Which of these acids/enzymes would you recommend to improve homemade wine?!
Which of these acids/enzymes would you recommend to improve homemade wine?
I've been making homemade wine with just Welch's juice, sugar, and yeast, but I want to step it up a bit and improve the quality and taste. I bought some Lalvin EC-1118 yeast, but I noticed a bunch of add-ons/enzymes/acids. Which of the following would you recommend that are easy to use and will make the biggest difference to the wine in one way or another:
Acid blend
Campden tablets
Pectic Enzyme
Yeast nutrient/energizer
French oak chips
Grape tannin
Calcium carbonate
Answers:
Acid blend adjusts the acid level in your must...to know how much to use, you need to be able to test the pH.
Campden tablets are sodium metabisulfite in tablet form...these are used to kill any bad bugs in the must before fermenting, and to stop a fermentation when you're at the level of residual sugar you're happy with.
Pectic enzyme is used when you're fermenting fruits that are high in pectin (apple juice for example) that will finish with a residual haze...the enzyme breaks down the pectin so the final brew clarifies better.
Yeast nutrient...self explanatory. Yeast needs more than pure sugar to thrive, so this allows for more complete fermentation and less nutritionally stressed yeast and less funky tasting flavors from yeast by-products
Oak chips are added to a finished wine to give it a little oak flavor...like aging in an oak barrel, but instead of putting the wine in a barrel, you put the barrel in the wine.
Grape tannin...adds a little bit of the tannin found in grape skins to help the flavor profile...more advanced stuff you don't need to worry about just yet.
Calcium carbonate is the opposite of the acid blend...it's for reducing the acid levels in your must.
Read up...here's lots of good stuff on making wine at home:
http://winemaking.jackkeller.net/...
http://www.homewinemaking.co.uk/...