Petite Sirah Port Recipe
Yield: 4.5 gallons or 20 bottles
Ingredients:
At Crush:
5.5 gallons (55 lbs) macerated Petite juice with skins
15 ml 10% Potassium Metabisulfite solution
4.5g Opti-Red
.45g Lallazyme EX (or other pectin enzyme)
5.85g FT rouge tannin (or other red tannin)
At Fermentation start:
50g American oak chips
50g French oak chips
4.5g Fermaid-K
10g Go Ferm
8 g GRE yeast
At Fortification:
2.3 liters 150 proof Everclear (or other high proof brandy)
At Stabilization and Bulk aging
3 separate ¼ tsp Potassium metabisulfite additions.
Directions:
Prepare fruit: After grapes are crushed, destemmed and treated with 10% Potassium Metabisulfite solution, add enzymes and tannin. Cold macerate for 3 days. Punch down daily.
Start Fermentation: Add oak chips and Fermaid-K. Make a yeast starter with 100 ml water and Go ferm. Mix into juice and set aside. Keep temperature between 75-85 F. Specific gravity should be between 1.080 and 1.1.
Punch down: Punch down for 2 days or until Specific Gravity reaches 1.030.
Fortify: ABV should be 9-11%. Add brandy to raise ABV to between 18-20%. Brandy should stop fermentation, retaining around 30% residual sugar.
Press: After 2 weeks, press wine off skins and oak.
Rack: After 2 weeks, rack wine and add ¼ teaspoon metabisulfite.
Add SO2: At 3 months, rack and add ¼ teaspoon metabisulfite.
Bottle: After 6 months, rack and add ¼ teaspoon metabisulfite. Filter and bottle. Age at least 1 year in the bottle.
Notes:
At fortification, we had just over 4 gallons at 10% ABV. To dilute Everclear with 75% ABV, we blended these quantities using a pearson square:
Credit: Adapted from Northern Brewer.