July 4th

I admit to some mixed feelings this July 4th. We had the good judgment to elect a man who may be remembered as the greatest president of my generation. And now we have a 22% chance of making one of the gravest mistakes in our history. Not for her? This probably won't change your mind, but I'm compelled to post the link anyway.

Over the 3 day holiday weekend we received over 4.5 inches of rain. Some places in town got even more. Yet we managed to get in plenty of weeding and picking, and a little cooking too.

Friday we went back to Danamay Farms.  We picked 9 buckets of blackberries and about 10# of blueberries. The plan at this point is 60# of blackberries, of which about 35# will go into a straight blackberry, all-juice, no-water wine. The remainder will be blended with elderberry. My blueberry target is 30#. That is 12# for a straight blueberry-concord 3 gallon batch like I made last year, and then another 18# for a blueberry rosé in standard rosé style - crush, a few hours on the skins for some color, then pressed. Then we'll use the seconds to make the same blueberry hibiscus wine that turned out so well last year.

Blueberry Hibiscus Wine
Leftover seeds/skins/pulp from earlier 3.5# batch 
160 hibiscus flowers
1 can Welch's red grape concentrate
1# 10oz sugar
1t pectic
1/4t citric acid
1/4t (1g) Opti-White
Fermaid K
Go-Ferm
1 gal water

Put the hibiscus flowers in straining bag and place in primary. Add the blueberries, grape concentrate, and flowers. Boil the water and dissolve the sugar.  Pour the sugar-water mix over the flowers and fruit. When cool, remove the flowers and squeeze gently, not too hard. Add the pectic, citric acid, and Opti-White.  After 12 hours, make a starter with Go-Ferm, and pitch yeast (K1-V1116). Step feed, kmeta at first racking, and usual care thereafter. This wine needs no fining or filtering.

Saturday after CME we worked on some of the wines that need to be bottled before we can start this year's batches. We bottled 6 gallons of DB, as good as ever. The blackberry was, after bench trials, stabilized and sweetened with 60g/gal and colored up a bit with 10% elderberry. We bottled it and the blueberry hibiscus.

Blackberry wine

Dinner was, again, on the BGE. Brisket burgers exceeded expectations, and the blackberry dump cobbler was excellent too.

Dump Cobbler on the BGE

Sunday, still raining, we worked on Shawn and Suzanne's new place. I've determined that down-sizing is not for me, not at this time anyway. 

On Monday the 4th we went back to Danamay Farms. I took them some wine - one bottle each of DB, elderberry, lemongrass-ginger, and blackberry. I know for sure that at least two of these are drinkable, so I felt as if I could take a chance on the other two. Amy likes drier wine, Gabe sweeter. He was given permission to sweeten them up as needed. 

At this point we have hit our 60# target on blackberries, but we're not quite there on blueberries.

We got some weeding done, and as important, nailed down the plans for Christmas. We'll have the kids together, which will be great. For supper, Shawn and Suzanne returned (lacking a functional kitchen in their new place) for roasted chicken, brussel sprout slaw, corn on the cob, and blueberry-peach yogurt cake for supper. 

Happy 4th! And I'm with her.

Wine Weekend - Part 1

It is too hot for anything to really grow outside, including weeds. We have started watering early in an effort to just keep things healthy. So this weekend will be spent catching up on winemaking. Friday I tackled the 1 gallon batches.

First up were the blueberry wines. We have a straight blueberry which isn't bad, but suffers from a little foxiness from the bit of Concord used. For unclear reasons, this foxiness is missing from the blueberry hibiscus, which was made from the seconds. Both wines are clear, with good color and taste. Of the two, I prefer the hibiscus blueberry. They will be bottled soon, dry.

Blueberry and Hibiscus Blueberry Wines

Arkansas Black was made from straight juice of apples given to me by one of my patients. It could be that I just don't like apple wine. I find this wine unremarkable. I have to search for any hint of apple. The acid is about right, as are the tannins. I'm afraid that no matter what I do this this I won't like it that much.

Varieta Tropical is my Christmas Tutti Fruiti freezer wine. This wine is a pleasant surprise. It's only problem is its tea color. It has a nice floral aroma, just a little green peppery bite. Tannins are a little prominent. It might need some acid and a little backsweetening, but this wine has much more promise than the apple.

Costa Rican Hibiscus batch number two tastes as good as batch number one, like a combination of red hots and peppermint candies. Like the first batch, it is slow to clear however and will require a clarifier.

Arkansas black, Varieta Tropica, and Costa Rican Hibiscus wines

The 2016 citrus combo wine is clearing nicely. This wine is citrusy without the bandaid smell some of my citrus wines get. I'll sweeten this a little bit and we'll have a nice wine for next summer.

2016 Citrus Wine

Tomorrow we'll get to the elderberry and blackberry wines. And some more outside watering.

Chocolate and Blueberry

We kicked off two new brews this weekend.  I'll call them brews because one is not truly a wine - Chocolate Mead.

Each batch I make involves some research, and I found that chocolate mead recipes range from cocoa preferment to Hershey's Syrup postferment.  I went with the former.  I heat pasteurized the honey, added 8 ounces by weight of Hershey "Special Dark Chocolate" cocoa, and after much reading and hand wringing about pH in meads, went with no adjustments to the pH of 5.99.

We'll leave this on the cocoa lees for 2-3 months.  It is said to take 2 years for the bitterness of the cocoa to settle down.  I see why some would choose the Hershey's Syrup route.

The second batch is a second run blueberry hibiscus wine.  I saved the fruit/skins/pulp from my blueberry wine earlier this fall.  I thawed it and simmered it in a gallon of water.

Then in the primary I put the usual hibiscus flowers, a can of red grape concentrate, and sugar.

Then poured the blueberry water (with the bag) into the primary and gave it a good mix.  The kitchen smells like baked bread.  But the must is surprisingly fruity, with excellent deep purple color.

The plan is to let this cool, add OptiRed and pectic, then adjust the OG and pH and pitch the yeast in the morning.