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Well, I just bottled my Apfelwein yesterday morning. It has been in the fermenter for about 3 weeks already. Yes, I had said that I wanted it to ferment for 4 weeks but due to the fact that next week I will most probably be very busy, I decided to bottle it yesterday. I must say, it was definitely fun. This is the first time I ever done a Apple cider (or Apple Wine) so I was not very sure about all the steps in bottling. But luckily, it was pretty smooth, except the problem with several of the clear bottles which couldn’t be easily capped with the capper I had bought.

I had bottled most of them in the PET bottles (just like for beer) and several in clear 330ml bottles as well as a few in wine bottles. The ones I bottled in the wine bottles will not be carbonated as the wine bottles cannot handle carbonation. All the rest will be fizzy, just like I like it. Yes, I will have to age them for a few more months before I can drink them. When I tasted a sample, the flavour is a bit too harsh, probably because of the high alcohol content in the wine. And it didn’t have the apple flavour I had expected it to have. Worse of all, I did find some buttery aftertaste which is a bit of a turn off. I was warned in the beer brewing about this buttery taste due to the Cote des Blancs yeast, but there wer some in the forum who said that the yeast can produce a very smooth wine. Perhaps they were talking about a few months down the road?

Anyway, I have taken a few photos of the bottled Apfelwein and you can take a look at them below

That’s the Apfelwein in clear glass bottles. Too bad, my capper cannot work for some of these bottles.

That’s two bottles of Apfelwein in glass bottles. The red stuff with handles is the corker used to cork the wine bottles. Basically what you have to do is the put the wooden cork in the “squeezer” and then squeeze it by pushing the two handles together till the cork is small enough. Then you place the corker on the glass bottle and push the handle down to “insert” the cork into the wine bottles. Takes a lot of strength and some good balancing skill but it is doable. Hehehe, if I can do it, most of you sure could. I am skinny and weak remember?

Another view of the Apfelwein in green glass bottles. Well, I am patient enough to leave these Apfelweins alone for a few months and forget about them.Then I will go and have a taste again. Hopefully it will turn out drinkable. I really hate to waste so much of my effort, time and money to make this Apfelwein and nobody is willing to drink them. Let’s keep our fingers cross.

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You guys remembered the Apfelwein (Apple Wine) I am making about 2 weeks back? Well, today I went to check it and realize that it is rather quiet. It has been fermenting furiously for the past 2 weeks like nobody’s business. The airlock was bubbling crazily. However for the last 2 to 3 days, nothing seems to be going on in the must. Silence. Well, this is definitely a good thing. It means that the majority of the primary fermentation is complete. For those who don’t understand, it means that the yeast in the must have finished eating the sugars and converting it to alcohol. But does that mean that it is complete?

No! It is not! To make good alcoholic drinks like beer and wine (most of the time anyway), we should let it age for a while. Why? Well, first of all, if you don’t, the beer/wine will taste green. There will be a slight sourish flavour. And if you are making wine (with a much higher alcoholic content than beer), the alcohol will give your wine a very strong alcohol bite which can taste rather bad. If you allow the beer or the wine to age properly before consumption, you will find the taste smoother and more complex. This is the result of the yeast, after eating away all the basic sugars, will then proceed to consume the more complex sugars which will produce a more “complex” beer/wine. The yeast will also clean up after itself, eating away it’s own by-products which would normally taste unpleasant. And yes, this is definitely desirable. I have always felt that aging really helps the final product. I had an Australian Pale Ale which was aged for 5 months before I had a taste and it was the best I ever tried.

So I will be bottling this Apfelwein when it is ready. From what I read from the forums, it should take about 4 weeks in total for it to ferment in the primary. And after that, I will bottle it and let it age again for another month or so before drinking.  However, I am not sure whether I should carbonate it or not? I wanted it to taste like a real wine but I am afraid that it would be too bland without the fuzziness. Well, I will cross the bridge will I reach it. No point worrying about it now.

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How many of you guys heard before of Glutinous Rice Wine or Jiuniang? It is an traditional Chinese alcoholic drink made from fermenting glutinous rice and it is supposed to be very healthy and nutritious. I have been told that mothers are given small amounts of the rice wine to built up resistant and good health after birth during confinement. Not sure whether this is really that true or not, but who am I to argue with tradition? I mean, if someone gives you alcohol (a sweet nice tasting one at that), why complain? Just drink it. I guess a lot of Singaporean Chinese are just a bit obsessed with this confinement thing, which I think is a bit ridiculous. I mean, what’s the difference between staying in a hot, stinking room and going outside where the air should be much fresher and cleaner other than being allowed to drink rice wine eh?

Well, I have been thinking of making some Glutinous rice wine myself. And from what I read, it isn’t that difficult at all. The recipe just calls from Glutinous rice which is cooked (with a steamer) and allowed to cool. Then after transferring the rice to a fermentation vessel, yeast is added to it. After which a few days later, you will get Glutinous rice wine! It is a cloudy slightly sweet stuff. However, I heard that if you do it this way (without some sort of mold to help convert the rest of the starch to sugar), you will get less alcohol. It should hit about 8% ABV. I believe that if you use the mold (Koji) to help convert the starch in the rice to sugar, you will get a stronger drink. Of couse it will take much longer due to the time it takes to convert starch to sugar by the mold and the corresponding time taken to convert the extra sugars to alcohol.

Oh, and if you are into cooking, this rice wine is used in many Chinese recipes. If you have eaten rice wine chicken or any of those food stuck full with the wine, you will definitely appreciate the wine. Luckily in Singapore, we often have the opportunity to taste such dishes as they are pretty common here. Delicious! Even with the poor quality of food served in Singapore nowadays,the rice wine seems to help camouflage the poor quality chicken and help bring out the exotic aroma of the dish. And when I say it is delicious, I mean it. Once you tasted dishes cooked with rice wine, you will never forget the taste.

The sad part about all these is that not many Singaporeans drink this. When I visit the alcohol beverages section of the local supermarkets, I seldom see rice wine being sold. Yes, there are sake available but even those are few. I guess that is surprising as what the current Japanese craze in Singapore, sake is not even popular. Chinese Rice Wine is usually found in the cooking section of the supermarket.  Well…

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This is just a quick update on the Apfelwein which I am attempting to make. The Apfelwein is currently bubbling happily in the fermentor, which is a good sign. However, it gave me quite a shock yesterday because the must initially had no reaction from adding the yeast. Normally for beer brewing, in just a few hours (the most is like 5 hours) the yeast will start to produce krusen and you can see foam exploding on the wort. But in this case, it was dead quiet for the entire day. Nothing at all. In the evening when I checked the must, I was really surprised. I was then tempted to go and add more yeast into the must as I thought that something was wrong. But luckily, I decided not to. I knew that the Cote des Blancs yeast was a slow fermenter and it probably would take longer for it to get ready to ferment. I was right. Just that I didn’t know it would take so damn long for it to be ready.

This morning when I woke up, I saw small bubbles forming on the must. Unlike the krusen you see when you brew beer, they are just like oily slick bubbles being produced and some of them are floating on the surface of the must. And by afternoon time, it was bubbling strongly. Thank the gods!  You should see the smile I have on my face when I came back to see the airlock bubbling happily away. The only thing I found funny is the smell. I can’t detect any alcohol coming from the airlock, only the sweetness of the apple juice. I had expected some alcoholic aroma but none is detected even when I put my nose close to the airlock.

Maybe it is because the majority of the must still consist of apple juice? And when the carbon dioxide is being forced out, the apple juice smell escapes along with it? And it just a few weeks time, I will be smelling alcohol only? Well, I think that would be the most likely case. The good thing is that I didn’t smell any sulfur, which a lot of brewers complained about. I really don’t think that my neighbours would care to smell sulfur whenever they open their windows for some fresh air. Anyway, it will probably take a few more weeks for the Apfelwein to complete it’s fermentation and for me to start bottling the wine. I will update you guys when I am done. Take care!

27/8/2008 Update: Bubbling very furiously now. The bubbles the yeast creates are pretty massive now. Looks like everything is fine. Vigourous fermentation is good. I have also kept the temperature about 20°C which should be healthy for the yeast.

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Hi there, it is Saturday and this is the day that I will be making my first wine. Well, hopefully it will turn out like wine. For my first try, I will be doing a very simple Apple Wine and the recipe consists of just apple juice which you can easily find in the local stores.However, the apple juice must not contain any preservatives or it will not work as the preservatives will kill off the yeast before it can convert the sugars to alcohol. So, if you are thinking of making your own wine with the juice, the first thing you must look out for is whether there is any preservatives in the juice. I have purchased the apple juice from either Shop n Save or NTUC and in all, it cost me about S$50. Quite reasonable for a wine, right? I also took advantage of any offers when I purchased the juice, so I managed to save a little more. Note that this will be more like a Cider than a real wine, you will need to expect some cidery aftertaste. The word “Apfelwein” is German and thus not to be taken literally.

The recipe for the Apple Wine (Apfelwein) is as follows:

1. 5 litres Ceres Apple Juice
2. 5 litres Marigold Apple Juice
3. 5 litres Harvey Fresh Apple Juice
4. 5 litres VeGood Fuji Apple Juice
5. 4 litres Cyprina Apple Juice
6. 1kg Dextrose
7. 2 pieces Cinnamon sticks
8. Cotes des Blancs Yeast 5 grams (2 packs)

Yes, the recipe is that simple! Everything except the yeast can be found in your local supermarket. You can substitute the glucose for dextrose if you can’t find it. You can purchase the yeast online from eBay. It took about 8 days for the yeast to arrive and it cost like S$13 for 10 packs. Much much cheaper than if you purchased from the local home brew store. But the advantage of buying from the local homebrew store is that the yeast should be viable. Remember, if you buy the yeast from online stores, they will have to travel long distances through harsh weathers to reach you. So the freshness and the quality of the yeast is not assured. However, for me, I took the risk and bought 10 packs from a store on eBay. Their URL is The Bruhaus.

I guess some of you guys might be more interested in the pictures. Well, without further ado, I will start with the pictures!

Aha! All the ingredients necessary to make Apfelwein (except the yeast)! We have 24 litres of no-preservatives apple juice, 1 kg of dextrose as well as cinnamon sticks.

Ceres Apple Juice. That’s right, it is 100% pure apple juice. The colour of the Apple Juice in the picture is much lighter than the colour of the actual apple juice I pour from the pack. What gives?

Cyprina Apple Juice. Yes, again it is 100% natural apple juice. The most costly of the lot. It is about S$2.25 per pack. Smells extremely nice!

Marigold Apple 100% juice. Marigold, probably one of the most famous brands in Singapore. Everywhere you turn, you will see some sort of advertisement from Marigold. Not sure whether this is a good thing or not, but it was on offer when I went to the store a few days back. I got it for S$1.65 per 1 litre pack. Pretty cheap. And surprisingly, it smells quite nice too.

Ya, it’s the VeGood Fuji Apple Juice. It comes with “100% Vitamin C  Daily Intake*”. Not sure what that means? Well, that makes both of us. Anyway, I read through the package and it comes without any preservatives, so this will go into the must as well. However, I didn’t smell any of the Fuji apple sweetness when I poured the juice out.

Harvey Fresh 100% crushed apple juice. I tasted this apple juice before and it tasted damn great. Probably one of the best tasting apple juice I have ever tried before. Not sure how it will as a wine though.

That’s 1 kg of dextrose! Yes, this will ensure that anyone drinking the Apfelwein will be drunk in warp speed. Come on, don’t tell me that you drink wine to become more sober? That’s like “jumping off from a 25 storey building because you want to touch the sky”!

From what I read, the resulting Apfelwein will be pretty dry and tart, so adding a few sticks of cinnamon into the fermenter will ensure that there will at least be some sweetness.

Yes, it is Cinnamon Stick.

Sorry for the blurred pictures. Not too sure what happened. Maybe I got too excited when I was doing the wine. That’s two packets of Cote des Blancs dry wine yeast.

That’s me rehydrating the yeast. Just use a sanitized container, add some clean water and then pour the packets of yeast into the water. Give it a gentle stir and allow it to rest. Oh, you will need to cover it as well so as to prevent bacteria or other spores from contaminating the yeast. You don’t want that to happen!

After about 25 minutes of pouring the apple juice into the fermentor, I am all done. Took me quite a while because I wanted to ensure that the juice is not split out so I poured slowly.

A close up view of the must. Well, the colour is not what I expected but, hey it should be correct. I really doubt that there is anything which can go wrong with the recipe. Perhaps that’s just the colour of a lot of apple juice.

After pouring in the rehydrated yeast, I then cover the fermentor and will allow it to ferment for about 4 weeks. Hopefully by then it will become a hard cider and kick a lot of drinkers’ asses. I am keeping my fingers cross. I will also be spending a lot of time sniffing the airlock. I read that this will give off a lot of sulfur which reminds people of “rhino farts”. Hopefully since I have added to the must some yeast nutrients, there won’t be any “rhino farts”. Don’t want the neighbours complaining.

And this is the end of my first Wine Making adventure. I will keep you guys informed about the outcome of this Apfelwein. Please take note that the original recipe was taken from Edwort’s award winning Apfelwein recipe. Basically it is the same except with the different apple juice as well as yeast. Credit goes to Edwort.

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Yes! It’s now time for me to do Wines! I have been brewing beer since February this year and everything is fine and dandy but I think that wine making is definitely more interesting that beer brewing. Of course, I am not saying that beer brewing is easy or anything, just that I find wine making more interest and the resulting beverage certainly more appealing to me. Well, I am sure that there are a lot of people out there who disagree with me and in Singapore, I am sure this is the case. You don’t see a lot of people drinking wine. They drink mostly beer.  But hey, I say each to their own. If you think that beer is a better beverage than wine, then by all means, go ahead and drink beer.

Anyways, the home brew store (that is iBrew) which sells the beer ingredients is also selling wine making stuff. However, if you visit their website, you will not find any information about their wine making equipment or ingredients listed there. I am not sure why but I guess it should be because their inventory is not finalized yet. Or perhaps they are just too lazy to update their website. Who cares? You can email to the owner directly and ask for the prices. He will be glad to assist you in every way possible. It is just too bad that the other homebrew store doesn’t sell any wine making equipment or ingredients. Okay, so last night, the stuff I purchased arrived and I have taken some photos of them.

Sorry about some of the poor quality photos. I took them in a hurry and it was at night, so the lighting is bad.  Please endure.

That’s the Pasteur Champagne yeast from Red Star. S$6.50 per pack! And it consist of only 5 grams of yeast. Talk about monopoly….

Back of the Pasteur Champagne yeast pack. They have some instructions for you to read up. Basically it is the same as the Cote des Blancs yeast – rehdyrate the yeast. If I were you, I would follow the instructions as well. Nothing too difficult to do.

Wine bottle corker. Not sure how it works exactly. I guess the handle is for you to push the cork down into the bottle.

Sorry for the blurry photos.  I am guessing that you open the two handles to put in the cork at the bottom.Then to ensure that the cork stays in place, you will have to tighten the two handles together. Yes, that’s me guessing.

Ya, that’s the hole where you put the cork and if you push on the single handle, the cork will be forced into the bottle. Again, I am guessing. But it makes sense right? And if I don’t try, I will never learn. That’s the lesson of life I am telling everybody to listen to.

Corks! Not too sure whether they are natural corks or synthetic ones. Anyway,  it doesn’t matter as I am sure that the Apple Wine I am doing won’t be needing such a long aging time.

These are the shrink things you put at the top of the bottle after you “corked” them. I believe that you use a hairdryer and make them shrink fit onto the bottle top. It comes with many many colours but I chose gold because it is very close to the Apple Wine colour. I bought 10 of these.

I bought another Straight-A Cleanser as I have used finished my previous batch. I have 10 used wine bottles to clean and this cleanser will definitely come in handy. Remember, this is a cleanser and not a sanitizer. The difference is that this clears away dirt and grim from the surface, which a sanitizer kills bacteria or spores on the surface. So unless you are planning to use a lot of elbow grease, this will help you get rid of those stubborn grim on your brewing equipment.

Got this 1kg of dextrose to add to my apple juice. This will add some strong alcoholic kick to the wine. If I am not wrong, for a 23 litre batch, this will pump up the alcoholic content by 2%. Who am I to say no to more alcohol?

That’s the used wine bottles which the owner of iBrew provided me with. Not it’s not free, I had to pay 50 cents for each. Ahhh…..businessman meh. Anyway, if you have any lobang for me to get free wine bottles, please give me a hoot. Very much appreciated.

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Yup, the one I purchased from eBay and sent all the way from the US! It has finally arrived! Considering that I had purchased this pack just on 12th August and it arrived today 20th August, I am quite impressed. It took just 8 days for the pack to ship from the US to Singapore. Not bad, I am thinking that I could be buying more stuff from the Internet, especially if the stuff from my local homebrew store is too damn expensive (well just like yeast).

And with the arrival of the yeast means that I am on track to make the Apfelwein this weekend. I will be using two packs of this Cote Des Blancs yeast to make what will hopefully be some very fine Apple Wine. I read that using Cote Des Blancs yeast will produce a very smooth wine which I am very keen to try. But I have also heard some bad things like there will be sort of like a buttery aftertaste and that it takes very long to ferment finish. Well, for that reason, I will be adding yeast nutrients to the must as well using 2 packets of yeast. That should give the yeast a good boost and hopefully, it will not produce that buttery flavour in the wine. Who likes wine that taste like oily butter anyways? Definitely not me.

Well, I have added some pictures of the yeast.

That’s 10 packets of Cote des Blancs yeast! Should last me quite a while. Of course, it will mainly depend on whether the result of the wine is decent enough to continue making Apfelwein.

Red Star Cote de Blancs in all it’s glory. It is an active dry wine yeast and Levure Oenologique Seche et Active, whatever that means. Oh, it is also Kosher, so it should be alright for Jews to use this yeast. And oh, the manufacturer is Red Star. I believe that they are related to the former Soviet Union. The 5 gram pack should be enough for 23 litres of wine, but we have 10 packs and it’s cheap, so why not use 2 packs to ensure we get the best results.

The back of the yeast packet with instructions. Basically, they are telling you to rehydrate the yeast, which I think I will be doing. It is always good to rehydrate your yeast in order for your yeast to gain enough water to rebuild their cells before you pitch it and shock the hell out of it in the sugar rich must. Sort of like getting it more prepared for work. Well guys, this is the stuff that will be making all those precious alcohol we all love so much. So let’s give them all the respect they deserve.

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Well guys, I am looking for wine bottles. Yes, it must be glass and yes, it should be good looking. Since my local homebrew store doesn’t carry them butI was told that it can be easily found in the backlanes of restaurants and cafes. However the problem is that I don’t have a car and it’s going to be a hassle for me to go around these places to look for bottles. Not to mention how to transport those wine bottles back home. Hey, it’s glass and taking the bus with glass bottles in your bag is going to attract a lot of attention and even some breakage. Don’t you just hate the sound of glass “clanking” together?

I was thinking of asking those recycling companies whether they will deliver those bottles. I have browsed through the ENA website and there are quite a number of companies dealing with recycled bottles. Again, the problem I foresee is that the amount of bottles I want is just too little for them to even bother. And what about the price of those recycled bottles? They would probably make way way more profit selling the bottles to bigger customers than delivering them to me.

Ahhh…too bad. It’s surprising that the “bottleneck” in me making some Apple Wine is the lack of wine bottles. Never did I expect the problem to be the bottles which is supposed to be something very common. But I guess if life is that easy, we would all be walking around with silly big smiles in our faces. And it makes life interesting.

*21-8-2008 Update: Looks my homebrew store owner have several used wine bottles for sale. I am getting them from him. Using some cleanser and sanitizer, it should be as good as new. Hopefully.

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I have been thinking about making wines for a while now. I have always wanted to make wines since my younger days when I travelled to Asutralia and New Zealand and saw how they make wines there. Of course, I will not be using wine presses and all those, but most likely, it will be using Wine Kits or just fresh juice. Heard that it takes a lot of patience to make a decent wine. Most wines needs to be racked and racked again for about 1 year or so before they are drinkable. Yes, there are “6-weeks” wine kits available out there too, so I should be trying them out too.

Anyways, I will be making most of the wines for my friends. I think if you use a wine bottle, it will look very presentable as gifts. In fact, you can easily make it look like from a commercial wine from some winery in Australia with just a wine bottle capsule and some very nice labelling. And from what I see from the stores, the price for the cheapest wine you can find is about S$20 or so. I think I can make about 34 bottles of such wines with about S$180. Well, that doesn’t include the equipment and accessories like wine corker and so on. Still, that’s a lot of savings!

What do you guys think? It is now legal to make wine in Singapore and this should be a very cool hobby. Who would have thought that you could be making your own wine in Singapore and giving them away as presents. Furthermore, you yourself could be enjoying a cup of wine now and then. And enjoying fine wines doesn’t need to be in the domain of the rich anymore.

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Yup, you guys must fed up to hear me saying that I will be doing Edwort’s Apfelwein time and again but yet I was still making beer. Trust me, I am quite fed up as well. What to do, my friends wanted beer. But this time, I am quite sure that I will be finally making Edwort’s Apfelwein and with a twist. One of my friends had bought an Ice Apple Wine which he claimed tasted extremely nice and he wanted to find something smiliar to it. I didn’t actually drank it as he had already finished drinking the entire bottle. If I am not wrong, the wine is from Pinnacle and you can read more about this wine in this link. Anyway, from the site, it states that it is made up of 6 varieties of apples blended together. This got me thinking that instead of using just one type of apple juice to make the Apfelwein, perhaps I could use several different brands of apple juice as a blend? I was sourcing NTUC and Sheng Shiong and other local stores and I discovered that there are indeed a lot of different types of apple juice being sold. Initially I wanted to do an Apfelwein using Fuji apple juice from Vecool, but now I am thinking of using the Vecool juice as the base (majority of the blend like 50%) while mixing with 4-5 other types of apple juice. I am sure that this will turn out interesting.

Anyway, this should be the recipe for the Apfelwein:

1. 10 litres of Vecool Apple Juice (Fuji Apple Juice)
2. 2 litres of Marigold Apple Juice (100% Juice)
3. 3 litres of Ceres Apple Juice
4. 4 litres of Cyprina Apple Juice
5.  2.3 litres Berri Apple Juice
6. 2 litres Just Juice Apple Juice
7. 2 x 5g packs of Red Star Cote de Blanc Yeast
8. 1kg of Dextrose
9. Yeast nutrients

The 1kg of dextrose should add a little more alcoholic kick to the entire thing. I just hope that it won’t thin the wine too much till it becomes like drinking plain water. The yeast nutrients should help the yeast along as it is known that apple juice don’t provide enough nutrients to the yeast for a healthy fermentation. I also used 2 packs of yeast instead of just one. The reason is that I don’t want the wine to taste too cidery, although it is supposed to be a hard cider. I would like it to taste more like a wine instead. I think the most likely reason for the cidery taste is due to unhealthy yeast. Note that all the juice have to be free from preservatives or it won’t work as the preservatives will kill off the yeast before it can do it’s work.

Now only if the local home brewing shop starts carrying wine bottles and corks, everything would be great. Too bad, we don’t have any stores in Singapore selling these wine making equipment. I will have to bottle my wine in either glass beer bottles or PET bottles. It certainly doesn’t look that nice.

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