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Bought this yeast from the Internet. Will be using this to make mead yet again. From what I read this yeast is supposed to create a very neutral tasting mead so that the “honey” flavour will be more pronounced in the mead. Well I guess that makes sense, especially if you are using a good quality honey to make your mead in the first place. But then isn’t the honey the most important part of your mead? Poor quality honey will result in a poor quality mead. That is a fact. Of course you can add adjuncts to cover the poor quality honey but it defeats the purpose of mead anyway. So yes, this is the perfect yeast for making good mead. However, the problem here is the Premier Cuvee is a very strong yeast and will add most of the available sugar in your honey water mixture. This will result in a dry mead, something which you will need to consider when making mead. And you will also get a very strong alcohol mead.

Anyway, this is my first time making use of Premier Cuvee for my wines. My first mead was made using bread yeast. Again there are a lot of people who claim that bread yeast will produce off flavours in the mead – something which I could not detect in my first tastings of my mead. Perhaps it is the pseudo effect? Whatever. Hope that it will turn out great. Or at least decent.

5 grams of dry yeast. It is termed “Active Dry Wine Yeast”. It is normally used to make champagne – yes, those stuff which you “pop” the bottle when you are celebrating something. And they are pretty strong stuff too. This is definitely something which you should consider when making your mead because your mead might be dry without too much sweetness.

The reason you need to rehydrate the dry yeast first before you pitch the yeast is to ensure that the “cell walls” of the yeast is strong enough. Remember, the yeast has been the dry state for a long time, it lacks water. Adding water to the yeast so that it can build up its cell walls make sense. If you simply pitch the yeast to the high gravity (aka tons of sugar) must, the yeast might not get enough water to rebuild its cell walls and thus produce off flavours. Always read the instructions on the package. I mean the manufacturers should have the best information and they know their product best. Plus it is always good to give the yeast a little “heads-up” when you make wines or mead. The yeast will reward you for it.

Made in Belgium.

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Currently I have a few small batches of wine going on – pineapple and rumbullion (a fake dark brown sugar wine that is supposed to mimic rum). Both have been raked and transferred to clear bottles so that they will clear a little more before I bottle them. I will be posting some pictures of them soon. The pineapple wine seems to be going very well, I can smell the pineapples in the wine – pretty nice. The colour is a bit off though. Perhaps it is due to oxidation or something. The rumbullion on the other hand smells a bit sour and has this harshness about it. But no worries I will not be throwing them away. It is a crime to throw away alcohol. I will bottle them with the rest and perhaps in a few months time, they might taste great. You will never know – aging the rumbullion might actually produce a decent wine.  And oh, the dates wine turn out pretty nice – not that much in the flavour department but I think it will be a pretty refreshing drink. Not too sure whether I should dilute it so that I can get a wine that can be easily drunk without being too strong in alcohol. The colour of the dates wine is black.

Anyway, for my next batch of wine I will be making yet another mead. One of my friends would like to have a go at mead.  His first time I think. The first one I did using a raw organic honey, which I think will turn out great since the smell and the taste of the actual honey is rather strong. But for my next batch I will be using honey from a China manufacturer. I would like to see what real difference is there when making mead with different types of honey. And of course, the mead I made using the raw honey has a layer of “scum” on the surface which doesn’t seem to go away. The Chinese honey from the supermarket is as clear as a whistle, no sediment to speak off. So yes, it should produce a very clear mead in the end. I think that would certainly help when trying to get newbies to drink mead because we are so used to having very clear drinks. If there are sediments or scum on the surface, we tend to think that the beverage is “spolit”.

I would also be making an apple ice wine. I got the Treetop Frozen Apple Concentrate so I am pretty sure I will be able to make a wine that has probably the same amount of alcohol as normal wines – about 12-14% alcohol. And since it is frozen, I would be able to extract even more sugar from the concentrate. Since the “water” in the concentrate would tend to freeze much earlier than the actual concentrate, I can make use of this science to separate the concentrate from the water – hereby increasing the sugar content even more. And with that I can get Apple Wine. The problem now is getting the correct concentration to make the wine with the desired alcohol content. I guess this makes this type of wine making so fun, all the experiments and testing that goes along with it. Fun. Fermentation is fun.

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This is to be used for making my wines. Yes, surprising isn’t it? When I first started making wine, I didn’t know that wine makers add “acids” to their wine – both to prevent oxidation and to get a little tartness to the wine. Something about the fermentation process removes some of the acid from the fruits and you are left with a slightly dull tasting wine. This acid will help “perk” things up. But usually they add a mixture of acids like tartaric acid, malic acid and citric acid to give it more of a tang. Of course we don’t have such a blend easily available in Singapore, I only found this citric acid in our local supermarket. If I am not wrong, it is used to add more flavour to the Konnyaku Jelly. Amazing, the same concept applies when it comes to making wine. I believe that the citric acid is the cheapest of them all, so it is widely available.

Anyway, I will be adding a little of this to my upcoming wines. Not only does it helps to perks things up, it will help prevent oxidation. And oxidation not only spoils the taste of the wine, for bright coloured wines, it tends to dull the colour. I know that it is the taste that is important, but honestly, we taste with our eyes as well. Wines should look good so that it will appeal to the drinker.

Red Sun Citric Acid. The Malay word for Acid is “Asid”. I wonder whether they are really made from lemons or fruits or this citric acid was created in the lab. Yes, those created in labs are actually much cheaper than those made from fruits. Well, we will never know.

Ingredients – just Citric Acid. Phoon Huat, the bakery supply store. I believe Red Sun is one of their subsidiary or something.

Citric Acid is made from Natural Fruits such as lemon and is commonly found in soft drinks, fruit juices, candy and foods. When added into Red Sun Konnyaku Jelly, it gives a refreshing taste. That is definitely great news. Hope that it will do the same to my wines.  Ciao.

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Apparently the parcel was shipped wrongly, it went to Thailand instead. Not too sure how that happened – the label states Singapore rather clearly and still it was shipped to Thailand. Perhaps the Americans think that Singapore is part of Thailand? I mean if they send to China I would understand but Thailand? This is a first for me. Anyway, I bought a couple of things – cider yeast, wine stoppers, airlock and bung. The cider yeast is to make cider from apple juice, the wine stopper is for me to cork the wine bottles and the airlock and bung are for fermentation. The bung is corked to the container and there is a small opening for the airlock. This way, the fermentation can be done without any air getting into the wine. Airlock only allows air (in this case carbon dioxide) to escape without letting anything in. Pretty smart little item.

Here you here the Young’s Cider Yeast. 5 g of yeast. You don’t really need that much yeast. Once you “pitch” the yeast, they will grow and grow. Soon you will find your entire container full of yeast and they will then help turn your apple juice into hard cider. Cool right?  Hard Cider is made from apples and it is supposed to be refreshing and crisp. I had made hard cider (apple wine) before and it didn’t turn out right. Tastes a bit dull without the refreshing taste and is rather tart. Probably because the wrong type of yeast and the poor quality of apple juice I used. It seems that the packaged apple juice in Singapore is of rather poor quality.

Hmm….this is special Bayanus strain, especially selected for its ability to produce exceptional crisp and refreshing ciders. Very nice. From what little I have read about this yeast, it should be the same as Champagne yeast, that is why it ferments so well to create that “crisp” and refreshing taste. This small pack of yeast is enough for 23 litres of cider. Just amazing isn’t it. Such a small package of yeast you can ferment 23 litres of hard cider. I love the wonders of fermentation. Anyway, what you do is sprinkle the sachet contents onto the surface of the juice, wait 15 minutes and then stir. And then you wait for a few days and you will get Hard Cider. Delicious. Product of the UK.

Here you have a pack of wine stoppers. The problem with them is they are not meant to keep for years, unlike the traditional corks that have often been used in traditional wine bottling. The reason I bought them is because most of the wines I am making do not require a long period of aging, so they will do. For those which requires long aging periods, I will use my trusty old corker.

Yes, it looks like they have been made from rather cheap plastic. But it should work. Hopefully it does not allow oxygen to enter and ruin my wines. And it is more convenient as well. Just plug the stopper into the wine bottle and you are done. The corker requires you to plug in the corks deep into the wine bottle – that would require a lot of strength and some experience in corking.  And you will need some corks which have been soaked in water for some time. Troublesome. As you know I am lazy and I do not want to do more work than is necessary.

Here you have the airlock and bung. This is the Buno Vino Bung which is stopped to be a “step-up” to the conventional bung. It has a wider length to allow for a wider range of openings with an additional of lip to prevent the bung from falling into the fermenter. The airlock comes with a cap and is the standard one-piece (or two -piece) airlock. What you do is add water into the airlock. As air (carbon dioxide) is forced into the airlock from the bottom, the water is pushed up and once the air escape, the water falls back, stopping any air from entering. Ingenious device. That cap is just to prevent too much evaporation so that the airlock would not go dry (which is a bad thing!).

Another view. These are pretty cheap stuff – just plastics. However these are niche items so it will definitely cost more. I bought 4 sets each for my wine making experiments. Since I make small batches, I am not wasting too much if they don’t turn out right. Overall not too expensive if you buy online. I think if you want to start getting into wine making, you could try online especially eBay. It is a great resource for find brewing equipment. Singapore has a few wine/beer brewing shops you might want to check out – ibrew and homebrew. If you live nearby, they are also a convenient resource.

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No surprise here, got another wine brew going on.  Maybe too much free time on my hands which is kind of rare for me. But hey, I am not complaining here. It is actually quite good to have some free time and not to have much worries at all. In Singapore where nearly everything you can be stressful, this respite is good. Anyway, I had started this about 3 weeks ago. It is made from dates syrup (concentrated dates) and left to ferment as per normal. What is surprising is that the fermentation went on for the entire 3 weeks. Perhaps I added a little too much dates syrup or something as even now there are still some bubbling going on. At Singapore’s temperature this is very rare. Not to mention, I had add an entire pack of Montrachet Yeast that was meant for 23 litres of must. I am guessing it could be that dates are much harder to ferment due to having more complex sugars or something. There seem to be a lack of information of fermentation of dates on the Internet, so I am not too sure the reason.

Remember, this is made from dates syrup which is most likely dates boiled down into a syrup form. So yes, it is blackish. You can find dates syrup in those Indian stores selling more traditional Indian foodstuff. The dates syrup isn’t exactly sweet and it has this bitter aftertaste probably from the skin and pith. I am not too sure how the wine will turn out though. Going to try it once I bottle the wine. Well even if initially it does not taste nice, we could always age the wine and perhaps get some world class wine after one year of aging. Hahaha, we can always hope right?

If you look carefully, you will see small bubbles forming on the surface. It took amazingly long time to ferment. I am also kind of worried that the fermentation might not be complete and I get exploding bottles. Perhaps I will rack it to yet another container and let it rest for another 2 more weeks or so, just to be safe. I don’t imagine enjoying cleaning up if my bottle breaks or explodes.

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Well guys, as you know I have some free time on my hands these days, so I have been making batches of wine and other alcoholic beverages. You remember a while back I made some Berri Grape Juice Wine and the Welch’s Grape Juice Wine? Now I have made another small batch of wine – this time it is mead or honey wine. Yes, it is made from fermenting honey diluted with water. Of course for the first batch, this is a simple recipe – just honey, water and some yeast. After a few weeks, you will get mead. It is that simple – in fact much easier to do that real wine where you need to crush grapes and so on. This one you just dump the honey into the container, add water and yeast and you are done. Wait a few weeks and you get alcohol.

I got the raw organic honey I bought a while back. But then using raw honey is a problem because it contains a lot of impurities which might not look nice when being bottled. Most people like their beverages to come squeaky clean like what you see in those advertisements. Although I only just began, I could foresee the problem of unsightly mead with sediments floating around. But honestly, the best tasting mead comes from the best tasting honey. And only raw honey will give you the real honey flavour which highly processed honey cannot. Too bad then. This batch will be for me – I think I have some Viking blood in me.

There you have it. It has finished fermenting most of the sugars in the honey and we are now left with mead. It needs about 1 year or so before it can really taste decent enough. If we age it even longer, it should taste even better. But then who can wait that long. I think this mead will be still. I don’t really like carbonated honey wine. Feels a bit off if you show me carbonated mead.

See the impurities? The photo here doesn’t show the small layer of protein or whatever “sediment” or scum floating just on top of the mead. It is going to be a problem when bottling. Nevertheless I hope that it will all settle down to the bottom by the time I bottle it. If not, I think I will just leave it be. From what I read, it won’t affect the mead at all.

Most of us think of mead as the drinks those rough Vikings drink just before they go raiding some poor village In Western Europe. It is mostly to warm up the blood and build up rage or something like that. But from what I know, mead is actually pretty tasty stuff. And not really a rough kind of drink. It just needs to age for some time before drinking – at least one year. Well, I have the time.

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Yes, it has been 2 weeks in the primary fermenter and now I had racked it. Most of the yeast and whatever will be left behind and the wine can then further condition in a clean container. Look at how clear the wine is now. If you have read my previous post about this Welch’s Grape Juice wine, you could see how cloudy (or murky even) the wine was in the beginning. The yeast, whatever sediments moving about in the wine/juice as carbon dioxide is produced by the yeast – that is why the wine is cloudy. Once most of the fermentation has completed, the higher alcohol content (things will tend to sink down in alcohol) of the wine will force the yeast and sediments to settle down at the bottom. That is a good thing because we like our wines clear. Most people relate sediments in wine as being “spolit” or contaminated. But at any rate, yeast in wine might give off-flavours, so it is actually good to remove the wine from the yeast (or lees).

As you can see, the colour of this wine is darker than the first one I made from Berri Dark Grape Juice. If the initial juice is darker, obviously the resulting wine will be darker as well. Oh and the resulting brew is very clear. You probably won’t be able to see that from the picture. Somehow I can’t taste a clear photo of the liquid in the bottle. My skills with the camera needs a lot of improvement. Anyway I feel that this Welch’s might have a lot more flavour than the Berri one. However, I had not yet tried the Welch’s, so I might be wrong. I added a little more sugar to the Welch’s Grape Juice and this Welch’s originally should have more sugars than the Berri – so this should result in some very potent wine.

I am still waiting for my bung and airlock to arrive. It should arrive any day now. But it seems that the postal service is highly unreliable. I remembered about half a year back I bought something from the same eBay seller and it arrived within 2 weeks. But it has been over 2 weeks now, still no sign of the airlocks and bungs. Hopefully it will arrive before Christmas. I will post some photos then.

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I just bottled the Berri Dark Grape Juice Wine I made about 3 weeks ago. It turned out pretty clear which is kind of surprising. I had read that using bread yeast to make wine (or beer or any alcoholic beverage) will result in the wine being cloudy because the yeast isn’t that flocculant compared to wine or bee yeast. But that is that the result I got. I got pretty clear wine. Well, maybe they didn’t use the same type of bread yeast like I used. And oh, I tasted a little of the wine. It was pretty harsh – as expected because it has only been 3 weeks. No where as complex as the wines I had drank before. Even the cheapest wines had better aroma and flavour that this. Hahaha, I think it will be a very cheapo style wine in the end. Maybe the Berri Dark Grape Juice isn’t just cut out for making wines? Probably need about 3 months to age before I can taste something decent in this one. And that is what I plan to do – age it in the bottle for 3 months and then have a go at it again. As I said I am not expecting this wine to be like those premium fine wines you get at the gourmet liquor store.

Alcohol content is strong. So who says that bread yeast cannot be used to make wines? My few little sips tells me it contains about 10-11% alcohol. Not too shabby for yeast that is meant to make breads right?

I am sorry, the picture isn’t that good. This has been sitting for about a day, there isn’t much of a sediment to speak of. I had racked this wine twice – first from the primary fermenter then to the glass bottle (secondary fermenter). By then it was already pretty clear. At the end of the third week, only a small layer of yeast can be found at the bottom. And when I bottled it, most of the yeast remained at the bottom of the glass bottle.

The next will be the Welch’s Grape Juice Wine. Currently, it is sitting in the glass bottle. I think maybe I will let it sit for about a month before bottling. But all the fermentation should be completed. I don’t even see a single bubble in the glass bottle. I think I add a little more sugar into this Welch’s Grape Juice Wine, so it should be a little stronger than the Berri Dark Grape Juice Wine. The next time, I will keep track of how much sugar I add, instead of estimation.

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I like Welch’s Grape Juice. Made from Concord Grapes, they taste much better than the rest of the packaged grape juice I have tried before. Yes, it taste a tad sweeter but overall I really like the flavour, definitely stronger than the rest. And they claim there is no added sugar as it is 100% grape juice, which is weird since they are made from concentrates. They also claim that within 2 hours of the grapes being picked, they are turned into the concentrates which supposedly locked in the goodness. I would definitely prefer the juice to be fresh instead of in concentrates. The way they make concentrates is most likely from high heat where all the water is being evaporated off, leaving only the thick syrupy sugars and what-not. I think this process damages the flavour and of course some of the vitamins and nutrients.

Anyway, I bought a bottle of Welch’s Grape Juice to make some wine. Yes, wine is made from grapes (or from the juice of grapes). Actually what you need is any type of juice (that isn’t too acidic), you should be able to make wine from it. Add some yeast and you will soon get wine as the yeast eats the sugars and produce alcohol. But if you are looking for premium fine wines, you won’t get it from packaged fruit juices. But if you are looking for some decent wines, actually the wine made from Welch’s Grape Juice is quite decent. This is according to homebrewers who have made their own wine before.

You see how cloudy it is? This is the result of the yeast producing carbon dioxide. Yes, those are the yeast floating in the wine/juice mixture as carbon dioxide is being produced. I did add about a cup of sugar into the juice so as to pump up the alcohol volume to that of a normal strength wine (12-14% ACV).  However, once the sugars are all eaten up and the yeast settles on the bottom, it will become clear again. You can see the difference in the colour from my previous wine made from Berri Dark Grape Juice.

I will be posting the taste test after 3 months. Yes, it will take that long for the wine to be decent. Some commercial wines take like years to mature so 3 months is nothing. What happens is once the simple sugars in the juice has been consumed by the yeast, only the more complex sugars are left. And this is what makes a wine taste good – those complex sugars will be eaten by the yeast slowly and they will produce more complex flavours in the wine. Those simple sugars only produce harsh alcohol, which isn’t going to taste great. Of course aging does not work all the time, it depends on the grapes and whatever sugars are in there. But since Welch’s grape juice is pretty strong stuff, I think it should do well with some aging. Hopefully.

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Well, this is for my next batch of rice wine. Instead of using Glutinous rice, I will be using this shortgrain rice. From my basic knowledge of rice, this kind of shortgrain rice is mainly use as very famous “Sushi” rice that we all love. Of course, this is not from Japan, it is from the United States. Not surprisingly, a lot of shortgrain rice we have in Singapore are imported from the States instead of Japan.  It would be too expensive if it was from Japan. Heck, from what I know, Japan can’t even produce enough shortgrain rice for their own consumption, so I doubt we can find them here. One of the main reasons we use Glutinous rice to make rice wine is because it absorbs water well. The more water absorbed, the more liquid alcohol we get during fermentation. And yes, this shortgrain rice absorbs water well too. Yes, they are sticky when cooked, just like glutinous rice! Hence, I feel that it makes good sense to make rice wine from this type of rice. Oh, yes, Sake is made from Shortgrain rice as well. Can’t really go wrong when the Japanese are doing it themselves.

I bought this from Sheng Siong for about S$4.30 per 1kg pack. Glutinous rice is about half that price. Well, what can I say? The price difference is most likely due to the shortgrain rice being some sort of an exotic item and it is shipped all the way from the United States. Those glutinous rice we have in Singapore usually comes from Thailand. So of course it would be cheaper. One of the main difference between the glutinous rice and this shortgrain rice is well….the shortgrain rice grain is shorter than the glutinous rice. And fatter as well. And if you have eaten Sushi before, you will know that they taste different.

Bought 1 kg of this Okome Shortgrain Rice. Yes, product of USA. Lookie, they have Japanese wordings on the bag. This is called “marketing”!

Back of the 1kg Shortgrain rice bag.

The steps for cooking are nearly the same as normal rice, except for the 20 minute soak. For our normal rice, we seldom soak the rice much since we usually cook the rice in a rice cooker. However, when making the rice wine, I will be steaming the rice the same way as I would for Glutinous rice. We do need the rice to be firm instead of fluffy. Even if the rice is sticky, cooking the rice in a rice cooker, we will definitely find that the rice will somewhat become slightly fluffy. That is why we need to steam the rice.

Yes, steamed rice is nutritious! We are going to make rice wine from it! Wuhahahaha! Anyway, I believe that making rice wine from this type of rice, the taste should be different from the ones made from glutinous rice. If you have tried Sushi rice and glutinous rice before, surely you will notice that there are quite a significant difference in taste. I am pretty sure the rice wine will taste different as well. And I will be trying other types of rice to make my rice wine as well – Basmati Rice (from India/Pakistan), Jasmine Rice, Calrose Rice…..It would be very interesting to see what different flavours would result from the different types of rice used.

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