Winemaking project: Pictures page 6!

[freemotion]

Just looking at an onion wine recipe, and also noticed several spiced/herbed wine recipes.

I wonder what would happen if I made a small batch of onion/garlic wine, herbed with basil, oregano, etc and made it into vinegar for salad dressings? And used the wine for cooking? Anyone have an opinion?

 

[freemotion]

I picked up some peaches today at the farm stand to make a gallon batch of peach wine, and I plan on starting the elderberry at the same time. I also picked up two more 2-gallon containers at the discount store to use as my primary fermenter, the place one starts the mixture off before putting it in a jug with an airlock. I have two jugs, so I figure I can start two batches at a time with the two primaries, then get more jugs as I want them.

Of course I came home, itching to get started, KNOWING I had all the ingredients at home with a packet of yeast in my fridge. You'll never guess. I have almost no sugar in this house! :/ Imagine that!

It'll have to wait until tomorrow. I only run across the street to Big Y if I am desparate for an ingredient, as their prices are ridiculous and I try not to support them. DH will pick it up at another store near his place of work.

I ordered a five gallon pail of raw wildflower honey, so I will be trying some batches with that, too. Hopefully I can do a batch of peach with it. It sounds like such a wonderful combination. I sweeten my peach pies with honey and it is delicious.

 

[freemotion]

Last night I cut up and weighed out 2.5 lbs of peaches, mashed them in a bowl with a potato masher, and put my Memere's jelly thingy (what is it called? Cone-shaped metal with little holes punched in it, with a wooden pounder that is also cone shaped, and a ring with legs that goes with it) over the big jar that will by my primary fermenter for one gallon batches. I lined it with cheesecloth and pounded away, extracting juice.

I weighed out 2 lbs of white sugar into the primary fermenter, and added 7 pints of filtered water. Stirred in the sugar, then tied up the peach pulp in the cheesecloth and dropped it in. Covered the top with plastic wrap and a rubber band and added a note with the recipe and date.

Tonight I add the yeast. I left out all the powders and chemicals that were called for in the recipe.

 

[freemotion]

Since the gallon jug I found in a bottle dump cleaned up SPARKLING clean (Long soak with Dawn, then a scrubbing with a bottle brush and baking soda, then a disinfect with a mild bleach solution) I now have two gallon jugs that I can put airlocks onto. So I started the elderberry batch today.

I ended up combining two recipes, the one in my new booklet and the one in Wild Fermentation. I would've just used the latter but some of my elderberry juice was from last year, stored in pint canning jars in the freezer. I'd extracted it using the jelly method of simmering the berries, then straining out the liquid.

I used four pints of frozen juice, one pint of frozen raw berries from this year, and 3 pints of filtered water. It is thawing in the primary fermenter on the kitchen counter. I may add the yeast tonight, as per the WF recipe, or I may wait until tomorrow, as per the booklet recipe. Hmmm, what to do, what to do....

I put a call in to a friend to see if he has any potatoes in his garden, grown chemical-free, as I need a half pound for the onion wine and organic ones would mean an hour or more in the car to buy. I have one other source, if neither has any, I'll have to be patient and just get some 'taters the next time dh is near Whole Foods.

I'm gonna scout for some wild grapes, but my hopes are not high. Most of them grow too far out of reach or there is poison ivy beneath them, so getting the six pounds needed could be a challenge. I will pick whatever I can find and freeze them, hoping to end up with enough. If not, I'll mix them with something else, maybe. We will see.

 

[freemotion]

I added half a packet of champagne yeast to the peach, and added a pint canning jar to hold the bag of peach pulp under the liquid as it was floating and was looking a bit oxidized where it floated above the liquid. I left the elderberries loose, I think I will use this method in the future and just strain it into the jug with the airlock later. The instructions call for using a "nylon bag" to hold the fruit, but I don't really want to go through all this trouble just to add nylon to my wine. I used cotton cheesecloth. It floats.

I didn't add yeast to the elderberry yet as it still felt too cold to the touch, especially when I felt the peach, which was quite warm in comparison. I will add it tomorrow.

Ah, the excitement! Be still, my heart!

 

[freemotion]

Forgot to mention that none of the corks have moved for a while, so I turned all the bottles upside-down in their cardboard wine boxes and put them in the cellar, to age. We seriously need to think about picking up the big oak wine rack that was offered to me by a friend. Not sure how many bottles it will hold, but now I can imagine filling it! It is probably 4' x 8' or something like that...it was made for a wine store or restaurant or something....but we will have to cut it down a bit to fit into my cellar.

 

[freemotion]

Went out to pick wild grapes today after reading a recipe that combines watermelon juice with wild grapes, and I only needed two pounds. That sounded doable.

I came home with about a half a cup. Put 'em in the freezer...hope springs eternal!

 

[freemotion]

I finally measured the specific gravity of my two batches tonight, something I should've done with the juice when I first started. I think I am ready for a winemaking book...I need to understand the process in more detail, and after working with three batches, I think I am ready to read about it more in-depth.

The peach was 1.060 at three days old. The elderberry was 1.010 at only two days old. Both were working and fermenting enough to have the plastic wrap bulging upward quite noticably. I decided to up the sugar in the elderberry, and I added a quart of pomegranate/raspberry juice. That brought the specific gravity up to only 1.020, so I made some simple syrup with one cup of sugar and it is cooling on the stove. I will add it in the morning. I tasted the elderberry and it was rather bitter....eep.

 

[FarmerDenise]

I am glad you posted how you clean your bottles. I have several gallon jugs, that I had saved years ago, but they a nasty dirty from being outside. I am going to try and clean them up, using your method.
I canned all my peaches and the blackberries got dehydrated during our brief heatwave. Our grapes got something called greenrot, and the ones that didn't, got burned in that short heatwave also :/ Now I'll be looking around for some free fruit. The blackberries might come back for one more wave, I hope
Something will pop up, or maybe I'll try making zucchini wine

 

[freemotion]

My little booklet has recipes for wines made from garden veggies! Carrot wine, beet wine, onion wine, pumpkin wine....and from grains, such as barley, wheat, and corn.

Do you have any of those dehydrated blackberries? I have a recipe that calls for dehydrated elderberries, and many recipes call for raisins, like some of the ones with the veggies.

Oooo, I hope your jugs clean up as nicely as mine did!