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, rhubarb wine on Jul 6th, 2007
I’m still behind last year, but the rhubarb patch is looking much better now.
The large leaves on large stalks show how far the rhubarb patch has come from early spring.
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 similar […]
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 can […]
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 […]