Even though this is just really for me, I feel bad that I haven't updated this in over a year. I'm sorry.... me. But, I'm still happily making alcoholic beverages for many to enjoy, so I guess it's still a win there! The bouchet is.......... odd, but I'll get to that later. The blueberry was bottled and was FANTASTIC (better than the blackberry), and I did another batch of the Honningbrew Mead, but remembered NOT to over-clove it this time. I did, however, use cheaper apple juice, which had more sugar than I was counting on. This made the specific gravity WAY higher than I anticipated, so while the ABV is still around 16-17%, it ended sweeter. I'm ok with this, though the fiance was less so.
Oh yeah, I'm engaged now. :-p For a few months, at least. Probably the next blog will be saying "husband". But that's part of the reason why I haven't updated this. LOTS of non-wine-making related things happened, so blogging about it went by the wayside.
We've also gotten in to beer making, and have one batch (a Hefeweizen) bubbling in its primary. The Saison was bottled last weekend, so it'll be ready in a few weeks. I have plans to do at least a Dubbel and an Oktoberfest this fall, and a good stout or porter in the wintertime. I did a porter of my own last winter and it was absolutely FANTASTIC. We've started getting our beer kits from Schoolhouse Beer, which is a homebrew and craft beer store that's just a few miles away from the house. They are seriously awesome people and I highly suggest going to them if you want beer kits. We've made 2 from them so far (a session IPA and the porter), and 2 more are in the works (the Saison and the Hefeweizen). Each one has been fantastic, and way better than any other kits we've tried. So give them a look!
Wine/mead plans for the summer:
Mixed berry (blackberry/blueberry/raspberry) mead or wine if possible, if I can get to the u-pick farm to get them.
Possibly re-try the prickly pear wine, this time keeping an eye on the specific gravity so I don't have 17% ABV ungodly sweet ew.
As for the bouchet, it is odd. I at first over-ginger'd it (Eric says I should name it "Ginger Your Face". I am not opposed to the idea) so it was very very overpowering. Also I may have boiled the honey a bit too long as it had a "burned" aftertaste to it. The strange part is that....... it looks like Coke. It smells like Coke (apparently one of Coke's secret ingredients is cardamom). It even TASTES a bit like really really flat Coke that's highly alcoholic. I took it out to my good and wonderful friends at Boutier Winery, and Victor suggested I add some licorice. While I'm not a fan of black licorice, I could see why he suggested it, and so I've dropped a 1.5'' stick in to it to let it get some of that flavor. Eric likes it and says it should be bottled eventually. I'm still on the fence. It's mellowed CONSIDERABLY since the "Ginger Your Face" time, but I'm still not sold.
I may try it again this summer as well, but not boil the honey as long, and using different spices. I don't think the "chai" part is a good idea. Ooooooo maybe I should dilute in apple juice! And do an apple pie spiced bouchet!
SO MANY IDEAS!!
Hopefully I don't forget to blog about them!
Saturday, May 7, 2016
Saturday, February 28, 2015
Vanilla Chai Bouchet
Yeah it's been a while. Just been racking, and honestly completely forgetting about, all the stuff I have going on. Life went "BOOM!" and so blogging about the wine went by the wayside. But I'm back for today!
I had some really fantastic news happen this week, and decided to celebrate with trying a recipe I'd been told about, but was always too terrified to try. With things going so well, I figured "Why the heck not?!" and forged on ahead. Just like what's going on in life, I was very apprehensive, excited, terrified, and filled with a sense of "What am I DOING?!". And just like life, I think I've made the right decision.
I'm attempting to make a vanilla chai spiced bouchet. I first heard of a bouchet when I had emailed the wonderful person behind the Game of Thrones food blog (naturally named after the Inn at the Crossroads) to send my Season 4 premier dinner. I off handedly mentioned that I was sad my spiced apple cyser wasn't ready, but mainly wanted to go "OMG look at what I made thanks to you, you are so awesome!" So I was completely FLOORED that she replied wanting to know more about this cyser of mine. We chatted a bit via email, and she suggested I try to make a bouchet next. Considering it came so highly recommended from someone I was geek-squeeing over corresponding with, naturally I *had* to do it sometime.
A bouchet is a "burnt-honey mead", and most people find it with a very very *very* old recipe that's hard to parse into modern speak. It essentially is boiling honey until it's caramelized (but not an actual caramel. No butter or cream is added.) and then adding water or juice to dilute it to your desired specific gravity and volume. Then proceed with wine making as usual. The boiling and caramelizing of the honey darkens it a LOT and also gives everything tastes of toffee, marshmallow, and caramel. All things I really *really* wanted to make into a mead. Being that you're pretty much making molten sugar, I was more than a bit terrified about burning myself, ruining pots, and the like. So I did a *lot* of internet research.
My geek-squee-causing correspondent also runs a medieval brewing blog called Game of Brews, and had posted about the bouchet, as well as the original recipe she followed. (http://www.gameofbrews.com/brewing-bouchet-burnt-honey-mead-1393/). The 1393 recipe is:
“BOUCHET. To make six sesters of bouchet, take six pints of fine sweet honey, and put it in a cauldron on the fire and boil it, and stir continually until it starts to grow, and you see that it is producing bubbles like small globules which burst, and as they burst emit a little smoke which is sort of dark: and then stir, and then add seven sixths of water and boil until it reduces to six sixths again, and keep stirring. And then put it in a tub to cool until it is just warm; and then strain it through a cloth bag, and then put it in a cask and add one chopine (half-litre) of beer-yeast, for it is this which makes it the most piquant, (and if you use bread yeast, however much you like the taste, the colour will be insipid), and cover it well and warmly to work. And if you want to make it very good, add an ounce of ginger, long pepper, grains of Paradise and cloves in equal amounts, except for the cloves of which there should be less, and put them in a cloth bag and throw in. And after two or three days, if the bouchet smells spicy enough and is strong enough, take out the spice-bag and squeeze it and put it in the next barrel you make. And thus you will be able to use these same spices three or four times.” -Le Menagier de Paris, France, 1393
Thankfully, I didn't need to translate all that to modern speak. The great part is that it's a pretty good description of what to look for as you're boiling the honey. Plus, there were pictures on the Game of Brews site. I do love pictures of what to expect.
I didn't want to make this exact recipe, though. I wanted something quite a bit stronger, so the beer yeast was right out, and I wanted a good strong 14% ABV or higher mead like my cyser. So to the internet I went! I found a ton of great posts and recipes (that I totally did not bookmark so I have no way to link back to them) that gave me the basic ratio of 3lbs honey per gallon. So to the farmer's market I went to get 9lbs of honey! Since this was going to be an experimental batch, and the honey was going to be caramelized to give more tones of toffee, marshmallow, and caramel, I wasn't picky on the type of honey. Local wildflower honey was the cheapest, so I went with that:
See how gorgeously empty that is? I am a bloody genius, I tell you. I was thinking the night before how to get all the honey out without having to hold it there, or rinse it out with water because I wanted JUST honey. I came up with the idea of rubber bands and kitchen utensils. And it worked like a charm.
I'm bloody brilliant I tell you.
After all 9lbs went in... we watched some anime.
After we watched some anime, then it was time to hopefully not cause 3rd degree burns. Turning on the stove and starting to stir. I had been warned that honey expands A LOT when heated, so I used Boyfriend's beer brewpot which holds 5 gallons. 9lbs of honey didn't even come up to a gallon, so I figured I was good.
It looks dark, but it's not. It's just a LOT of honey.
It took a while to get it going, but it was weird feeling how the honey got easier and easier to stir as time went on. It makes sense chemically, but it was still weird to feel . Eventually, it started to get opaque, and oddly, lighten up.
Seriously got to a very light butterscotch color. Note that it took 15 minutes to just get it to THAT stage. And that was when the fun started. It started boiling, foaming and EXPANDING!
You can see it starting to darken as well as how much it expanded. I was pretty much stirring non-stop at this point. And it took all of one minute to go from gorgeous butterscotch to "OMG BOIL". And then 5 minutes to get darker and start puffing up. I'll admit, I burned myself a few time. Molten honey is HOT! This project is currently the one that's been the most personally painful. However, my house now smells like toffee and marshmallows, so I guess it's a trade off.
Eventually, the color darkened and I felt it was time to stop. It was kinda scary looking then.
25 minutes of constant stirring and burning fingers. If I stopped stirring for more than a few seconds, it would puff up to over the 4 gallon line as you can see on the pot. It got BIG.
I tried to take samples out to show the progression of the color, but my plate got messy. Starting at the 6 o'clock position, go clockwise (mostly). There's one splat at the top that's of the finished product. But you can see how it does get darker.
The final color was a bit darker as it kept cooking while I was trying to add the water to cool it down and dilute. That was......... fun. I had to have the lid on and slowly funnel water down the side and then take the funnel out and hold the lid on while the whole pot shook explosively. Once again, thank you to all the internet research for warning me that water + hot honey = explosions.
Once I was able to pour water and have it NOT explode, I poured enough to make sure it was all dissolved in the water and no hard candy bits wold be forming if I walked away. The cold water also cooled things off to be pourable. There were SOME bits on the bottom, but I added some water and heated things up to dissolve most of them.
When I dissolved what I could, and added it to the bucket, the volume was a bit over 2 gallons. So I added cold water until just a bit over 3, and hoped my starting specific gravity wouldn't be too low. I was worried because I used 9lbs of honey and 2 1/2 gallons of apple juice for the cyser, and that ended at about 16.5% ABV. I wanted something like that, but apple juice has a LOT of sugar in it as well, which I wouldn't be getting by just adding the water. Luckily, I didn't have to worry too much.
1.102. I would have liked higher, but that will give me about 13.5% or so after all is said and done and dilutions from racking etc. Not quite the 15% I wanted but still a good hearty mead.
My one issue so far is the yeast I was planning to use I've had for a bit too long and the use by date was last month. They've also been in the fridge for the last year or so, so I'm not sure if they'll work. At worst, they don't, and I run by one of the beer and wine stores and get another sachet of them tomorrow or Monday.
I'm also going against my usual grain and NOT fermenting with the spices I want to use. I'll add them later in the secondary while the mead is clearing, and not while it's actively fermenting. I really don't have any idea as to how much I want to add, but my thoughts are:
1 vanilla bean, split with the seeds scraped out and in to the mead as well.
3-4 sticks cinnamon
1oz cloves
3-4 whole nutmeg
2oz cardamom
1oz white peppercorn
3-4 anise star
3 inches peeled and sliced fresh ginger
I'll add those when things go in to the secondary and taste after a month. I feel that is a small enough amount of spice that I can increase if needed, and I won't over spice initially. I hope.
So far, the yeast aren't doing anything, so I have a feeling I'm going to be heading to one of my local brew stores tomorrow to get another packet. Ah well!
I had some really fantastic news happen this week, and decided to celebrate with trying a recipe I'd been told about, but was always too terrified to try. With things going so well, I figured "Why the heck not?!" and forged on ahead. Just like what's going on in life, I was very apprehensive, excited, terrified, and filled with a sense of "What am I DOING?!". And just like life, I think I've made the right decision.
I'm attempting to make a vanilla chai spiced bouchet. I first heard of a bouchet when I had emailed the wonderful person behind the Game of Thrones food blog (naturally named after the Inn at the Crossroads) to send my Season 4 premier dinner. I off handedly mentioned that I was sad my spiced apple cyser wasn't ready, but mainly wanted to go "OMG look at what I made thanks to you, you are so awesome!" So I was completely FLOORED that she replied wanting to know more about this cyser of mine. We chatted a bit via email, and she suggested I try to make a bouchet next. Considering it came so highly recommended from someone I was geek-squeeing over corresponding with, naturally I *had* to do it sometime.
A bouchet is a "burnt-honey mead", and most people find it with a very very *very* old recipe that's hard to parse into modern speak. It essentially is boiling honey until it's caramelized (but not an actual caramel. No butter or cream is added.) and then adding water or juice to dilute it to your desired specific gravity and volume. Then proceed with wine making as usual. The boiling and caramelizing of the honey darkens it a LOT and also gives everything tastes of toffee, marshmallow, and caramel. All things I really *really* wanted to make into a mead. Being that you're pretty much making molten sugar, I was more than a bit terrified about burning myself, ruining pots, and the like. So I did a *lot* of internet research.
My geek-squee-causing correspondent also runs a medieval brewing blog called Game of Brews, and had posted about the bouchet, as well as the original recipe she followed. (http://www.gameofbrews.com/brewing-bouchet-burnt-honey-mead-1393/). The 1393 recipe is:
“BOUCHET. To make six sesters of bouchet, take six pints of fine sweet honey, and put it in a cauldron on the fire and boil it, and stir continually until it starts to grow, and you see that it is producing bubbles like small globules which burst, and as they burst emit a little smoke which is sort of dark: and then stir, and then add seven sixths of water and boil until it reduces to six sixths again, and keep stirring. And then put it in a tub to cool until it is just warm; and then strain it through a cloth bag, and then put it in a cask and add one chopine (half-litre) of beer-yeast, for it is this which makes it the most piquant, (and if you use bread yeast, however much you like the taste, the colour will be insipid), and cover it well and warmly to work. And if you want to make it very good, add an ounce of ginger, long pepper, grains of Paradise and cloves in equal amounts, except for the cloves of which there should be less, and put them in a cloth bag and throw in. And after two or three days, if the bouchet smells spicy enough and is strong enough, take out the spice-bag and squeeze it and put it in the next barrel you make. And thus you will be able to use these same spices three or four times.” -Le Menagier de Paris, France, 1393
Thankfully, I didn't need to translate all that to modern speak. The great part is that it's a pretty good description of what to look for as you're boiling the honey. Plus, there were pictures on the Game of Brews site. I do love pictures of what to expect.
I didn't want to make this exact recipe, though. I wanted something quite a bit stronger, so the beer yeast was right out, and I wanted a good strong 14% ABV or higher mead like my cyser. So to the internet I went! I found a ton of great posts and recipes (that I totally did not bookmark so I have no way to link back to them) that gave me the basic ratio of 3lbs honey per gallon. So to the farmer's market I went to get 9lbs of honey! Since this was going to be an experimental batch, and the honey was going to be caramelized to give more tones of toffee, marshmallow, and caramel, I wasn't picky on the type of honey. Local wildflower honey was the cheapest, so I went with that:
See how gorgeously empty that is? I am a bloody genius, I tell you. I was thinking the night before how to get all the honey out without having to hold it there, or rinse it out with water because I wanted JUST honey. I came up with the idea of rubber bands and kitchen utensils. And it worked like a charm.
I'm bloody brilliant I tell you.
After all 9lbs went in... we watched some anime.
After we watched some anime, then it was time to hopefully not cause 3rd degree burns. Turning on the stove and starting to stir. I had been warned that honey expands A LOT when heated, so I used Boyfriend's beer brewpot which holds 5 gallons. 9lbs of honey didn't even come up to a gallon, so I figured I was good.
It looks dark, but it's not. It's just a LOT of honey.
It took a while to get it going, but it was weird feeling how the honey got easier and easier to stir as time went on. It makes sense chemically, but it was still weird to feel . Eventually, it started to get opaque, and oddly, lighten up.
Seriously got to a very light butterscotch color. Note that it took 15 minutes to just get it to THAT stage. And that was when the fun started. It started boiling, foaming and EXPANDING!
You can see it starting to darken as well as how much it expanded. I was pretty much stirring non-stop at this point. And it took all of one minute to go from gorgeous butterscotch to "OMG BOIL". And then 5 minutes to get darker and start puffing up. I'll admit, I burned myself a few time. Molten honey is HOT! This project is currently the one that's been the most personally painful. However, my house now smells like toffee and marshmallows, so I guess it's a trade off.
Eventually, the color darkened and I felt it was time to stop. It was kinda scary looking then.
25 minutes of constant stirring and burning fingers. If I stopped stirring for more than a few seconds, it would puff up to over the 4 gallon line as you can see on the pot. It got BIG.
I tried to take samples out to show the progression of the color, but my plate got messy. Starting at the 6 o'clock position, go clockwise (mostly). There's one splat at the top that's of the finished product. But you can see how it does get darker.
The final color was a bit darker as it kept cooking while I was trying to add the water to cool it down and dilute. That was......... fun. I had to have the lid on and slowly funnel water down the side and then take the funnel out and hold the lid on while the whole pot shook explosively. Once again, thank you to all the internet research for warning me that water + hot honey = explosions.
Once I was able to pour water and have it NOT explode, I poured enough to make sure it was all dissolved in the water and no hard candy bits wold be forming if I walked away. The cold water also cooled things off to be pourable. There were SOME bits on the bottom, but I added some water and heated things up to dissolve most of them.
When I dissolved what I could, and added it to the bucket, the volume was a bit over 2 gallons. So I added cold water until just a bit over 3, and hoped my starting specific gravity wouldn't be too low. I was worried because I used 9lbs of honey and 2 1/2 gallons of apple juice for the cyser, and that ended at about 16.5% ABV. I wanted something like that, but apple juice has a LOT of sugar in it as well, which I wouldn't be getting by just adding the water. Luckily, I didn't have to worry too much.
1.102. I would have liked higher, but that will give me about 13.5% or so after all is said and done and dilutions from racking etc. Not quite the 15% I wanted but still a good hearty mead.
My one issue so far is the yeast I was planning to use I've had for a bit too long and the use by date was last month. They've also been in the fridge for the last year or so, so I'm not sure if they'll work. At worst, they don't, and I run by one of the beer and wine stores and get another sachet of them tomorrow or Monday.
I'm also going against my usual grain and NOT fermenting with the spices I want to use. I'll add them later in the secondary while the mead is clearing, and not while it's actively fermenting. I really don't have any idea as to how much I want to add, but my thoughts are:
1 vanilla bean, split with the seeds scraped out and in to the mead as well.
3-4 sticks cinnamon
1oz cloves
3-4 whole nutmeg
2oz cardamom
1oz white peppercorn
3-4 anise star
3 inches peeled and sliced fresh ginger
I'll add those when things go in to the secondary and taste after a month. I feel that is a small enough amount of spice that I can increase if needed, and I won't over spice initially. I hope.
So far, the yeast aren't doing anything, so I have a feeling I'm going to be heading to one of my local brew stores tomorrow to get another packet. Ah well!
Sunday, July 27, 2014
Blooping, blurping, bubbling away
No pictures this time, as it would just be a bunch of plastic jugs covered by t-shirts in a dark pantry. But I really do want to try and update this thing more often, and not once every few months. Even if it's just a "still clearing. Check back next month".
The plum went in to the secondary less than 24 hours after my last post.... and then proceeded to still be so vigorously fermenting that I had my first blowback. It's STILL producing pressure, which is impressive because I put it in there at 1.010, so this is likely to be truly beyond my hydrometer's ability to measure in terms of dryness. We tasted it and it was............... harsh. I'm hoping a lot of the sour is the yeast and the fact that it's young, and not because my plums weren't 100% mushy ripe yet. I have high hopes, but I don't know if it'll live up to them. It is darkening to a delightful deep reddish color, though, like dark tropical punch. If I can remember to keep the darned shirts on the carboys, hopefully this one won't fade.
The watermelon-strawberry is still slowly producing pressure, so it's not quite done yet. That one is still harsh, but has mellowed some. I'm hoping as time goes by the "I just drank rubbing alcohol" flavor will decrease and I'll get more fruit flavors. As it is, it smells a helluva lot better than it tastes. Could probably clean battery terminals with it....
The blueberry, on the other hand, is the only bright spot this summer. Slow to ferment because of the ascorbic (I can't spell) acid, I was afraid it wouldn't go dry. Well, I'm still worried but not as worried. The hydrometer still read 1.100 a few days after pitching the yeast. Then suddenly, it went to 1.090 and I did a small jig in my kitchen to celebrate proof that it WAS actually fermenting. And then in 12 hours it went to 1.070. Then 1.050, then it seemed to start lagging. At 1.030, I had to strain the solids and leave things to settle overnight as we were due to leave for a weekend away the next morning. It was still around 1.030 in the morning, so I crossed fingers and transferred to the secondary. And then watched the airlock anxiously to see if it would continue to ferment. Eventually pressure built up and it blooped, and I was happy.
A few days later, we came home from our delightful weekend away and (after checking in on all other, more higher order pets) when I checked in on all the wines, the blueberry was still blooping away, pretty steadily and while not massively rapidly, it was definitely not slow. This sucker might actually go dry!
Boyfriend and I had a taste before it all went in the secondary, and oh my word. If this mellows and ages the way I think it will, this will rival and could possibly surpass the mead. I liked it when it was still sweet, of course, but I have a feeling this is one I might like dry. There is so much blueberry flavor in there. I can't imagine how this is the MEDIUM bodied one!
I was planning to do one more batch this summer, as I have 5 carboys, but the plum predictably needed the second carboy for overflow. A lot of overflow. Like a gallon and a half of overflow. So I will probably just wait until I bottle the strawberry-watermelon to do my bochet. Gives me time to save up for the honey I'll need, and time to concentrate on Dragon*Con. :-p
The plum went in to the secondary less than 24 hours after my last post.... and then proceeded to still be so vigorously fermenting that I had my first blowback. It's STILL producing pressure, which is impressive because I put it in there at 1.010, so this is likely to be truly beyond my hydrometer's ability to measure in terms of dryness. We tasted it and it was............... harsh. I'm hoping a lot of the sour is the yeast and the fact that it's young, and not because my plums weren't 100% mushy ripe yet. I have high hopes, but I don't know if it'll live up to them. It is darkening to a delightful deep reddish color, though, like dark tropical punch. If I can remember to keep the darned shirts on the carboys, hopefully this one won't fade.
The watermelon-strawberry is still slowly producing pressure, so it's not quite done yet. That one is still harsh, but has mellowed some. I'm hoping as time goes by the "I just drank rubbing alcohol" flavor will decrease and I'll get more fruit flavors. As it is, it smells a helluva lot better than it tastes. Could probably clean battery terminals with it....
The blueberry, on the other hand, is the only bright spot this summer. Slow to ferment because of the ascorbic (I can't spell) acid, I was afraid it wouldn't go dry. Well, I'm still worried but not as worried. The hydrometer still read 1.100 a few days after pitching the yeast. Then suddenly, it went to 1.090 and I did a small jig in my kitchen to celebrate proof that it WAS actually fermenting. And then in 12 hours it went to 1.070. Then 1.050, then it seemed to start lagging. At 1.030, I had to strain the solids and leave things to settle overnight as we were due to leave for a weekend away the next morning. It was still around 1.030 in the morning, so I crossed fingers and transferred to the secondary. And then watched the airlock anxiously to see if it would continue to ferment. Eventually pressure built up and it blooped, and I was happy.
A few days later, we came home from our delightful weekend away and (after checking in on all other, more higher order pets) when I checked in on all the wines, the blueberry was still blooping away, pretty steadily and while not massively rapidly, it was definitely not slow. This sucker might actually go dry!
Boyfriend and I had a taste before it all went in the secondary, and oh my word. If this mellows and ages the way I think it will, this will rival and could possibly surpass the mead. I liked it when it was still sweet, of course, but I have a feeling this is one I might like dry. There is so much blueberry flavor in there. I can't imagine how this is the MEDIUM bodied one!
I was planning to do one more batch this summer, as I have 5 carboys, but the plum predictably needed the second carboy for overflow. A lot of overflow. Like a gallon and a half of overflow. So I will probably just wait until I bottle the strawberry-watermelon to do my bochet. Gives me time to save up for the honey I'll need, and time to concentrate on Dragon*Con. :-p
Friday, July 18, 2014
So. Much. Fruit.
I have not one, not two, but THREE wines in progress in my kitchen right now, and all three have been some serious learning experiences. I guess I'll go in order:
First up is an update on the watermelon-strawberry wine. I am SO HAPPY to say that the yeast starter solution not only worked, but worked WELL. That is the absolute fastest I have ever gone from introducing yeast to putting it in the secondary. If I had the time, I'd do that for ALL my wines, but sadly I don't have that much forethought :-/
It started fermenting immediately, and the color went from a pale color to the thick "smoothie" look indicative of a LOT of yeast being in there. The starting gravity was 1.13, which gave me a potential alcohol of.... a lot. like 17% ABV a lot. The yeast I used could definitely take it there, but it was at the upper limit of what it could do. But it went FAST and seemed to actually be going to dryness. In record time, it was time for the secondary:
Watermelon wine is very watermelon colored. Strangely I was surprised at this. I don't know why. I also, as usual, ended up with about half a gallon of extra. I always do that. I need to learn to stop that, but I just always underestimate how much water will come out of the fruit and so think there will be more solids left than actually are. Ah well.
This one bubbled for a while, and then started to clear. As with the mead, I did some gravity filtration, but this time only on the bit left in the small jug at the bottom. I couldn't trust myself to siphon that precisely, so I just got rid of the solids that way. It, too, unfortunately, turned a more gold color. I think it's because *someone* (totally not looking at you, Boyfriend) keeps leaving the pantry door open, and so light gets in there and breaks down the color. I should use some of my old black shirts to cover things again. But I so LIKE seeing how it's clearing!
Also, yeah. Totally went to dryness.
And beyond.
This one is..... not the best I've done. I should have let it be a lower alcohol wine as the kick from the alcohol completely over powers any fruit flavor until about 2-3 seconds after you stop coughing. I'm hoping it'll mellow, but I don't have much faith in that. I think this one's name will be "Potent Potable", because.. as my mother says about my grandfather's wines "Not a lot of bouquet, but it's got a helluva kick!". Also... Celebrity Jeopardy is awesome.
Next, the blueberry!
We went back to Weavers Berryland Farm to get fresh picked blueberries. And I'm glad we did. I'm also glad I had a small breakfast because I totally GORGED on blueberries in the field. (They said we could...). It wasn't quite "one for me, one for the bucket".. but it was close at times. We ended up with 2 gallons:
The colander is less than a gallon. I needed a little over a gallon (9 pints, to be precise) so we picked 2 gallons, so we'd have stuff to eat too. Once again, I'm using Jack Keller's recipe. These are lowbush blueberries, and I'm making the medium bodied dry wine there. I'm still trying to avoid all use of anything related to a grape (no grape juice, raisins, etc).
Once again, the recipe called to put all the berries in the bag and crush them. I was more prepared than I was last year, and just used my fists and was very careful to not drip as much. My kitchen looked MUCH less like a murder scene, though the bucket did look....... icky. :-p
I ended up adding a bit more sugar than the recipe called for because I knew I was going to underestimate the amount of water that will come from the berries, and that my volume would be higher than the 3 gallons I was aiming for. I ended up adding about 6 1/2 lbs instead of just 6. Oddly it made the juice and water look incredibly dark.
I have since put the yeast in and it's fermenting, but not as fast as usual. I used good old Montrachet to make sure the alcohol doesn't go too high, and to preserve that delightful dark color. There's a lot of ascorbic acid in blueberries which can inhibit yeast to a very large extent, which is likely why fermentation is going slower, and the recipe calls for it to ferment 10 days before putting it in the secondary. I've added some yeast energizer to see if I can get it to move a bit faster. I want this wine dry, not semi-sec.
The name for this one will be "I'm Blue" with a small stick figure either singing or thinking "Ah boo dee ah boo dah..." because... I'm a child of the 90's. That song is addictive. It's blueberry.
And lastly... PLUM!
While at work on Sunday, I made a promise to myself that if they had black plums on for less than $2/lb, I would grab them, as it's plum season here and very few farms have a pick your own for plums. Naturally, after making a deal with the universe, the universe called my bluff and showed me black plums for $1.89/lb. I sighed, told the universe I get it, and hauled away 18lbs of the suckers. Because I need 6 lbs per gallon, according to Jack.
And then went "Wait. I have the blueberry in my primary now. WHERE AM I GOING TO START THIS?!"
So Tuesday had me at the wine store getting ANOTHER primary bucket and nylon bag. I justified it by saying that one bucket will later be turned in to a "cleaning bucket" for mopping, cleaning bottles, and all that. That's my story and I will stick to it, even when I start another 2 batches at the same time later this year.
Tuesday night, I enlisted Boyfriend to help me chop up all 18lbs of said plums. I wish I'd thought to take a picture, but figured there's enough pictures of chopped fruit on here. Also, I had to put some bandaids on.
Me: Ow!
Boyfriend: Did you cut yourself?
Me: I'm using a sharp knife over the course of 3-4 hours.
Boyfriend: That's like asking me if I'm hungry, isn't it?
Me: Pretty much.
My thumb is a bit worse for the wear. But neosporin and bandaids are all that's needed. This time.
Again, I have NO IDEA how much water to add because 18lbs of chopped plums take up a LOT of volume, and I just can't trust the measurements to say "Here is 3 gallons" because I KNOW I'm going to lose volume when I take out the solids and well... ok.. this one might be 4 full gallons. Interestingly enough, it started to look like Hawaiian punch...
And it's only darkened since. That was about an hour or so after I added the boiling water, so the color got down to a really nice ruby color by the time it was time for yeast. This is also the first time I've used SO MANY additives because apparently plums just suck on a lot of levels. I needed acid blend, yeast nutrient, yeast energizer, a TON of pectic enzyme, and for the first time, tannin:
My "no grape things!" does not extend to grape tannin, as this is a necessary thing for a lot of wines. Tannin adds astringency, which is hard to describe, but is necessary in wines. Also tannins help with the clearing process as they bind to proteins and precipitate them out, which is a possible explanation as to why they taste like they do. It lends a taste of "dryness" to a wine, which can be confused with "bitter". But in this case, I have a very large feeling that it's being used less for a taste, and more for the "protein binding and precipitation" effect. Plum wine takes a VERY LONG time to clear, and so anything that will help get those proteins out of there is good.
I took a specific gravity reading before adding all my nutrients and was dismayed at the 1.08 I saw. I added a full 6 lbs (instead of the 5 1/2 the recipe stated) and hoped that would be enough, but apparently my plums aren't as ripe and I added too much water. I came home and added another 2lbs and that brought the SG up to a more respectable 1.10, which is where I'd like it to be. I sprinkled the yeast on and crossed fingers. Again, I used Montrachet.
And man... fermentation took off massively. The color has lightened already to the smoothie stage, and is just fizzing away. At 24 hours post yeast pitching, the SG had already gone down to 1.09. This one will definitely be in the secondary before the blueberry.
And that's what's going on in the kitchen now. I have one more open secondary and am debating on either doing a fig wine, or going ahead on my chai spiced bochet. So much fruit, so many ideas. So little time!
Boyfriend has told me I am allowed to name the plum wine "Somebody has set up up the bomb" only if I do a fig wine later and name it "Take off every fig."
I think this is a fantastic idea. And also why I love that man so much. :-p
First up is an update on the watermelon-strawberry wine. I am SO HAPPY to say that the yeast starter solution not only worked, but worked WELL. That is the absolute fastest I have ever gone from introducing yeast to putting it in the secondary. If I had the time, I'd do that for ALL my wines, but sadly I don't have that much forethought :-/
It started fermenting immediately, and the color went from a pale color to the thick "smoothie" look indicative of a LOT of yeast being in there. The starting gravity was 1.13, which gave me a potential alcohol of.... a lot. like 17% ABV a lot. The yeast I used could definitely take it there, but it was at the upper limit of what it could do. But it went FAST and seemed to actually be going to dryness. In record time, it was time for the secondary:
Watermelon wine is very watermelon colored. Strangely I was surprised at this. I don't know why. I also, as usual, ended up with about half a gallon of extra. I always do that. I need to learn to stop that, but I just always underestimate how much water will come out of the fruit and so think there will be more solids left than actually are. Ah well.
This one bubbled for a while, and then started to clear. As with the mead, I did some gravity filtration, but this time only on the bit left in the small jug at the bottom. I couldn't trust myself to siphon that precisely, so I just got rid of the solids that way. It, too, unfortunately, turned a more gold color. I think it's because *someone* (totally not looking at you, Boyfriend) keeps leaving the pantry door open, and so light gets in there and breaks down the color. I should use some of my old black shirts to cover things again. But I so LIKE seeing how it's clearing!
Also, yeah. Totally went to dryness.
This one is..... not the best I've done. I should have let it be a lower alcohol wine as the kick from the alcohol completely over powers any fruit flavor until about 2-3 seconds after you stop coughing. I'm hoping it'll mellow, but I don't have much faith in that. I think this one's name will be "Potent Potable", because.. as my mother says about my grandfather's wines "Not a lot of bouquet, but it's got a helluva kick!". Also... Celebrity Jeopardy is awesome.
Next, the blueberry!
We went back to Weavers Berryland Farm to get fresh picked blueberries. And I'm glad we did. I'm also glad I had a small breakfast because I totally GORGED on blueberries in the field. (They said we could...). It wasn't quite "one for me, one for the bucket".. but it was close at times. We ended up with 2 gallons:
The colander is less than a gallon. I needed a little over a gallon (9 pints, to be precise) so we picked 2 gallons, so we'd have stuff to eat too. Once again, I'm using Jack Keller's recipe. These are lowbush blueberries, and I'm making the medium bodied dry wine there. I'm still trying to avoid all use of anything related to a grape (no grape juice, raisins, etc).
Once again, the recipe called to put all the berries in the bag and crush them. I was more prepared than I was last year, and just used my fists and was very careful to not drip as much. My kitchen looked MUCH less like a murder scene, though the bucket did look....... icky. :-p
I ended up adding a bit more sugar than the recipe called for because I knew I was going to underestimate the amount of water that will come from the berries, and that my volume would be higher than the 3 gallons I was aiming for. I ended up adding about 6 1/2 lbs instead of just 6. Oddly it made the juice and water look incredibly dark.
I have since put the yeast in and it's fermenting, but not as fast as usual. I used good old Montrachet to make sure the alcohol doesn't go too high, and to preserve that delightful dark color. There's a lot of ascorbic acid in blueberries which can inhibit yeast to a very large extent, which is likely why fermentation is going slower, and the recipe calls for it to ferment 10 days before putting it in the secondary. I've added some yeast energizer to see if I can get it to move a bit faster. I want this wine dry, not semi-sec.
The name for this one will be "I'm Blue" with a small stick figure either singing or thinking "Ah boo dee ah boo dah..." because... I'm a child of the 90's. That song is addictive. It's blueberry.
And lastly... PLUM!
While at work on Sunday, I made a promise to myself that if they had black plums on for less than $2/lb, I would grab them, as it's plum season here and very few farms have a pick your own for plums. Naturally, after making a deal with the universe, the universe called my bluff and showed me black plums for $1.89/lb. I sighed, told the universe I get it, and hauled away 18lbs of the suckers. Because I need 6 lbs per gallon, according to Jack.
And then went "Wait. I have the blueberry in my primary now. WHERE AM I GOING TO START THIS?!"
So Tuesday had me at the wine store getting ANOTHER primary bucket and nylon bag. I justified it by saying that one bucket will later be turned in to a "cleaning bucket" for mopping, cleaning bottles, and all that. That's my story and I will stick to it, even when I start another 2 batches at the same time later this year.
Tuesday night, I enlisted Boyfriend to help me chop up all 18lbs of said plums. I wish I'd thought to take a picture, but figured there's enough pictures of chopped fruit on here. Also, I had to put some bandaids on.
Me: Ow!
Boyfriend: Did you cut yourself?
Me: I'm using a sharp knife over the course of 3-4 hours.
Boyfriend: That's like asking me if I'm hungry, isn't it?
Me: Pretty much.
My thumb is a bit worse for the wear. But neosporin and bandaids are all that's needed. This time.
Again, I have NO IDEA how much water to add because 18lbs of chopped plums take up a LOT of volume, and I just can't trust the measurements to say "Here is 3 gallons" because I KNOW I'm going to lose volume when I take out the solids and well... ok.. this one might be 4 full gallons. Interestingly enough, it started to look like Hawaiian punch...
My "no grape things!" does not extend to grape tannin, as this is a necessary thing for a lot of wines. Tannin adds astringency, which is hard to describe, but is necessary in wines. Also tannins help with the clearing process as they bind to proteins and precipitate them out, which is a possible explanation as to why they taste like they do. It lends a taste of "dryness" to a wine, which can be confused with "bitter". But in this case, I have a very large feeling that it's being used less for a taste, and more for the "protein binding and precipitation" effect. Plum wine takes a VERY LONG time to clear, and so anything that will help get those proteins out of there is good.
I took a specific gravity reading before adding all my nutrients and was dismayed at the 1.08 I saw. I added a full 6 lbs (instead of the 5 1/2 the recipe stated) and hoped that would be enough, but apparently my plums aren't as ripe and I added too much water. I came home and added another 2lbs and that brought the SG up to a more respectable 1.10, which is where I'd like it to be. I sprinkled the yeast on and crossed fingers. Again, I used Montrachet.
And man... fermentation took off massively. The color has lightened already to the smoothie stage, and is just fizzing away. At 24 hours post yeast pitching, the SG had already gone down to 1.09. This one will definitely be in the secondary before the blueberry.
And that's what's going on in the kitchen now. I have one more open secondary and am debating on either doing a fig wine, or going ahead on my chai spiced bochet. So much fruit, so many ideas. So little time!
Boyfriend has told me I am allowed to name the plum wine "Somebody has set up up the bomb" only if I do a fig wine later and name it "Take off every fig."
I think this is a fantastic idea. And also why I love that man so much. :-p
Thursday, July 17, 2014
Filtering, bottling, and corking!
WOW things have been happening, and I totally haven't even had time to sit down and write this. Whew! Remember when I said summer in Georgia is all about the fruit that grows? Well it all comes in to season at the exact same damn time, leaving me scrambling and juggling time and batches. But it's all worth it! So much wine being made in my kitchen right now! But this post is going to be about how filter, bottle, and label my wines to look purdy. Next post will be all about what's bubbling away in the kitchen!
I decided to finish off and bottle the prickly pear and the mead, but to do that, I had to play with my new toy. A Buon Vino Mini Jet Wine Filter, to be exact. I use #2 pads which are the 2nd finest, and have a 2µM pore size. This is enough to filter out almost all the yeast, but not strip red wines of their color. They do have "sterile" pads which are 0.5µM, but that can and will strip the actual color from wines, because the pore is so small.
It kinda looked like a cross between a medieval torture device, and mad science. But the result was fantastic, and I couldn't have asked for clearer wine. This is the mead being filtered, and you can see that even though it's "clear", it's still a bit hazy.
It's not hazy anymore. I wish I'd thought to take a picture of the after, but I forgot to in my excitement.
The prickly pear got almost as clean, but I stuck the intake too far into some of the sediment left from using my fining agents, and it was too much for the filter to handle, so some of the "sludge" got in to the carboy. Notes for next time!
After filtering, I let things sit and settle a bit and then went to bottle. I don't use any fancy mechanisms to bottle, other than a simple bottling wand. If you've ever seen a "pocket pet" water bottle, it operates on the same theory. Something blocks the liquid from leaving until you push it up into the tube. Instead of a small ball, however, it's a spring and a tube. I just set up my normal racking siphon, and fill bottles by gravity.
I don't exactly get all dressed up when bottling, so apologies for the bare feet and ratty t-shirt. :-p The cool thing about using the bottling wand is that I can pretty easily fill each bottle to the exact same amount each time. In order to get liquid to fill the bottle, I have to press the wand on the bottom. The moment pressure lets up, it stops filling. Removing the wand lowers the level of wine in the bottle due to volume displacement. If I fill up the bottles so that they're almost brimming, removing the wand makes the level go down to that perfect level you see in store bought wine! It's so cool!
Boyfriend and I have developed a pretty good system by now. I fill, and he corks. I fill, and as one bottle is filling, I'm grabbing the next empty bottle and placing it down at my feet next to the other bottle. When I'm done, it's a quick switch and I start filling the next (and grabbing the next empty). Boyfriend takes the full bottle and corks and then places the corked bottle off to the side for me to make pretty later. I could do it all by myself, but what's the fun in that? Also, the corking was his idea, and I'll show you why it's totally not a matter of strength as to why I fill and he corks.
Because I have this corker. It's seriously the coolest thing I have in terms of wine making. The cork goes in the top there, and as the lever is moved down, it get squeezed to about the diameter of a pencil. Then the peg on the lever pushes the now smaller cork into the bottle where it POPS back to its normal diameter, and seals the bottle. The platform is on a pretty hefty spring so it takes all kinds of bottles without having to adjust. It's great! (That's a 375mL of the prickly pear on there now, with a #8 cork ready to go).
After all is corked, I usually let things sit for a while before labeling and sealing them up. Most wine and beer stores sell heat shrink caps which look seriously fantastic when used. So that's what happened with the prickly pear.
My weapon of choice was.... a hairdryer. Hey.. it works. This one doesn't have a guard right at the front, but rather further inside so I was able to stick it on top of the bottle itself to really envelop the whole thing in heat. It takes about 2 minutes per bottle, and really does make things look all professional at the end.
I named this one "Provocative Cactus", though I cannot take credit for the name, or the art that I used on the label. The name, idea, and artwork all belong to Viciously Sweet, and I thank them so much for having the idea that a regular cactus is just boring. But a PROVOCATIVE one.. now that's awesome!
All done! Look how pretty and professional that looks! I've had friends tell me they can't open the wine because it looks too pretty. :-p I tell them OPEN IT because it's delicious!
For the mead, I wanted to do something a bit more rustic and homey. Something that you would imagine would be done to a nice bottle of mead in Skyrim. So instead of the heat sealed caps, I decided to get fancy and go with wax. This turned out to be better than I'd ever hoped, even if it was a bit of a pain overall.
I had to first MELT said wax, which was an adventure, but I ended up just using a tin can (that used to hold green chilies.. a necessary thing when making enchiladas... not that you needed to know what I had for dinner that night, but anyways), and putting it in a pot of simmering water. Eventually, it all did melt, and looked kinda cool.
Next time, though, I need to use a different pot. Still having a bit of trouble getting the wax off that one. :-/
After that, it was a simple matter of inverting the bottle, sticking it in as straight as I could, then lifting it out and waiting for it to stop dripping (pretty fast, actually). Then all done! I put the labels on it (again done by the wonderfully talented Empty Samurai on DeviantArt) and..... man it looks so cool.
I do need to get a deeper can, though, so the wax can go up further. But I think I'll be using sealing wax from now on. I just like the rustic homeyness of it.
All the labels were just printed on sticker paper. Specifically full sheet label paper that I got at Wal-Mart. I just created a word document, and put my created image on it. I then resized the image to be a normal wine label size, and then copy/pasted it to fit as many as I could on one page (about 5). Then it was just careful cutting to not leave too much white and cut too much into the label itself.
I think they all look fantastic! So excited!
I decided to finish off and bottle the prickly pear and the mead, but to do that, I had to play with my new toy. A Buon Vino Mini Jet Wine Filter, to be exact. I use #2 pads which are the 2nd finest, and have a 2µM pore size. This is enough to filter out almost all the yeast, but not strip red wines of their color. They do have "sterile" pads which are 0.5µM, but that can and will strip the actual color from wines, because the pore is so small.
It kinda looked like a cross between a medieval torture device, and mad science. But the result was fantastic, and I couldn't have asked for clearer wine. This is the mead being filtered, and you can see that even though it's "clear", it's still a bit hazy.
It's not hazy anymore. I wish I'd thought to take a picture of the after, but I forgot to in my excitement.
The prickly pear got almost as clean, but I stuck the intake too far into some of the sediment left from using my fining agents, and it was too much for the filter to handle, so some of the "sludge" got in to the carboy. Notes for next time!
After filtering, I let things sit and settle a bit and then went to bottle. I don't use any fancy mechanisms to bottle, other than a simple bottling wand. If you've ever seen a "pocket pet" water bottle, it operates on the same theory. Something blocks the liquid from leaving until you push it up into the tube. Instead of a small ball, however, it's a spring and a tube. I just set up my normal racking siphon, and fill bottles by gravity.
I don't exactly get all dressed up when bottling, so apologies for the bare feet and ratty t-shirt. :-p The cool thing about using the bottling wand is that I can pretty easily fill each bottle to the exact same amount each time. In order to get liquid to fill the bottle, I have to press the wand on the bottom. The moment pressure lets up, it stops filling. Removing the wand lowers the level of wine in the bottle due to volume displacement. If I fill up the bottles so that they're almost brimming, removing the wand makes the level go down to that perfect level you see in store bought wine! It's so cool!Boyfriend and I have developed a pretty good system by now. I fill, and he corks. I fill, and as one bottle is filling, I'm grabbing the next empty bottle and placing it down at my feet next to the other bottle. When I'm done, it's a quick switch and I start filling the next (and grabbing the next empty). Boyfriend takes the full bottle and corks and then places the corked bottle off to the side for me to make pretty later. I could do it all by myself, but what's the fun in that? Also, the corking was his idea, and I'll show you why it's totally not a matter of strength as to why I fill and he corks.
Because I have this corker. It's seriously the coolest thing I have in terms of wine making. The cork goes in the top there, and as the lever is moved down, it get squeezed to about the diameter of a pencil. Then the peg on the lever pushes the now smaller cork into the bottle where it POPS back to its normal diameter, and seals the bottle. The platform is on a pretty hefty spring so it takes all kinds of bottles without having to adjust. It's great! (That's a 375mL of the prickly pear on there now, with a #8 cork ready to go).
After all is corked, I usually let things sit for a while before labeling and sealing them up. Most wine and beer stores sell heat shrink caps which look seriously fantastic when used. So that's what happened with the prickly pear.
My weapon of choice was.... a hairdryer. Hey.. it works. This one doesn't have a guard right at the front, but rather further inside so I was able to stick it on top of the bottle itself to really envelop the whole thing in heat. It takes about 2 minutes per bottle, and really does make things look all professional at the end.
I named this one "Provocative Cactus", though I cannot take credit for the name, or the art that I used on the label. The name, idea, and artwork all belong to Viciously Sweet, and I thank them so much for having the idea that a regular cactus is just boring. But a PROVOCATIVE one.. now that's awesome!
For the mead, I wanted to do something a bit more rustic and homey. Something that you would imagine would be done to a nice bottle of mead in Skyrim. So instead of the heat sealed caps, I decided to get fancy and go with wax. This turned out to be better than I'd ever hoped, even if it was a bit of a pain overall.
I had to first MELT said wax, which was an adventure, but I ended up just using a tin can (that used to hold green chilies.. a necessary thing when making enchiladas... not that you needed to know what I had for dinner that night, but anyways), and putting it in a pot of simmering water. Eventually, it all did melt, and looked kinda cool.
After that, it was a simple matter of inverting the bottle, sticking it in as straight as I could, then lifting it out and waiting for it to stop dripping (pretty fast, actually). Then all done! I put the labels on it (again done by the wonderfully talented Empty Samurai on DeviantArt) and..... man it looks so cool.
All the labels were just printed on sticker paper. Specifically full sheet label paper that I got at Wal-Mart. I just created a word document, and put my created image on it. I then resized the image to be a normal wine label size, and then copy/pasted it to fit as many as I could on one page (about 5). Then it was just careful cutting to not leave too much white and cut too much into the label itself.
I think they all look fantastic! So excited!
Sunday, May 11, 2014
It's summer!
It's finally summer! Random thunderstorms, 90% humidity at all times, blistering heat..
Oh wait.. I'm thinking of Texas.
Atlanta gets the name "Hotlanta" too much by people who don't live here and have been here for a few days during Dragon*Con. Over Labor Day weekend. Yes, it's gonna be pretty damn hot at the end of August. But honestly, it's not all that bad for the rest of the summer. Of course, take that with a grain of salt, because I grew up in Austin, Texas where 100+ temperatures are nothing unusual. In fact, a summer WITHOUT 100+ temperatures is damned unusual. My first summer away from Texas, they had a heat wave that had them at 100+ days... for 66 days. Straight. Mom took a picture of her outdoor thermometer reading 112 in the shade. Also, 85% humidity at the same time. Because any and all precipitation just vaporizes into the atmosphere before hitting the ground. So it's humid, AND damned hot!
So yeah... Atlanta... not so bad really. :-p
But what summer DOES mean is fruit. SO MUCH FRUIT! It's strawberry season now, and blueberry season is really ramping up. Soon blackberries, and watermelons too! And figs and plums later on in the summer. And fresh fruit means cheap fruit. And cheap fruit means WINE!
Bur first, I should update the prickly pear and the mead. Sadly, the prickly pear really is losing its PAINK color. As in, a lot. It's very very sad. :-(
See? So not PAINK anymore at all. It looks more red in the carboy thanks to there just being 3 gallons of it, but it's slowly fading. I don't know what it'll end up as, but it won't be the glorious PAINK color that I had hoped for. It's still fantastic though! Next time I will experiment with just juicing the prickly pears, or just fermenting them whole instead of boiling them.
The mead is coming along VERY nicely. Somehow between the first racking and the second, some kind of magic happened, and it turned in to a strong (STRONG) very spiced but very delightful drink. To me, the spice is too much, but boyfriend LOVES it and declares it the best thing I've made to date. Wine friend at work also absolutely loves it. I'm skeptical and think I added too much spice. Ah well. It's clearing delightfully though!
Look at how you can see my baseboards through it! Most places would say it's done because I can definitely see and read my mail through it, but I want to get it off those lees and not have any sediment. Soon I'll be able to get my wine filter and then I'll filter both the mead and the prickly pear and bottle them. Wine for my birthday maybe? :-p
And now, the bounties of Georgia are getting me started on this summer's wine making. The first things in season that I wanted to use were the strawberries. Well, actually, it was the blueberries, but I also wanted to do a watermelon wine. While looking at Mr. Keller's site (I seriously love all his recipes!), I ran across his page o' watermelon wines, and saw Strawberry Watemelon Wine. Boyfriend thought I should just do a pure watermelon, but I was hooked. I knew I wanted to make a strawberry wine at some time, so I decided to start off this season with a strawberry watermelon.
This.... posed a few issues. Firstly, strawberries and watermelons are not in season at the same time. I would have to buy one of them out of season, and as the strawberries are the more expensive fruit to buy out of season ($3-5 per pound!), I decided it was the watermelons that had to be bought. The moment I saw the big watermelons appear in the store, I planned a trip to get 9lbs of strawberries.
And then it rained.
So.... sadly, there was no fresh fruit picking for this batch. But it's also hard to argue with 3lbs for $5 when all the u-picks were selling at $12/gallon (or about $12 for 5-6lbs). So, I nabbed 9 lbs of strawberries there.
The second issue was that, these were not in prime season watermelons and I had NO idea what kind of juice I was going to get out of them, so I got 4. Boyfriend and I LOVE watermelon, so if I had some leftover, we would gladly take care of it.
Issue number three was the biggest, and the one I'm still worried about. If you read Jack's intro, he notes that watermelon juice goes rancid FAST and you have to get the fermentation going, and the alcohol high enough really fast to prevent this. I'm doing all I can in only juicing RIGHT before I needed it, and putting all juice in my fridge until the exact time I needed it in my primary, but I don't have the space in my fridge to put my WHOLE primary for these first 12 hours. So... I'm just crossing fingers and hoping.
I *am* doing a yeast starter this time, though. To really make sure my yeast are viable and going to kick off and go nuts as soon as possible.
So, here's all that happened:
So much fruit. I got the most hollow sounding melons I could, and the best (3 of 5) containers of strawberries. Also, my kitchen was so not that clean after I was done.
I juiced the watermelons by cutting them in half, then scooping out the flesh into my nylon straining bag. That, in turn, went in to a giant popcorn bowl and hand squeezed the crap out of. My hands STILL hurt, but it was probably the fastest way I could have done it without actually using a juicer.
Note to self: Next year, get a juicer.
I had.... vastly underestimated the amount of juice I could get from one watermelon. I needed 9 quarts to start things off, and then more to top up in 2 weeks. I figured I'd just aim for those 9 quarts, and if I needed more in 2 weeks, I'd juice more.
Yeah, I got those 9 quarts after only TWO melons!
The two red pitchers and the bowl are all watermelon juice. From just two melons. Also, boyfriend is trying new kinds of beer and was intruiged by Sam Adams Cherry Wheat, so I got some for him as a "congrats on finishing the semester! Also I'm about to destroy our kitchen." present. He likes it, though it's definitely got a strong cherry flavor. :-p
Next up, strawberries!
Jack says to "roughly chop" the strawberries. Which sounds simple. It's not like I'm mincing them. But there are NINE POUNDS of them. After about the first 3 berries I went "screw this" and took the hint of my wine friend and got out the food processor. A few pulses with the chopping blade and VOILA! Coarsely chopped strawberries!
That's the last 3 lbs of them. Not pictured is the hell that is my kitchen after juicing the melons. Whew.
Boyfriend helped and zested and juiced the 3 lemons for me. I didn't feel like getting yet another fruit juice all over me.
As watermelons are VERY different in sugar content, this time I took a hydrometer reading before adding ANY sugar, and then added sugar until I got to the reading that would give me the potential alcohol that I wanted.
Before: 1.040:
After: 1.125 (or so):
I added, in total, about 6 1/2 lbs of sugar to get my specific gravity to where I wanted it. This gives me a potential alcohol of 17%, which is just delightful! Of course, to get that, I need a fast acting, high tolerance yeast!
Meet Lalvin EC-1118. Fast acting, low foaming, high sugar tolerance, high alcohol tolerance, imparts no flavors or aromas, and is FANTASTIC for white and delicate wines. I also used this for my mead and was not disappointed at all.
So, for now, I have the juice and strawberries sitting and getting sulfited to get rid of all bacteria. I've started my yeast starter, and it's going happily. Every 2 hours I add another 1/2 cup of apple juice, a 1/2 tsp of sugar, and a pinch of yeast nutrient and stir vigorously. Stirring gives oxygen, and oxygen makes happy yeast. And I really really want happy yeast.
Unfortunately I do need sleep, so I won't be able to add any more at the 2am and 4am time points, but I'll be able to add more at 6am, and then also add pectic enzyme to the must. And then go to work. While at work, boyfriend has said he'll take care of my "new pet" for me and hopefully I'll be able to add it to my must when I get home from work. And then... we wait and see if the watermelon juice has gone bad.
I really really hope not. :-(
So, crossing fingers!
Oh wait.. I'm thinking of Texas.
Atlanta gets the name "Hotlanta" too much by people who don't live here and have been here for a few days during Dragon*Con. Over Labor Day weekend. Yes, it's gonna be pretty damn hot at the end of August. But honestly, it's not all that bad for the rest of the summer. Of course, take that with a grain of salt, because I grew up in Austin, Texas where 100+ temperatures are nothing unusual. In fact, a summer WITHOUT 100+ temperatures is damned unusual. My first summer away from Texas, they had a heat wave that had them at 100+ days... for 66 days. Straight. Mom took a picture of her outdoor thermometer reading 112 in the shade. Also, 85% humidity at the same time. Because any and all precipitation just vaporizes into the atmosphere before hitting the ground. So it's humid, AND damned hot!
So yeah... Atlanta... not so bad really. :-p
But what summer DOES mean is fruit. SO MUCH FRUIT! It's strawberry season now, and blueberry season is really ramping up. Soon blackberries, and watermelons too! And figs and plums later on in the summer. And fresh fruit means cheap fruit. And cheap fruit means WINE!
Bur first, I should update the prickly pear and the mead. Sadly, the prickly pear really is losing its PAINK color. As in, a lot. It's very very sad. :-(
See? So not PAINK anymore at all. It looks more red in the carboy thanks to there just being 3 gallons of it, but it's slowly fading. I don't know what it'll end up as, but it won't be the glorious PAINK color that I had hoped for. It's still fantastic though! Next time I will experiment with just juicing the prickly pears, or just fermenting them whole instead of boiling them.
The mead is coming along VERY nicely. Somehow between the first racking and the second, some kind of magic happened, and it turned in to a strong (STRONG) very spiced but very delightful drink. To me, the spice is too much, but boyfriend LOVES it and declares it the best thing I've made to date. Wine friend at work also absolutely loves it. I'm skeptical and think I added too much spice. Ah well. It's clearing delightfully though!
And now, the bounties of Georgia are getting me started on this summer's wine making. The first things in season that I wanted to use were the strawberries. Well, actually, it was the blueberries, but I also wanted to do a watermelon wine. While looking at Mr. Keller's site (I seriously love all his recipes!), I ran across his page o' watermelon wines, and saw Strawberry Watemelon Wine. Boyfriend thought I should just do a pure watermelon, but I was hooked. I knew I wanted to make a strawberry wine at some time, so I decided to start off this season with a strawberry watermelon.
This.... posed a few issues. Firstly, strawberries and watermelons are not in season at the same time. I would have to buy one of them out of season, and as the strawberries are the more expensive fruit to buy out of season ($3-5 per pound!), I decided it was the watermelons that had to be bought. The moment I saw the big watermelons appear in the store, I planned a trip to get 9lbs of strawberries.
And then it rained.
So.... sadly, there was no fresh fruit picking for this batch. But it's also hard to argue with 3lbs for $5 when all the u-picks were selling at $12/gallon (or about $12 for 5-6lbs). So, I nabbed 9 lbs of strawberries there.
The second issue was that, these were not in prime season watermelons and I had NO idea what kind of juice I was going to get out of them, so I got 4. Boyfriend and I LOVE watermelon, so if I had some leftover, we would gladly take care of it.
Issue number three was the biggest, and the one I'm still worried about. If you read Jack's intro, he notes that watermelon juice goes rancid FAST and you have to get the fermentation going, and the alcohol high enough really fast to prevent this. I'm doing all I can in only juicing RIGHT before I needed it, and putting all juice in my fridge until the exact time I needed it in my primary, but I don't have the space in my fridge to put my WHOLE primary for these first 12 hours. So... I'm just crossing fingers and hoping.
I *am* doing a yeast starter this time, though. To really make sure my yeast are viable and going to kick off and go nuts as soon as possible.
So, here's all that happened:
I juiced the watermelons by cutting them in half, then scooping out the flesh into my nylon straining bag. That, in turn, went in to a giant popcorn bowl and hand squeezed the crap out of. My hands STILL hurt, but it was probably the fastest way I could have done it without actually using a juicer.
Note to self: Next year, get a juicer.
I had.... vastly underestimated the amount of juice I could get from one watermelon. I needed 9 quarts to start things off, and then more to top up in 2 weeks. I figured I'd just aim for those 9 quarts, and if I needed more in 2 weeks, I'd juice more.
Yeah, I got those 9 quarts after only TWO melons!
Next up, strawberries!
Jack says to "roughly chop" the strawberries. Which sounds simple. It's not like I'm mincing them. But there are NINE POUNDS of them. After about the first 3 berries I went "screw this" and took the hint of my wine friend and got out the food processor. A few pulses with the chopping blade and VOILA! Coarsely chopped strawberries!
That's the last 3 lbs of them. Not pictured is the hell that is my kitchen after juicing the melons. Whew.
Boyfriend helped and zested and juiced the 3 lemons for me. I didn't feel like getting yet another fruit juice all over me.
As watermelons are VERY different in sugar content, this time I took a hydrometer reading before adding ANY sugar, and then added sugar until I got to the reading that would give me the potential alcohol that I wanted.
Before: 1.040:
After: 1.125 (or so):
I added, in total, about 6 1/2 lbs of sugar to get my specific gravity to where I wanted it. This gives me a potential alcohol of 17%, which is just delightful! Of course, to get that, I need a fast acting, high tolerance yeast!
So, for now, I have the juice and strawberries sitting and getting sulfited to get rid of all bacteria. I've started my yeast starter, and it's going happily. Every 2 hours I add another 1/2 cup of apple juice, a 1/2 tsp of sugar, and a pinch of yeast nutrient and stir vigorously. Stirring gives oxygen, and oxygen makes happy yeast. And I really really want happy yeast.
Unfortunately I do need sleep, so I won't be able to add any more at the 2am and 4am time points, but I'll be able to add more at 6am, and then also add pectic enzyme to the must. And then go to work. While at work, boyfriend has said he'll take care of my "new pet" for me and hopefully I'll be able to add it to my must when I get home from work. And then... we wait and see if the watermelon juice has gone bad.
I really really hope not. :-(
So, crossing fingers!
Tuesday, April 8, 2014
So.. uh.. hi!
Not that anyone's really reading this, but....
I fail at the whole "keeping a blog" thing. I really do. I don't have any pictures, but I do have a few updates and a new batch!
The prickly pear is coming along VERY nicely. It didn't actually go all the way to dryness, thanks to using the Montrachet yeast which only has about a 13-14% ABV tolerance, so fermentation stopped when there was a still a decent amount of sugar left. It's sweet, but very drinkable! And getting FAR darker now that the yeast is falling out. Not quite a red wine, but not a blush or a rose. Just.... prickly pear. This one won't need any backsweetening at all, and probably won't need too much bottle aging, either.
Speaking of bottles.... yeah. So... stabilize your wine before backsweetening. I didn't. I have 7 bottles of delighful peach banana sweet wine......... soaked in to my carpet thanks to the corks popping. It is sad, and I need a carpet cleaner, now. So from now on, potassium sorbate it is!
As for the new batch, I wanted to try mead. Mead is, essentially, wine but made with honey instead of sugar. A true mead is JUST honey and water, where the addition of fruits or spices changes the name. A pyment is a mead made with grapes. A cyser is made with apples. Melomel is witih fruit other than grapes or apple. Metheglin is spiced. Hippocras is a pyment (made with grapes) and spiced.
And tons tons more.
I decided I wanted to try an "apple pie" mead, as that seemed to be a pretty common one to try on, and I hadn't made anything with apples yet so far. While researching, I found this recipe on a deviantart page:
http://emptysamurai.deviantart.com/art/Honningbrew-mead-recipe-281711080
And I just had to. It's Skyrim!! But... there were a few issues right off the bat:
1) I do 3 gallon batches, not 5. This made the amount of honey and juice a bit.. awkward.
2) No way to get fireweed honey here in Georgia, and the only other honeys were rather bland.
3) There's more than just cinnamon in an apple pie.
4) The recipe would make a rather low(er) alcohol mead than I wanted.
So I changed things up to fit my needs. This is what I ended up going with:
9lbs wildflower honey
2 1/2 gallons apple juice
10-15 cinnamon sticks
10-15 whole nutmeg
small handful whole cloves
1 1/2 tsp yeast energizer
3 tsp yeast nutrient
Lalvin EC-1118 yeast
Also unlike most mead recipes, I did my fermentation like a normal wine fermentation. Getting things started in the primary, and then transferring to a secondary after the violent fementation has subsided.
First I added the honey and apple juice in small quantities, alternating honey, then juice, stopping to stir and get the honey all incorporated. I Also would pour some of the juice into the "empty" honey containers and shake violently to try and get as much honey out as possible. The 2 1/2 gallons wasn't really decided on until I took specific gravity measurements and saw how large a volume I was getting after then 9 lbs of honey was added. That put me a bit over 3 gallons, and a starting specific gravity of 1.13. If it went to dryness, the ABV would be 17.7%. Within range of the yeast I was using.
Initially I only added 5 cinnamon sticks, as mine are old, and the original recipe didn't call for a lot. I also added 5 whole nutmeg as that goes in an apple pie. Sprinkle the yeast over the must, leave it for a night to get going, and then stir once a day vigorously for a few days until the main fermentation is over (3-4 days). I then put it in my secondary and watched the airlock bubble massively for a while.
And I mean for a LONG while. It was STILL actively fermenting a month later! I racked it, tasted, and...... was not impressed. Strong, yes (SG was about 1.012 now) but very very little spice taste, not a lot of apple, and just the barest hint of honey. It was mainly yeast and alcohol. I decided to add more cinnamon, nutmeg, and then some cloves because I just can't resist cloves in anything. And then hope for the best.
It continued to ferment for another two weeks. I was wondering if it was ever going to STOP! Then one day it did. And I noticed it started to look oddly clear in the top inch or so. Over the next 24-48 hours, the yeast just.... sank. All at once. You could almost watch it clear on its own. It was magical.
I decided it was clear enough to try and get a reading and take a taste. The yeast had petered out around 1.008 or near 16.5% ABV. And the taste.... my word the taste. Strong as ever and will put hair on your chest, but the spices come through wonderfully, and without the sour yeast flavor, the apple and honey are very present as well! Honestly, it's one of the best tasting things I've made thus far, and this includes the prickly pear AND the backsweetened peach banana!
I couldn't wait 2 more weeks to get it off those dead yeast and away from those spices. The yeast by this time were all at the bottom, but they were covering a good 3 inches all over the bottom of my carboy, which would be impossible to siphon up and away from them. I decided to try gravity filtration with some 5-10µM (5-10 micron) filter pads I'd.... um... liberated from work.
That... did not go so well. It took WAY too long to get even the nearly yeast free mead through. I gave it up and just poured it all into a new carboy, and disposed of the spices. At least half of my plan worked. I then watched the yeast sink again, leaving deliciously clear mead up top, but SO MUCH YEAST on the bottom. I decided to try a different tactic.
I siphoned off as much as I could that was relatively clear. I couldn't avoid ALL the yeast, but it was pretty good. I'd say barely more than a "normal" first racking. I then fiunneled the rest of the yeast concentrated mead into a smaller 1 gallon container. This left me with about a half gallon of very very murky yeasty mead.
Boyfriend had bought some smaller funnels when needing a TINY one for a hobby of his, so I grabbed the largest one there, and it just so happened to PERFECTLY fit on top of one of my huge plastic cups! Grab some filter paper, make an inverted cone, and I have a filter funnel! As I only had about a half gallon of liquid this time, I could take my time. And boy did it ever. It took 5 days to filter out that 1/2 gallon of liquid. One. Drip. At. A. Time. But it did eventually filter! After using about 5 pieces of filter paper, too as it would get clogged with the yeast very quickly. But I ended up with probably over a quart of mead filtered out. It didn't get rid of ALL the yeast, as yeast can go smaller than 5 microns, but it got rid of a LOT of them.
I'm getting a "spare" paycheck in May, and I've already decided to get a wine filter pump. You can filter your wine through a 1 micron filter as long as you've racked it at least once, but twice is better. If I can bottle wines within 4 months of starting, I can make more wine more often, and not have to keep my carboys occupied!
Here's hoping that by my birthday (mid June) I can sit down with a glass of Honningbrew Mead!
I fail at the whole "keeping a blog" thing. I really do. I don't have any pictures, but I do have a few updates and a new batch!
The prickly pear is coming along VERY nicely. It didn't actually go all the way to dryness, thanks to using the Montrachet yeast which only has about a 13-14% ABV tolerance, so fermentation stopped when there was a still a decent amount of sugar left. It's sweet, but very drinkable! And getting FAR darker now that the yeast is falling out. Not quite a red wine, but not a blush or a rose. Just.... prickly pear. This one won't need any backsweetening at all, and probably won't need too much bottle aging, either.
Speaking of bottles.... yeah. So... stabilize your wine before backsweetening. I didn't. I have 7 bottles of delighful peach banana sweet wine......... soaked in to my carpet thanks to the corks popping. It is sad, and I need a carpet cleaner, now. So from now on, potassium sorbate it is!
As for the new batch, I wanted to try mead. Mead is, essentially, wine but made with honey instead of sugar. A true mead is JUST honey and water, where the addition of fruits or spices changes the name. A pyment is a mead made with grapes. A cyser is made with apples. Melomel is witih fruit other than grapes or apple. Metheglin is spiced. Hippocras is a pyment (made with grapes) and spiced.
And tons tons more.
I decided I wanted to try an "apple pie" mead, as that seemed to be a pretty common one to try on, and I hadn't made anything with apples yet so far. While researching, I found this recipe on a deviantart page:
http://emptysamurai.deviantart.com/art/Honningbrew-mead-recipe-281711080
And I just had to. It's Skyrim!! But... there were a few issues right off the bat:
1) I do 3 gallon batches, not 5. This made the amount of honey and juice a bit.. awkward.
2) No way to get fireweed honey here in Georgia, and the only other honeys were rather bland.
3) There's more than just cinnamon in an apple pie.
4) The recipe would make a rather low(er) alcohol mead than I wanted.
So I changed things up to fit my needs. This is what I ended up going with:
9lbs wildflower honey
2 1/2 gallons apple juice
10-15 cinnamon sticks
10-15 whole nutmeg
small handful whole cloves
1 1/2 tsp yeast energizer
3 tsp yeast nutrient
Lalvin EC-1118 yeast
Also unlike most mead recipes, I did my fermentation like a normal wine fermentation. Getting things started in the primary, and then transferring to a secondary after the violent fementation has subsided.
First I added the honey and apple juice in small quantities, alternating honey, then juice, stopping to stir and get the honey all incorporated. I Also would pour some of the juice into the "empty" honey containers and shake violently to try and get as much honey out as possible. The 2 1/2 gallons wasn't really decided on until I took specific gravity measurements and saw how large a volume I was getting after then 9 lbs of honey was added. That put me a bit over 3 gallons, and a starting specific gravity of 1.13. If it went to dryness, the ABV would be 17.7%. Within range of the yeast I was using.
Initially I only added 5 cinnamon sticks, as mine are old, and the original recipe didn't call for a lot. I also added 5 whole nutmeg as that goes in an apple pie. Sprinkle the yeast over the must, leave it for a night to get going, and then stir once a day vigorously for a few days until the main fermentation is over (3-4 days). I then put it in my secondary and watched the airlock bubble massively for a while.
And I mean for a LONG while. It was STILL actively fermenting a month later! I racked it, tasted, and...... was not impressed. Strong, yes (SG was about 1.012 now) but very very little spice taste, not a lot of apple, and just the barest hint of honey. It was mainly yeast and alcohol. I decided to add more cinnamon, nutmeg, and then some cloves because I just can't resist cloves in anything. And then hope for the best.
It continued to ferment for another two weeks. I was wondering if it was ever going to STOP! Then one day it did. And I noticed it started to look oddly clear in the top inch or so. Over the next 24-48 hours, the yeast just.... sank. All at once. You could almost watch it clear on its own. It was magical.
I decided it was clear enough to try and get a reading and take a taste. The yeast had petered out around 1.008 or near 16.5% ABV. And the taste.... my word the taste. Strong as ever and will put hair on your chest, but the spices come through wonderfully, and without the sour yeast flavor, the apple and honey are very present as well! Honestly, it's one of the best tasting things I've made thus far, and this includes the prickly pear AND the backsweetened peach banana!
I couldn't wait 2 more weeks to get it off those dead yeast and away from those spices. The yeast by this time were all at the bottom, but they were covering a good 3 inches all over the bottom of my carboy, which would be impossible to siphon up and away from them. I decided to try gravity filtration with some 5-10µM (5-10 micron) filter pads I'd.... um... liberated from work.
That... did not go so well. It took WAY too long to get even the nearly yeast free mead through. I gave it up and just poured it all into a new carboy, and disposed of the spices. At least half of my plan worked. I then watched the yeast sink again, leaving deliciously clear mead up top, but SO MUCH YEAST on the bottom. I decided to try a different tactic.
I siphoned off as much as I could that was relatively clear. I couldn't avoid ALL the yeast, but it was pretty good. I'd say barely more than a "normal" first racking. I then fiunneled the rest of the yeast concentrated mead into a smaller 1 gallon container. This left me with about a half gallon of very very murky yeasty mead.
Boyfriend had bought some smaller funnels when needing a TINY one for a hobby of his, so I grabbed the largest one there, and it just so happened to PERFECTLY fit on top of one of my huge plastic cups! Grab some filter paper, make an inverted cone, and I have a filter funnel! As I only had about a half gallon of liquid this time, I could take my time. And boy did it ever. It took 5 days to filter out that 1/2 gallon of liquid. One. Drip. At. A. Time. But it did eventually filter! After using about 5 pieces of filter paper, too as it would get clogged with the yeast very quickly. But I ended up with probably over a quart of mead filtered out. It didn't get rid of ALL the yeast, as yeast can go smaller than 5 microns, but it got rid of a LOT of them.
I'm getting a "spare" paycheck in May, and I've already decided to get a wine filter pump. You can filter your wine through a 1 micron filter as long as you've racked it at least once, but twice is better. If I can bottle wines within 4 months of starting, I can make more wine more often, and not have to keep my carboys occupied!
Here's hoping that by my birthday (mid June) I can sit down with a glass of Honningbrew Mead!
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