Growing grapes and making wine in Bellevue
Posted in enology, equipment, maintenance & cleaning on Jul 12th, 2007
To work properly, a pH meter must be calibrated. You do this by preparing (or buying) buffered solutions of known pH and testing the meter against them. My meter uses a two point calibration. It works by immersing the meter in the first buffer solution (pH 6.86 in this case) then reading the pH and [...]
Posted in enology on Jul 11th, 2007
I’ve used pH papers for a while, but in making red wine from cherries I’ve gone beyond their limits. I can’t read the color very well when I’m measuring dark colored wine, and for the same reason, its tough to do acid titration with an indicator. Since I didn’t have a good way to measure [...]
Posted in gardening, tomato wine on Jul 8th, 2007
I put a lot of thought into pruning my grapes, but I normally just let my tomatoes grow any which way they choose. I might try to tuck them into their cages every now and again, but I never thought about pruning. Now that I’m growing tomatoes for wine, I’m starting to wonder if some [...]
Posted in gardening on Jul 6th, 2007
Checking in on the rhubarb patch
Country wine, second wine, and melomel Cherry mead, often called “cherry melomel”, is usually made like a country wine. You make a country wine with small amount of fruit, 2-6 lb, per gallon of water (250-750 g/L) with enough sugar to bring the alcohol up to 12% and acid to balance. You would do something [...]
Posted in cherry wine on Jul 3rd, 2007
I pressed the cherry wine last night. I got just under three gallons of free run, and another half gallon or so after pressing. The photo is from last night and shows the free run wine in a carboy. It’s foamy because I just poured it in through a funnel, and it’s still fermenting. You [...]
Posted in colony collapse disorder, mead on Jul 2nd, 2007
My cherry wine is fermenting nicely. I plan to press it soon, and use the pomace to make a cherry mead. The good price on the cherries worked out really well, but it did leave me with a dilemma about the honey. Use the wildflower that I have? It would be much better in the [...]