Growing grapes and making wine in Bellevue
Posted in apple wine, herb wine, rhubarb wine, tasting, winemaking on Nov 13th, 2007
Maybe getting caught short, when I racked my mead the other day, was a blessing in disguise. Having half a gallon of mead in a 1-gallon jug, with all that head space threatening to oxidize it, motivated me to rack four other 1-gallon batches. Some of these had been sitting on lees longer than I […]
Posted in Recipes, apple wine, winemaking on Nov 5th, 2007
I got my start in winemaking by fermenting apple juice. I bought 1-gallon glass jugs, filled with juice, for less than homebrew shops were selling them empty. This got me a collection of small secondary fermenters and some nice dry white wine. I still make apple wine, almost every year, from my own apple trees […]
Posted in Recipes, halloween, pumpkin wine, winemaking on Oct 18th, 2007
How much pumpkin and acid?
This isn’t a common wine to make, even for a country wine, but I did find some recipes. Every single one of them agreed on using 5 lb/Gallon (600 g/L) of pumpkin, but they were very different in the amount of acid and sugar. I think it makes sense to use […]
Posted in halloween, pumpkin wine, winemaking on Oct 11th, 2007
Being a kid on Halloween meant dressing up in a costume, staying out after dark, and asking strangers for candy. Saying it like that makes it sound kinda strange - maybe even dangerous - why on earth would I do something like that? I was a young boy, so I did most things because they […]
Posted in gardening, rhubarb wine, tomato wine on Oct 8th, 2007
Harvest your rhubarb early in the fall
I pulled in the last of the rhubarb on 10/5/07. The 11 oz (312 g) brought my total for the year to 62 oz (1737 g), which is about what I harvested last year. October is a bit late, and I had to discard many stalks. Next year, I’ll […]
Posted in gardening, tomato wine on Sep 7th, 2007
I began harvesting my Gold Nugget tomatoes a month ago. I hope to get at least 15 lb (almost 7 kg) to make a white tomato wine. The 6.5 oz (175 g) that I harvested on 8/9/07 has become 9 lb 12.5 oz (about 4.4 kg) and counting, so I’m about 2/3 of the way […]
Posted in enology, herb wine, winemaking on Sep 5th, 2007
I’ve never been happier with a specific gravity measurement than this one: 0.993 on 8/31/07. After the pH crash and the stuck fermentation, after the potassium bicarbonate addition and the yeast starter, and after all that waiting my Oregano Wine has finally fermented out! I racked on 9/3/07 to a 1-gallon jug and a half-bottle. […]
Posted in tomato wine on Aug 9th, 2007
It’s a modest beginning, but a beginning nonetheless. Yesterday’s 6.5 oz (175 grams) of Gold Nugget tomatoes began a harvest that I expect to last into September. I’ll be gathering the fruit often, maybe every day, and storing it in the freezer. Currently, the freezer has unimportant things like food in it, so you might […]
Posted in cherry wine, enology on Jul 31st, 2007
Too much acid, but I don’t dare neutralize it
I pressed the cherry wine four weeks ago, and looked in on it yesterday. It’s had time to settle, and the clear wine has a lovely dark color. It tastes tart, though, and when I measured the total acidity (TA) I could see why. It was 11 […]
I’ve been stirring my oregano wine every day since I used potassium bicarbonate to raise the pH. Yesterday I took some measurements, and I found some good news and some bad news. The good news is that I succeeded in raising the pH to 3.67, and that’s high enough to permit fermentation. The bad news […]