Growing grapes and making wine in Bellevue
Posted in apple wine, mead, measurement & testing, tomato wine on Feb 28th, 2008
Best of Twitter! You are 90 percent more likely to buy red wine if you buy onions & more the wine industry has learned about you: http://bit.ly/brPFFg Follow Washington Winemaker on Twitter. Cherry Mead: The case of the disappearing acid Suppose you measure 6 g/L titratable acidity (TA), then add about 1.3 g/L of tartaric [...]
Posted in tomato wine, winemaking on Dec 31st, 2007
Ten days after pitching the yeast, I siphoned the translucent, yellow, tomato wine into two 1-gallon jugs and a 1.5L magnum bottle. So 18 lb (8.2 kg) of tomatoes, 4.8 lb (2.2 kg) sugar, and 2.5 quarts (2.4 liters) water turned into about 9 liters (a little under 2.5 gallons) of wine. I still don’t [...]
Posted in enology, tomato wine, winemaking on Dec 27th, 2007
It looked like fermentation was winding down, so I drew a sample for testing. The sample had some dissolved CO2 in it, and that can skew my tests in two ways. It can give rise to carbonic acid, which will push the titratable acidity (TA) higher. It can also make it look like there is [...]
Posted in Recipes, tomato wine, winemaking on Dec 22nd, 2007
I sowed seeds that sprouted into seedlings. I transplanted the seedlings to beds. I fussed over the tomato plants. I planned. I harvested. Now, at last, I’m finally making tomato wine! Ingredients Juice from 18 lb (8.2 kg) tomatoes – about 1.67 gallons (6.3 liters) 4.84 lb (2.2 kg) sugar 2.5 quarts (2.4 liters) water [...]
Posted in tomato wine on Dec 21st, 2007
I started with about 18 lb (8.2 kg) of frozen cherry tomatoes that came up to the 4-gallon (15 liter) mark of the bucket. After they thawed, I lightly crushed them with a long spoon. That left me with about 2.25 gallons of must, which I loaded into my three-bucket press. A few hours later, [...]
Posted in tomato wine on Dec 19th, 2007
I finally pulled the 18 lb (8+ kg) of tomatoes out of the freezer. I’ll be making a white wine from them, so once they defrost I’ll press them into juice. Then I can see what I’ve got in terms of sugar and acid, make adjustments, and start fermenting! I say this every season, but [...]
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 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 gardening, tomato wine on Jul 27th, 2007
I’m waiting to see how my white tomato wine turns out before trying a red, so I haven’t been thinking about which varietals to try. Until yesterday. That’s when I noticed a photo of some beautiful bite-sized tomatoes that, if they were darker, would be just the thing for a red tomato wine. The photo [...]
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 [...]