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