Into the Secondary

The strawberry guava, lemongrass ginger, and passion fruit wines are now in the secondary and finishing up.  We're happy with the taste, smell, and color.

Newest wines in the secondary.

Passionfruit >> Persimmon

Yesterday we dumped out more wine than we made.  Eight gallons of persimmon wine required attention.  The first 3 gallon batch was over treated with vanilla.  The five gallon batch had "the funk" and showed no sign of improvement at 8 months.  I've got one more idea to try on persimmons and if that doesn't work, our persimmons will be reserved for cookies and bread and deer chow from now on.

Lemongrass Ginger wine

The lemongrass ginger wine is in the secondary and looking good.  The strawberry guava is chugging along as well.  I expect another 2-3 days before we can move it to the secondary.

Passion Fruit must

We started a batch of passion fruit wine today.  This batch used 2# 13oz of pulp, basically our entire 2014 harvest.  I reserved a bit for use in the secondary, and we're trying QA 23.  It is supposed to get really cold today and this week, so we may have to bring the primary upstairs to keep it moving along.  here is the planned recipe:

2# 13oz passion fruit pulp, frozen

1 can Welch's white grape concentrate

1# 8oz sugar

Kmeta or 1 campden

7 pints water

1t pectic

2g Bentonite

1g Booster Blanc

Lalvin QA 23

GoFerm 1tsp

Fermaid K 1/4 tsp, divided.

Thaw just enough to remove about 4oz pulp and reserve for use in the secondary. While fruit is thawing, add Kmeta. Allow to thaw overnight. The next morning, add sugar, concentrate to primary. Bag the pulp, reserving any juice, and add bagged fruit and juice to primary. Heat 7 pints water, and add to primary, mixing thoroughly to dissolve the sugar. When cool, add 1tsp pectic enzyme and 1g Booster Blanc. Wait 12 hours, adjust pH (this required 2.25tsp of calcium carbonate to move the pH from 2.75 too 3.25), then add starter of QA 23. Add bentonite after 2 days and add Fermaid K at end of lag phase and at 1.050-1.060 range. 

Rack to secondary when SG under 1.010. Rack again when fermentation complete. After second racking, add the reserved 4oz passion fruit pulp and leave for about a month. Rack off the extra pulp. Cold stabilize, then after 6 months clarify, stabilize, backsweeten, bottle.

For dinner, Salsa Soup which comes from our good friend Constance:

2# hamburger

2 pkg taco seasoning

2 pkg ranch dressing mix

16oz can each of kidney beans, pinto beans, black beans, diced tomatoes

1 can Rotel

2 cans shoe peg corn

2 cups water

Brown the hamburger, drain.  Then toss everything in the crock pot and simmer for 6 hours.

Guava and Lemongrass-Ginger Wines

We have two new, promising wines going on this New Year's Day.  My first-every wine was from guava, a blend of strawberry guava (Psidum littorale v. Longipes), lemon guava (Psidum littorale v. Littorale), and dwarf guava (Psidium guajava nana).  Although difficult to clear, it was wonderful wine.

Since then, the dwarf guava died, and the lemon guava tree was dug up and removed from the greenhouse.  The strawberry guava has continued happily on, leaving me with 23# of frozen fruit.  As before, we used a sketchy online recipe, only this time with about 60 other batches of  winemaking experience.  Per the recipe, and violating convention, we boiled the fruit, tweaking the fruit up to 5#/gallon.

Bagged fruit

We drip-drained the bagged fruit, added water to 3 gallons, added tannin, citric acid, and sugar.  Once cooled, we added pectic enzyme, followed by Booster Blanc; we want to preserve the fruit aromas and color as much as possible. Then it got covered with Saran Wrap and into the fridge for a 3 day cold soak.

Last night I pulled it out to warm up.  We nailed the pH at 3.31.  SG was a bit low at 1.081 so we added another 9 ounces of sugar.  Then we hit it with bentonite and a good starter of QA 23.

After cold soak, with the yeast starter on top.

Strawberry guava could turn out to be a very nice rose style wine.

At the same time we started Lemongrass-Ginger batch number three.  The lemongrass for all of my wines comes from a start given to me by my greenhouse friend and fellow Puerto Rico fruit hunter Jay Cotterman.  It grows like crazy in the greenhouse.  The original online recipe is pretty good, but not lemony enough for me.  With my last batch I doubled the lemongrass, which helped, but this was offset by some super-potent candied ginger.  The second batch, if carbonated, could pass for ginger ale.

Missouri-grown lemongrass

So this batch doubled the lemongrass again.  We're now up to 500g of lemongrass for a 3 gallon batch.  We dropped the fresh ginger, threw in a greenhouse Meyer lemon (juice and rind), and cut back the candied ginger to only 50g.  The grass was twice boiled, strained, bagged.

Lemongrass-ginger wine must

We nailed the SG at 1.089 and the pH was fine at 3.27.  We added pectic, tannin, and acid (citric and tartaric), and then a starter of K1-V1116.  Today, after 4 days, we're at 1.040.  I added the bentonite and the last of the nutrient.  It is pretty cold here, and the draft out of the crawl space is keeping this fermentation temp down nicely at 16.9C.  Good stuff.

We've got some additional wine planning to do today while watching football.  After seven tries, we've yet to make what I think is a really good batch of persimmon wine.  We have two bags left in the freezer from 2014.  Drawing inspiration from one Gary Weaver, we may try a small 1 gallon batch using boiled fruit, possibly with oak in the primary, using some of the remaining elderberries.  We've got more starfruit on the way, and the next batch of carambola will see some acid tweaks.  Finally, we're excited to try the QA 23 on a batch of passionfruit wine.  So much to do!