial number to track everything. When tracking the pressing juice, I use the date pressed and a letter to indicate if it was the first, second, etc pressing. That record then indicates what orchard and tree the fruit came from, the specific gravity and pH, along with any lab work I did to the juice.

For the fermentation record, I decided the serial number based on Eastern North Pacific Hurricane names. See, they come up with hurricane names in alphabetical order, and each year for seven years has unique names unless it is a major storm that causes them to retire the name (see naming rules under Atlantic Names for more information). Basically, I have an alphabetized name list at my disposal, and I don’t see myself doing more than 26 batches in a year.

The fermentation record then includes what juice at what quantity was added and then resulting specific gravity and pH of the new batch. If I do any lab work and modification to that new batch, it is marked here. If I used a juice as is, the moment I pitch yeast into it, it is now treated as a fermentation record, given a name, and all the juice information is then moved into the fermentation record.

I was a bit frustrated trying to come up with a good record system, as I knew once I became a licensed winery, the government would want to audit me from time to time, so it is good to get in the habit now. If you would like to see my cidermaking spreadsheet, or discuss what I did, please email me.

Record Keeping for Fruit Wines

I had written earlier about record keeping and how important it is. I have since then made some changes to my records.

Download PDF of new record

• First off, I found that my juice source was simpler than what I had made it out to be, so I just put lines to write out what it was.
• The Added Ingredients is part measurements, and part check list. For instance, it reminds me to add sulfite, and I would probably do it by package directions. I gave more room for the preparation of ingredients because I found I needed it.
• I changed the look of Measurements, Fermentation, and Racking.  Because Peter Mitchell taught me to add yeast nutrient after fermentation started, I move that down into the Fermentation portion. Again, it is kind of a check list, as is the racking and SO₂ in the table section.
• I removed the table tracking the specific gravity. I believe if I was a large wine maker doing up 50 gallons or more a batch, I would be monitoring this daily, but for gallon batches, I decided that the extra handling was really unnecessary and even time consuming with all the cleaning required.
• I moved the bottling information onto the first page so that I could see how old everything was. I made some changes to it based on my experience. For instance, I really don’t see myself using oak any time soon, so I removed that from the record.
• The last page includes extra notes, and tasting notes designed on the Clark County Fair wine competition, which I really liked the organization of.
• The extra room at the bottom of the page is for labels. Sometimes I attach the labels from my raw juice material if I can.

This record is still a work in progress, and still has some flaws. For instance, it really doesn’t allow for me to take any serious lab tests and make modifications based on that, but right now, I’m really reserving those tests for cider making.

Another record that I have found I’ve had to keep is a calendar. On the calendar, I mark when I start a batch, and then mark when I should rack and when I actually do.

Book Review: The American Cranberry

I was hoping to do a review on a cranberry themed cookbook today, but the only cranberry book I could turn up between two library systems was The American Cranberry by Paul Eck, published in 1990.

Inside the jacket cover sums it up well: Paul Eck provides a clear and comprehensive account for all expects of cranberry biology, ecology, cultivation, economics, and history. His book will be indispensable to cranberry growers, botanists, and horticultural students and scientists.”

Honestly, I’ve thought about planting cranberries, but there really isn’t much information on growing them. I thought I could find something in gardening books, but they avoid the topic or only write one or two pages on the topic. That is why this book is so valuable – it is a 350 page book dedicated just to growing cranberries. In fact, this book appears as a reference in some of the links provided below.

The book chapters are organized as follows: history, industry, botany, plant improvement, enivonrment, plant growth and development, plant nutrition, culture, diseases, insects, harvesting and handling, and a final chapter in economics, marketing, and utilization.

The book is has black and white photographs, and the first couple of chapters have lots of tables talking about cranberry production over the years by major cranberry producing states. From there, it gets technical, showing cranberry blossoms and fruit, talking about soil acity, and other things. There is even a diagram on how to create a cranberry dam to turn land into a bog. Everything you ever wanted to know about growing cranberries are found in this book, including diseases and pests, how to fertilize, different methods of harvesting, and even the economics of cranberry production. Eck even throws in some recipes on cranberry sauce, cranberry jelly, cranberry orange relish, and cranberry nut bread at the end. I’m sure every cranberry farmer has a copy of this book.

Further Reading:

• Cape Cod Cranberry Grower’s Association – How Cranberries Grow: “Cranberries 101”
• Cranberry Creations – Growing Information
• University of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries – Growing Cranberries
• Washington State University – Crop Profile for Cranberries in Washington

Cranberry Wines

The whole purpose of talking about cranberries this week was really leading up to today. Forget having a cranberry sauce –serve a cranberry wine with turkey on Thanksgiving!

My favorite: Shallon Winery Cranberry Whey Wine from Astoria, OR.

The only cranberry cider I am aware of is made by Blue Mountain Cranberry Cider in Milton-Freewater, OR. I believe this will be lower in alcohol than most wines.

Other cranberry wines I have had:

• Mountain Meadow’s Cranberry Mead from Westwood, CA.
• Nehalem Bay Winery Cranberry Wine from Nehalem Bay, OR.
• Hoodsport Bella Cranberry Cordial in Hoodsport, WA
• Sea Mist Winery has a few cranberry blend wines from Langlois, OR.
• Honeywood Winery in Salem, OR has three cranberry wines, though I find them heavy in apple filler.

There are a lot of other cranberry wines and meads, technically a melomel, out there. Here are a few that I know of:

• B Nektar Cranberry Melomel from Ferndale, MI. See video.
• Harbinger Cranberry Bliss from Port Angeles, WA. A chardonnay-cranberry blend.
• Heymann Whinery Cranberry Wine in Chehalis, WA. They blend cranberries with white wine grapes.
• HoneyRun Cranberry Honeywine from Chico, CA. Hopefully it is better than their blackberry mead.
• KW Cellars in Walla Walla, WA. It appears that this is the only wine they make.
• Pasek Cellars Cranberry Wine in Mt. Vernon, WA.
• Three Lakes Winery Cranberry Wine from Three Lakes, WI.
• Westport Winery in Aberdeen, WA. They had three cranberry wines: Rapture of the Deep, Bog Berry Blush (blended with Gewürz grapes), and a blackberry, blueberry, cranberry blend called Shelter from the Storm.

I know this is not a complete list, so look around your local area.

Remember that Shallon Winery suggests serving his cranberry whey wine with 7-up, which might work with other cranberry wines.

Cranberry Beer:

• Samuel Adams Cranberry Lambic beer
• Grey Parrot Brewing Cranberry Cream beer from Long Beach, WA

While it is a little too late for Thanksgiving this year, one could get hold of some wine kits with cranberry juice and make your own cranberry flavored wines:

• Winexpert’s Island Mist White Cranberry Pinot Gris wine kit, which is ready in four weeks!
• Orchard Breezin’ Cranberry Chianti
• Orchard Breezin’ Cran Apple Chardonnay

Also, for those who do not consume alcohol, may I suggest making for them my mulled cranberry apple juice.

Lots of drinks with cranberries!

Making Alcohol with Cranberries

Making alcohol with cranberries is interesting and challenging. The problem is with fermenting cranberry juice is that it is very acidic, being about 2.3 to 2.5 pH. As a result, straight cranberry juice is too acidic to make wine. It must be blended with something to raise the pH to the 3.2 – 3.8 range required for making wine.  Supposedly, licensed winemakers are not allowed to dilute a fruit juice with water to ferment, so other juices are usually substituted, such as apple juice.

I tried making a cinnamon cranberry apple cider once, and it was awful. I thought the pH got to low, causing it to taste funny. Peter Mitchell tried it and said that I had too much cranberry. It was about 25% cranberry juice and 75% apple juice.

On our way out to the Pacific Coast Cranberry Research Foundation Museum and Gift Shop, we stumbled upon Gray Parrot Brewing Co in Long Beach, WA. It was a former brew pub that scaled back to just a brewery. That day, he had a cranberry wheat beer to try, which I actually drank. He was very nice and answered lots of questions, so I asked him how much cranberry was actually in the beer. He said there was about 2% cranberry juice in it. Though, I should say that in making beer, the pH should be higher than wine at about 5.2 to 5.6, which would mean that the cranberry juice quantity would have to be lower. At such a low dose, it is kind of cranberry flavored.

On the positive side of making alcohol with cranberries, supposedly cranberries contain tannin, and tannins are desirable in ciders and red wines. However, I do not know how much, or how it really affects the flavor of the alcohol. Plus, at lower levels of cranberry juice, the tannins may not have much of an affect.

I should try making a cranberry cider again. At the moment, I am trying to make a cranberry whey wine like Shallon Winery does at 75% whey and 25% cranberry juice. The verdict is still out on if my batches of this will turn out or not.

One last thing I want to note is that I have purchased from Clear Creek Distillery a cranberry liqueur. It would not be that hard to make a cranberry liqueur at home. Also, there are flavored cranberry vodkas out there, and cranberry juice is quite popular being added to a spirit as a well drink such as a Cranberry and Vodka, or a Cape Cod if a lime is added.