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
Sunday, July 27, 2014
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!
Sunday, January 5, 2014
Well crap...... oooooh what's this?
So, the pumpkin didn't happen. I think the sugar was WAY too high, and the temp just wasn't happening. Also I could have over sulphered it as I added 3 Campden tablets, and that could have made the yeast die. I tried three times to get a good fermentation going, but in the end, I have 4-5 gallons of pumpkin spice sugar water. Sad.
The blackberry and peach banana took a HUGE bound towards mellowing with this last racking. They are fast losing the new wine yeasty bite and becoming much more flavorful. Neither are to my taste personally as I don't like dry wines, but boyfriend is loving them. I think he's re-thinking this whole "giving all the wine away" idea of mine. :-p
So with the pumpkin spice being a bust, I wanted to get another started ASAP. I'd done a red and a white, so I wanted to do something red again, or at least reddish. This is an issue as it's January here in Georgia and NOTHING IS IN SEASON. The closest is cranberries and those are still hugely expensive. Also pomegranates which are great, but I'd need 45 of them to make a batch, and at $2.50/fruit..... that ain't happening. I was ready to settle on using dried fruit to get something going, so with that in mind, I went to my farmer's market to see what was there. They also have a seriously amazing selection of dried fruits, so if I couldn't find anything fresh, I'd pick up something there. Prunes if I had to.
I didn't have to. Whew.
I was walking in between the mangoes and papayas, lamenting that they would make superb WHITE wines (and were around $0.75/lb or less), I passed a small display. Just one box. I stopped. Backed up. Stared. Looked up a recipe to see how much I'd need. And then started to grin and almost started to laugh.
And then I shoveled 17-18lbs of them in to my cart.
I had found PRICKLY PEARS!
To those who live in an area where cacti are common, you're probably grinning and going "Oh man! I bet that's going to be good! I remember when my mom/gran/great gran/friend's aunt/school teacher and I made prickly pear jelly and it was amazing!" To those who don't live in an area populated by cacti, you're probably going "What the hell is a prickly pear?" or maybe you've heard of them but are going "You're going to do WHAT with a cactus?!"
Prickly pears are the fruit of a very common cactus, and are a real pain to get in the wild. Not because they're rare, or because they're hard to grow, but because, well, they're cacti. They have spines. That hurt. A lot. Harvesting usually involves long sleeves, jeans, thick gardening gloves, and tongs.
And then you need a flamethrower when you get home to burn off the spines.
Luckily, the ones I found had been completely de-spined, so I was happy to pay the $1.85/lb or so for them. They also weren't completely ripe, but the fruit inside the pod was the appropriate color, texture, flavor, and smell. So PRICKLY PEAR WINE!!
For the uninitiated, this is a prickly pear:
It is vaguely pear shaped. It has spines. Hence, prickly pear. It really doesn't taste anything like a pear at all, so don't expect to bite in to one of these. To get to the fruit, you first shock them by pouring boiling water on them and letting them sit in it for about 2 minutes. This loosens the skin and makes them pretty simple to peel. First you cut the top and bottom off, and then do a vertical slit from one pole to the other:
Get a thumb in there and just peel back the thick skin!
If you're doing this from fresh picked ones, instead of ones found in a farmer's market, you'll want to have gloves on. Even with the flamethrower, they can retain some fine spines, and those suckers HURT!
Take the fruit from the skin, and discard the skin. Then use the fruit as you so wish! Some people make jelly, some juice them, some like them completely whole. They're really really full of seeds, but the seeds are edible as well, so you can eat them whole. The flavor is......... unique. I've heard it described like a combination watermelon and raspberry. It's subtle like a watermelon, but has a tang and a tartness like a raspberry. It's just...... prickly pear.
They're also violently pink. And I mean violently:
Boyfriend said that nothing on this planet should be that color and be safe to eat. They also can be a bit slimey, which is why most people boil them when they use them for anything other than raw cooking. Some people juice them for wine or jelly making. Some ferment as is. I was following Jack Keller's Prickly Pear Wine recipe, which says to slice and boil the fruit for 15 minutes, and then let them steep and cool until lukewarm. All the fruit did fit in to one pot:
Some of the fruit were "green cactus fruit" instead of "red cactus fruit". Probably same genus but different species. Or same species but different sub species. Or just less than 100% ripe ones. These smelled a lot like honeydew.
While all the fruit fit in there, the 1 1/2 gallons of water did not, so I had to sepearate them in to smaller pots to get them all to boil together. This leeched nearly ALL the bright pink color out of them. When relatively cool, I poured all pots into my nylon mesh bag lined primary, and then worked and squeezed like hell to get as much juice out as possible. This got me to about 2 gallons, well short of my 3 gallon batch! I knew the sugar would add some volume, so I added that next.
I realized I'd never shown the sugar, and that I probably should. Yes, everyone knows what sugar looks like, but it's a bit unreal to have to face the quantities used, and realize that it's ALL going to go away to make alcohol. Here is my measuring cup with a bit over 2 lbs of sugar in it:
In all, I added about 7 1/2 lbs of sugar total. So take that picture, and make it x4. It seems like that it would make things insanely sweet and I'd get near molasses out, but all the sugar happily dissolved quickly, and added about another half gallon to my volume. I then added another quart or so of water to bring the total volume up to just over 3 gallons.
And then I remembered to take my specific gravity! With no fruit pulp, nylon mesh, or the like in the way, I could get a nice clear reading.
Starting SG: 1.122.
If that ferments to dryness, it'll give me an alcohol by volume (ABV) of a bit over 16%. Not bad, though I don't think the yeast I chose will get it that high. I chose the Red Star Montrachet yeast for this one, as it's the most popular one for reds where you want to retain the character of the fruit, as well as the color. This is the same yeast I used for the blackberry, so I knew what to look for in terms of activity:
Jack's recipe is pretty simple. Peel fruit. Chop fruit. Boil fruit. Strain fruit. Add sugar, acid blend, nutrient and yeast. Let go for a while. So that's what I'm doing. I didn't make a starter culture, but instead just sprinkled the yeast on top. That's seemed to work well for others:
You can see that the juice retained its pink hue. I have a feeling this will make closer to a rose than a deep merlot, but as long as it retains the color, I'm excited.
The orange is from the pumpkin. It permanently stained my bucket, but I cleaned the heck out of it, so there should be NO contamination (taste or otherwise) from it.
And then I went to bed, as it was nearly 1am at this point. I was nervous as Jack said this yeast really only tolerates sugar up to 23 Brix, which is at a SG of about 1.100, so a goodly bit less than what mine ended up at, but when I uncovered it this morning, there was a happy cap of foam on top and some very busy yeast underneath! I stirred it and recovered and went away happy.
This evening, I uncovered to see how it was doing (I'm always antsy at this stage), and found this gorgeous sight:
And that's where we are right now. I haven't taken another SG reading yet, but I will in the next few days. As it's FAR colder now than it was when I did the blackberry, I have the primary sitting on a heating pad to keep it off the cold tile, and to keep some heat on it. My downstairs gets to around 60F, even though the upstairs is at 71F. So far, it seems to be working!
I can't wait to taste this.I haven't had prickly pear anything in YEARS, and to find some, and make wine from them, here in Georgia has me quite giddy! :-p
The blackberry and peach banana took a HUGE bound towards mellowing with this last racking. They are fast losing the new wine yeasty bite and becoming much more flavorful. Neither are to my taste personally as I don't like dry wines, but boyfriend is loving them. I think he's re-thinking this whole "giving all the wine away" idea of mine. :-p
So with the pumpkin spice being a bust, I wanted to get another started ASAP. I'd done a red and a white, so I wanted to do something red again, or at least reddish. This is an issue as it's January here in Georgia and NOTHING IS IN SEASON. The closest is cranberries and those are still hugely expensive. Also pomegranates which are great, but I'd need 45 of them to make a batch, and at $2.50/fruit..... that ain't happening. I was ready to settle on using dried fruit to get something going, so with that in mind, I went to my farmer's market to see what was there. They also have a seriously amazing selection of dried fruits, so if I couldn't find anything fresh, I'd pick up something there. Prunes if I had to.
I didn't have to. Whew.
I was walking in between the mangoes and papayas, lamenting that they would make superb WHITE wines (and were around $0.75/lb or less), I passed a small display. Just one box. I stopped. Backed up. Stared. Looked up a recipe to see how much I'd need. And then started to grin and almost started to laugh.
And then I shoveled 17-18lbs of them in to my cart.
I had found PRICKLY PEARS!
To those who live in an area where cacti are common, you're probably grinning and going "Oh man! I bet that's going to be good! I remember when my mom/gran/great gran/friend's aunt/school teacher and I made prickly pear jelly and it was amazing!" To those who don't live in an area populated by cacti, you're probably going "What the hell is a prickly pear?" or maybe you've heard of them but are going "You're going to do WHAT with a cactus?!"
Prickly pears are the fruit of a very common cactus, and are a real pain to get in the wild. Not because they're rare, or because they're hard to grow, but because, well, they're cacti. They have spines. That hurt. A lot. Harvesting usually involves long sleeves, jeans, thick gardening gloves, and tongs.
And then you need a flamethrower when you get home to burn off the spines.
Luckily, the ones I found had been completely de-spined, so I was happy to pay the $1.85/lb or so for them. They also weren't completely ripe, but the fruit inside the pod was the appropriate color, texture, flavor, and smell. So PRICKLY PEAR WINE!!
For the uninitiated, this is a prickly pear:
Take the fruit from the skin, and discard the skin. Then use the fruit as you so wish! Some people make jelly, some juice them, some like them completely whole. They're really really full of seeds, but the seeds are edible as well, so you can eat them whole. The flavor is......... unique. I've heard it described like a combination watermelon and raspberry. It's subtle like a watermelon, but has a tang and a tartness like a raspberry. It's just...... prickly pear.
They're also violently pink. And I mean violently:
While all the fruit fit in there, the 1 1/2 gallons of water did not, so I had to sepearate them in to smaller pots to get them all to boil together. This leeched nearly ALL the bright pink color out of them. When relatively cool, I poured all pots into my nylon mesh bag lined primary, and then worked and squeezed like hell to get as much juice out as possible. This got me to about 2 gallons, well short of my 3 gallon batch! I knew the sugar would add some volume, so I added that next.
I realized I'd never shown the sugar, and that I probably should. Yes, everyone knows what sugar looks like, but it's a bit unreal to have to face the quantities used, and realize that it's ALL going to go away to make alcohol. Here is my measuring cup with a bit over 2 lbs of sugar in it:
And then I remembered to take my specific gravity! With no fruit pulp, nylon mesh, or the like in the way, I could get a nice clear reading.
Starting SG: 1.122.
If that ferments to dryness, it'll give me an alcohol by volume (ABV) of a bit over 16%. Not bad, though I don't think the yeast I chose will get it that high. I chose the Red Star Montrachet yeast for this one, as it's the most popular one for reds where you want to retain the character of the fruit, as well as the color. This is the same yeast I used for the blackberry, so I knew what to look for in terms of activity:
The orange is from the pumpkin. It permanently stained my bucket, but I cleaned the heck out of it, so there should be NO contamination (taste or otherwise) from it.
And then I went to bed, as it was nearly 1am at this point. I was nervous as Jack said this yeast really only tolerates sugar up to 23 Brix, which is at a SG of about 1.100, so a goodly bit less than what mine ended up at, but when I uncovered it this morning, there was a happy cap of foam on top and some very busy yeast underneath! I stirred it and recovered and went away happy.
This evening, I uncovered to see how it was doing (I'm always antsy at this stage), and found this gorgeous sight:
I can't wait to taste this.I haven't had prickly pear anything in YEARS, and to find some, and make wine from them, here in Georgia has me quite giddy! :-p
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