Any winemakers/homebrewers here?

[Dawn419]

We got the watermelon wine bottled yesterday!

The color came out darker (in the pix) than it actually looks in person.

Ended up with about 4 and a half gallons. Now to let it sit for a year before we actually start drinking it.

We're taking the three largest bottles over to mom's today, to store in her canning shed since we don't have room for them here. Mom keeps the shed air conditioned so it'll do well there.

 

[~gd]

Very nice appearance on your watermelon wine! I hate to ask but why do you think a year of 'aging' is going to change it much? I looked at how it was made and there are very few complex chemicals to react with each other during the ageing process, I would expect little change. ~gd

 

[Dawn419]

~gd,

After reading back over the recipe that we used, Jack Keller stated letting it age for 3 months up to one year. I'm not sure why I had it stuck in my head for letting it age for one year.

 

[doc_gonzo]

hey gd,

it was my undrstanding that some fruit wines, ie watermellon in particular benefit from ageing the same as the finer grape wines do. a '59 lafitte is worth a kajillion bux. i fail to see the difference between ageing a fine grape wine as oposed to ageing a lesser watermellon wine? the water mellon wine at 3 months still has a sharp citrus and citrus zest kinda wang to it, we're hoping with a bit of age that this will mello and throw more of the watermellon to the foreground.

on a completely different note, we're only a few 4 packs away from having enough empty Grolshs bottles (the swing top) to finally pull off our 1 st apple ale 5 gal brew woooooot!!! i am soooooo stoked to get back to brewing my own beer!!!! we'll bottle our first attempt together but after that we plan on kegging the rest.

doc

 

[k15n1]

Interesting discussion. Didn't know brewing was a specific term.

I've recently realized that anything with refined sugar isn't very SS. Most modern recipes for wine involve added sugar. Back in the day, they just crushed the fruit and the proof of the resulting fermentation depended on the cultivar and weather. And I've heard that apples that aren't sweet still were made into a decent hard cider because the enzymatic activity of the yeast chews up some of the complex carbohydrates and turns them into alcohol. In fact, this was a low-energy way to make use of a fruit crop that was hardly edible. Same story for pears in the northern part of the UK and northern France, I read.

 

[k15n1]

I'm told that fruit wines don't last forever. For apple wine, I was advised to drink it between 3 months and 1 year. The person who dispensed this advice also tole me about some experience with blueberry and rhubarb wine, both of which did not age particularly well. I wish I knew more about this, but at this point I'm just focused on getting through another case of apple wine.

 

[~gd]

Interesting discussion. Didn't know brewing was a specific term.

I've recently realized that anything with refined sugar isn't very SS. Most modern recipes for wine involve added sugar. Back in the day, they just crushed the fruit and the proof of the resulting fermentation depended on the cultivar and weather. And I've heard that apples that aren't sweet still were made into a decent hard cider because the enzymatic activity of the yeast chews up some of the complex carbohydrates and turns them into alcohol. In fact, this was a low-energy way to make use of a fruit crop that was hardly edible. Same story for pears in the northern part of the UK and northern France, I read.

Yep brewing is required to extract the sugars from malt. Malting is done to naturally convert the starches in grains to forms can be converted by yeast into ethanol. The converted materials are commonly called sugars but Chemists will say that many are not true sugars. Just in case you are wondering distilled spirts are distilled directly from fermemted 'mash' and skip the malting and brewing step.
The adding of refined sugars to make wine is not accepted by many winemakers it was seldom done before Prohibition even in Country wines. Nowdays people want more alcohol kick and they want it faster... As for cider and peary makers, most will tell you that fruit that is good out-of-hand makes a poor drink. Cooking fruit and both the very tart and even bitter fruits handed down for cider use is what they want.