Natural Wine Fermentation with Wild Yeast. Preventing Problems and Making Incredible Wine
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 5 ก.ค. 2024
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In this video, I will discuss the basics of a successful wild or spontaneous fermentation for the home winemaker. We are fermenting a blend of Merlot and Petit Verdot with the yeast that came in from nature. Wild fermentation has the potential to produce very high quality wines but requires a lot monitoring and occasionally some intervention. There are many ways to improve success when fermenting wild, which we discuss in this video. - วิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี
I do a lot of 'wild' and mixed culture beer fermentation and have since starting doing wine. I also like to run a 'forced fermentation test' with a tiny sample of the wild-fermented wine. The sample is added to a flask on a stir plate under a little bit of heat. You're essentially trying to see if the wild yeast will actually work (giving it a ton of oxygen and ideal heat). You can monitor fermentation of the forced ferment with a refractometer. With my current grapes, the forced ferment sample stalled out at about 7% abv (didn't ferment further for 25 hrs). I didn't want to wait much longer so ended up pitching a small starter of RC212 on the must to make sure it finished out. It should still have some great complexity though since the bulk of the fermentation was wild.
Really excited to follow along and see the comparison of your commercial vs wild yeast wine! And as always, thanks so much for the content and education.
Hi, I belive you suffer of regional problem. The wild organismes who are in your region are not so proper for production of wine. I live in region where the spontanious fermentation produce 70% of the wines. Our wines are so great cause the sorts of grapes react great with our microorganismes. My EXPERIENCE say that the region Is very important for the production of wine and the microorganismes can realy compliment the ready product. This year the fermentation of my wine hapen for 12 days and this is normal, I belive that the weather condition are very significant for good spontanious fermentation.
do you use yeast nutients ?
Excellent content as always. The Halloween touch was quite entertaining. Thanks.
Thanks Jim! Hope it wasn't too "Spooky" for you. Had a lot of fun putting it together.
You are very brave to try Spooky wine (wild yeast). I suspect most “natural wine” actually ferments from yeast floating around in the winery rather than whatever comes in on the grapes. That said, I’ve never tried it. I have made a sourdough starter from flour and water, however, and the idea of cultivating a “house”yeast from grape juice would be interesting. Great video, thanks!
Sourdough and natural wine. Perfect example - sounds the same but the grapes actually contain yeast on the outside of them (white powder). I've tried grape fermented bread too btw, which is just sourdough with a couple grapes in the first fermentation to kickstart it. Eventually tastes like sourdough anyway, but for the first few ferments it is rather different. That also removes some of the risk of growing mold. Cheers
Great creatively done video! And, very informative as always. I'm a beginner and in the two years of trying to make wine I've been trying the 'old world' (European - especially Italy/France) style using only native yeasts on Carignon grapes from Lodi, CA. Those wines turned out 'ok' though this year I have my own vineyard grapes (cabernet sauvignon) and will be trying BDX yeast and Go-Ferm, so I'm still way down on the steep learning curve so have no idea how it will go. Thanks again for all your content...I literally learn tons of info from each of your videos and there isn't anyone else out there I know of that has the quality content that you do. Keep up the great work!
Good idea to experiment with small batches. Had you broken your five gallons into say 12 oz batches, you could have run 50 batches and tried 50 different things.
Great content! I just did my yearly batch, and 1/6 bucket smells nail polisher more than others not sure if it started fermenting before i added the yeast, all other bucket started today from the yeast. So i thought maybe it had too much contact with Oxygen but you suggest it needs more air? I added metasulfite potassium within 24hrs of crushing grapes (bit late maybe) i ordered the malolactic thing never tried before
Very cool artistic intro!
Do you think this would also work with frozen grapes? As you had ordered in one of your videos
Or is there a possibility they if flashed with sulphites prior to being frozen then the natural (wild) ferment may become a problem... ?
I like the idea of diverting a bit of a larger fermentation to try natural fermentation. Thanks for the video as it's an interesting discussion. I have also seen starting with a natural fermentation and finishing with a reliable commercial yeast. Any comments about that?
And just as an aside-I started 30 gallons of Riesling today, and half of it is with Fresco yeast at your recommendation. The other half is Allegro, which I've used before with good success. Garage is 65F so going with that.
Hi Andrew. Yes, intentionally adding a commercial yeast is a good method. You get the benefit of the diversity at the start of fermentation but also a reliable finish. If I had ran into too much trouble getting over the hump at 3-4% alcohol,, I would have pitched a good, competitive yeast to take over.
The fresco is a great yeast. I wish it were stocked by some of the major Winemaking retailers. I would let it stay cool until completion, then rack, sulfite, and top up. I like to give a pretty heavy SO2 dose at the end of fermentation on a white like Riesling. About 80ppm to assure it doesn't go through MLF. From there you can let it clear up and cold stabilize. You probably won't need any more SO2 at the time of bottling which can happen hopefully around January if it clears up. Usually takes about three or four months to take the edge off and is really great by the time summer hits.
I hate the term "natural fermentation". I prefer "feral fermentation". Too many people think packaged yeast isn't natural. It is just gathered in specific places and grown/dried/sold. Starting with a feral fermentation and finishing with a cultivated yeast is a good idea as it can add complexity. An even better idea you did was to start with a small batch to see what is a likely outcome.
Like you, I am always fermenting something so the chances are that most of the "feral" yeast in my wine room are from cultivated yeasts I have used over the years so I am not sure how feral the yeast really is. I really want to try a carbonic fermentation sometime though.
With 21 days on the skins were you afraid of off flavors from the seed tannins?
Nice. From Ukraine.
First brew of anything I made was with wild yeast in a cider. By random chance it was delicious!
Can you explain a bit more about how different airlocks play into the amount of oxygen the wine gets?
Yes, I discuss this in a video titled "Is a Little Oxygen Good for Wine?" From a couple years ago. Hopefully that should mostly answer your questions.
Hello! I’m on day 18 of a natural ferment on Oregon Pinot noir. Brix started at 23.5, got up to 80 degrees and now on day 18 one batch is at 3.5 brix the other is at 1.5. Wine temp is currently at 21 degrees Celsius. I haven’t added anything at all to the wine, splashing it pretty well with each punch down 3-4 times a day. Is it ok/safe to leave it fermenting to completion at this point you think? I haven’t detected any off smells at all. I was considering added some orange juice as a yeast nutrient but I’m not sure if I’m too far along to be doing that. Thank you!
You should be okay to keep it on the skins until completion, as long as the cap is rising. I definitely would not add orange juice to the wine. You don't really want more citric acid than what is naturally in the grapes. It is getting late for a nutrient addition at this point. I normally use Fermaid K or DAP in cases where the must is deficient.
Ok thank you!
Hello! I want to ferment 200 kilograms of red grapes with cultivated yeast, I want the wine to have malolactic fermentation to reduce acidity, if I add sulfur to the crushed grapes before adding the yeast, will malolactic fermentation be hindered?
no, just wait 24 hours after adding sulfites before adding yeast.
I wonder how it would work out by blending some of the wild fermented wine with a similar wine using inoculated yeast, post bulk aging that is - maybe the clean taste of the inoculated fermentation and the funky flavours from the wild fermentation can together produce a balanced yet complex and aromatically bold wine?
That is definitely a consideration! We will see how they progress. The best wine may be some combination of the two.
I have bought wine from a winery in Arizona and it says on the label that it is %100 wild Inoculum.What is that? Also, I got a dog from the animal shelter and he looks like Molly. Do you know what breed she is?
That means it was fermented with the wild yeast that came in on the grapes. A red wine will ferment on its own without the need to inoculate with yeast. You can make great wine with wild yeast but there is also some risk that a bad strain will take hold vs if you inoculate with a competitive strain known to make good wine. Molly is a F1B Labradoodle.
I started making wine.. Didn't know at the time using wild yeast.. I've never had a problem and I've been able to produce some very strong alcohol..
Very fruity,
@trixiek942 pretty strong especially using peaches.. peaches make a very strong wine for some reason.. from 15%-25%
1 cup will have you ringing
2 cups will have you drunk
3 cups will put you to sleep..
@trixiek942 idk still to this day i dont know what im doing differently but i produce a very strong wine maybe it my wine brewing style i tend to double/ triple ferment my wine..
Great intro do you have any other creative intros?
wild yeast apple ciders are better tasting then wine yeast packets
some of the best wines in the world are fermented with wild yeasts. The more you try and intervene in the winery, the lower the quality will be. Wine will never be a natural product, but the least amount of human intervention and addition of chemicals will always produce better wines.
@trixiek942 I’m guessing you’ve never been anywhere in Europe? There’s a lot of natural wineries making some of the best wines in the world, without filling them full of chemicals
what about bayanus bro?? If you used EC1118 in your previous brews thats probably your wild yeast lmao
EC1118 was once thought to be a different species (S. bayanus) but has more recently been categorized as a subspecies or strain of saccharomyces cerevisiae. Lallemand now markets it as S. Cerevisiae var. Bayanus. That thought had crossed my mind though when putting this together. It is probably the most odd strain of S. Cerivisiae available and has some interesting characteristics, as it is somewhat fructophilic where most other strains are glucophilic and will metabolize glucose first, then fructose. Because of that, it makes a great yeast to get a stalled fermentation though since it will eat what other yeasts have left behind.
USA sc
that intro was hilarious
I knew he was going to say, "It's alive!"
all these struggle for simple wine fermentation makes me think that, you might not be at the ideal location for winemaking :)
wild fermentation can get you 15% alcohol Never had any issue
its really risky, usually the wild microbes die out and then you have to pitch. Thats what I do, but I usually just use cultured yeast and get pretty similar wines with no risk and thats the thing, If i bought grapes for $2000 and then a wild ferment ruined them then I lose a ton of grapes.
wild fermentaion is the only way to make wine..... yeast is everywhere!
no
Couldn’t take all the BS “humor”. Just make a video with information.