Jammin' for Relay

All day yesterday our radar more or less looked like this:

We ended up with 4.5" yesterday and already today by 7:00am almost another inch. There was no hope of working outside so it turned out to be a perfect day preparing for the Relay for Life.

Each year, led by Mindy and the rest of the staff, our contribution has grown. This year, although twice postponed due to rain, we had a softball tournament which proved very successful. Our fundraising also involves selling homemade jam, and yesterday was the day to make it.

I had a lot of leftover fruit and brought only a portion of it. It seemed to be a fitting use for the last 2.5# of starfruit from 'Kari,' as I don't have enough for a batch of wine. I also brought elderberries, blackberries, and blueberries.

Starfruit Jam in-the-making

A request was also made for wine, and I obliged with elderberry rosé, blueberry, lemongrass mint, lychee, and Dragon Blood. Only the lemongrass was unpopular, although each person had a different favorite. I brought four empty bottles home.

Chief Jammaker Jamie with Lisa

Wine Weekend - Part 2

Today I racked the reds. It is possible that the worst of my 2015 reds is better than the best of my 2014 reds. Lisa has declared the 2014 second-run elderberry her favorite wine. In 2015, the second run wound up with about 1/3 blackberry and so far this seems to be an improvement.

Is it a red? Is it a rosé?

The elderberry-blackberry blend was roughly 2/3 elder, 1/3 blackberry.  This wine took the oak very well. It is fruity and dark and jammy.

I'm calling this EB. It will certainly make it to the label.

The straight elderberry has less oak than the EB, but well enough. This wine is less fruit-forward, thick and tannic.

Straight elderberry wine

Finally, today I racked the blackberry. This was a straight-juice wine, one of the first I've tried. It has an interesting, fruity pop. I'm going to lightly oak this one, and so I added 7 cubes per gallon. I will also probably nudge it with a hint of vanilla.

I'm told this color is typical of blackberry.

For Father's Day I became and EGGhead. I lit it and played around for a few hours last night, cooking some cedar plank salmon. I hope I'm far enough up the learning curve that I don't ruin the 13# of pork butt we have planned for today.

Spring Pizza

Today was cool and rainy.  We worked in the greenhouse.  Cherimoyas have started blooming, but I cut them back severely, as they get so long and lanky.  Sprayed everything with Neem, as we have a bit of scale here and there.  We may have our first Brewster lychees, but too early to jinx it with a pic. The first round of jaboticabas is starting to ripen.

For supper we made cauliflower crust pizzas.  One was an adaptation of "spinoccoli" and the other a traditional vegetarian.

As usual, first the cauliflower is pulverized into "rice," then cooked.  Afterwards, the water is pressed out by squeezing it in towels.  The new twist on this version is ground almonds.  We mixed it up and pressed it into crusts.

Then the toppings.  The spinoccoli used a garlic white sauce we made.

8 minutes at 400 degrees.  The tomato sauce pizza was a little soupy.

The pizzas tasted great with our 2014 Elderberry Rosé. We were surprised at how good this wine was, fruity and dry.

Plateau of Productivity

The Hype Cycle is a graphical representation of technology adoption and diffusion. The part of this graph I most like to point out is the "Trough of Disillusionment." Companies have to recognize this point in a product or project lifecycle and push through it.

I was standing there looking at a dozen carboys yesterday and thinking I've been through this same cycle with winemaking. I had some early successes which led to inflated expectations. Then failures led to some disillusionment. Study and practice and a lot of bad wine pushed me up the Slope of Enlightenment. Yesterday I looked at a dozen carboys, confident that not one of them has undrinkable wine, I felt as if I'm approaching the Plateau of Productivity.

For Thanksgiving the family is home, including my parents. The Elderberry Persimmon wine Wednesday was a big hit, both in terms of taste and in terms of photogenicity.

We moved the blackberry-elderberry to secondary and kicked off the second run elderberry. Grandma Sharon helped with this batch. For Thanksgiving dinner we finished a bottle of last year's second run elderberry. This wine was bottled dry and came out terrific - fruity with strawberry and raspberry elements and beautiful ruby color. This wine cleared on it's own and was bottled after 9 months.  Here is the recipe.

Elderberry - seeds, skins, and pulp leftover from 2 16# 3 gal batches
3# bananas
3 cans Welch's white grape concentrate
4# 14oz sugar
GoFerm
Fermaid K
3t pectic enzyme
5t citric acid
1t tartaric acid

Place elderberry pulp in nylon straining bag in primary; add sugar and grape concentrate. Slice bananas, simmer, strain into primary.  Add boiling water to 3 gallons.  When cool, stir in acids, pectic enzyme.  Pitch yeast starter with EC-1118, step feed, kmeta when into secondary, usual care thereafter.