Step-By-Step Making Port?

It is fairly simple: when fermentation is at desired sugar level (acutally, start when slightly sweeter (1-2 brix) as there will be some drift after the fortification), add enough alcohol to bring the total alc concentration to 17-19%. Press, then age (in old oak if possible). For a tawny, 5-10 years with an annual racking. For a ruby, 1-2 years with no racking.

The main difficulty comes from estimating the volume of must, which I do by weight.

The calculation for the fortification is fairly straight forward if you are familiar with Peason's Square. I find the calculator on the following website to be rather useful:

clyde

Just out of sheer curiousity, would you mind sharing your source?

When I try making a traditional port next year, I will probably use the canadian version of everclear.

You can find some complete instructions in the Winemaker magazine dec

Good luck Séb

Pretty please could you let me in on your source the high proof brandy - The frozen california Zin I ordered looks to have ended up with a Brix of around

Thanks! Alastair

The guy that is making the brandy is just starting out his business. He said it won't be available for sale until around Christmas. I emailed him for permission to give out his email early. When I hear back from him tomarrow, I'll let the group know. Thanks for the help making a port everyone! Are there any links on the web for making this stuff? It seems like an elusive topic...

I have another querry. Does it take everyone 3-9 hrs for their post to appear on the board?

Thad

Here are links for some info on port wine making.

And links to sites from major contributors to this page!

Good Luck, have fun!

Ideally, for port fortification, you want High Proof brandy in order to minimize the dilution of your port. That is, 160 proof (80% alcohol) or higher is best. Standard brandy, like Christian brothers, is only 80 proof (40% alcohol), so in order to fortify your wine up to 17-19% alcohol, you are adding almost up to 50% brandy and it gets diluted.

If you can't find high proof brandy, look for everclear in your area (95% alcohol).

That's standard for usenet... takes a while for the messages to propegate to each server.

Not standard here. My post show up almost instantaneously.

The op is using google groups which is www based and the post won't ever show up for a period of time. It tells you that when you use it. Usenet works independently.

clyde

Yeah, my posts show up to my own server as soon as I post them, but it will still take some time, although not 3-9 hrs to propegate to the other servers. *shrug*

I use two news servers. One's about 40 miles away, the other is on the other side of the planet. Post will show up from both pretty much instantaneously.

Your post I'm replying to shows that it was posted 45 minutes from now. Now that's fast!! Must've went the opposite way around the globe!

clyde

I'm curious as to why.

Will something that is distilled to 160 or 190 proof really have any flavor left that would change the finished wine?

Andy

Sure it does. In fact, the flavors/aromas are greatly concentrated. It's just that grain spirits have the least amount of flavor of all distillates.

There is great variation in the qualities of unaged brandy depending on the vintage, ventor, etc. There is also a significant difference in the aroma/flavor of everclear compared to brandy, regardless of what the vendor might claim.

BTW, by definition, it's all distilled to 190 proof. Dilution is required to get back to 160, or 80 or whatever.

With that said, the negative organoleptic impact of everclear is much less than what's created from the dilution when using lower concentrations of alc.

clyde

His name is John Stringer. As usual, I have no association with his company, just wanted to pass on this information snipped-for-privacy@stringersorchard.com

I think it will not affect flavor in a negative way, but brandy may affect flavor in a positive way more than everclear, as it does have some.

Thanks for the info. I am a novice and am pretty much speaking mainly from my intuition (which means, I'm talking out of my ass! :-). Anyway, I was under the impression high proof brandy was commonly used, but I certainly do not know for a fact. I know, in my feeble attempts at imitating port wine styles, lower proof brandies diluted the taste of the wine too much for me.

I might be talking out of Greg's ass too, but my sources (class from Christian Butzke of UC Davis), claims that brandy of 77% alc is used in Portugal. Not exactly "low proof" at 154 proof!

Two of the three online documents that Milt posted state the same.

Here in the states many producers use 190 proof unaged brandy, cause that level is most readily available.

clyde

Clyde, Your posts are probably showing instantaneously on your server which posts them to the newsgroup locally and starts the process of updating other servers. It may be that your post might not show up in Australia for sometime. Unless of course you post to your server and see it instantaneously on other usenet servers. That would mean your server is updating others on a frequent basis.

Of course, Google groups is notorious in taking a long time to show posts. Considering the gigs of data posted to usenet every day this is somewhat understandable. It's all in how much cpu time, disk space and network bandwidth they or anyone devotes to usenet.

Don

Well, If Pearson's square is telling me right, 4 parts of wine at about 7-8% (I'm guessing on the fly this would be the alcohol level when brandy would be added) mixed with 1 part brandy to reach an alcohol level of 19% or so would require the brandy be about 70% (140 proof). Hardly low proof like Christian Brothers.