Signs of Life

Birds are a problem this year.  A cardinal has spent the better part of the last 3 weeks attacking his image in one or another window of our house.  And a guinea hen has settled in the area of the backyard.  One of these birds will not see summer.

We are pleased with the progress of our fruit plantings in the yard.  All of the pawpaw trees survived the winter, although the two tallest trunks died back after getting roughed up by deer last fall.  The elderberries are spreading to the point where I'm getting a little concerned they may become invasive.  The haskaps, which looked nearly dead last fall, have set fruit and we may get a pint of berries.  Hoping for twice that output of jostaberries.

Jostaberry blooms

Most importantly, there are signs of life in 'Kari.'  I pruned back a lot of dead branches, but we clearly have a flush of growth.

Weather is limiting garden work a little bit this weekend, but it makes for some interesting views.

Cell moving north-northeast across Fulton

Fraternity Mulch

My friend and fellow YMCA board member Tim also happens to be the chapter advisor for Phi Delta Theta here at Westminster.  Each year they donate some labor to the Y auction and this year it was our pleasure to be rewarded with their time.  What better way for a Phi Delt to spend a couple of hours on Saturday afternoon than spreading mulch?

We didn't have enough tools because we didn't expect quite so many guys.

A public thank you to Tim and the Phi Delts from Westminster!

Wine day

Red Wine Racking Day.

Say that three times fast.

Today we racked all of our country red wines.  They are clear and for the most part, nearing time to bottle, and so it was a good time to sample them.

I racked elderberry batch #3 (3 gal) off of the oak.  This batch was made with straight tartaric acid and had some tartaric crystals.  It begs the question of whether I should cold stabilize this wine.  Probably not.  I doubt it will be chilled much below the temp of the basement this winter.  Color great, nice body, fruity, not too tannic.  Not sure if there is enough oak yet.  May benefit from more oak or finishing tannins.  However, in the words of a former professor, when in doubt, "Don't just do something, stand there."

Elderberry batch #4 (3 gal) came off of the oak as well.  Just a tiny bit of tartaric crystals in this wine, less than batch #3, because this one was made with acid blend.  I can't tell that it is any sharper than batch #3.

The second run elderberry, an elderberry rose (3 gal) may be the best of the elderberry wines.  Very fruity, low tannins.  This one has a couple of bananas for body which are supposed to be undetectable flavor-wise.  I'm not so sure.  But it is not there in a bad way; there is a complexity to this wine that the straight elderberry wines don't have.

Pomegranate/Cranberry (1 gal) is very good.  This wine, I discovered after investigating further, also has elderberry juice in the base.  I likely will bottle this one as-is.

Blackberry (1 gal) is fruity, a little citrusy, sharp, and probably excessively tannic.  This one is not ready for the bottle.  It clearly needs backsweetening, and may need the egg white treatment if it doesn't settle down in the next several months.

In greenhouse, the Carambola 'Kari' (starfruit) is just clinging to life.  I'm not sure what happened.  Very sad.  As you can tell from the background of the blog, it is one of my favorite trees.  This tree has produced dozens and dozens of tasty starfruit.  I have 4 1 gallon bags of fruit frozen, waiting for the next open 3 gallon carboy.  If I lose this tree it will take years before its replacement can produce the same amount of fruit.

Kari in happier times

The Start of the Garden Year

Each year, despite our best intentions, Lisa and I eventually fall behind with the gardens, sometimes sooner, sometimes later.  I can tell which years we'll fall behind sooner, because we get a rough start.  It might be weather, nice during the week and poor on the weekends; it might be travel; but for whatever reason, if we haven't mowed before the feather reed grass shows, we're in trouble.

This year, while it is not yet really spring, the start of the gardening season declared itself with a beautiful 60 degree sunny, windless Sunday.  Lisa spent much of her day strictly adhering to her pre-emergent schedule.  I tackled the mowing.

Over the years I've tried a variety of methods for cutting back the ornamental grasses.  We have the 'Karl Foerster', as well as Panicum virgatum 'Dallas Blues' and 'Rotstrahbusch', Miscanthus sinensis "Gracillimus', and several others whose names escape me.  The miscanthus is the toughest.  I've tried string trimmers, chain saws and other methods.  It turns out that by far the easiest way to handle the spring grass duties with the Grasshopper.  What used to take an entire day can be reduced to about an hour by simply mowing them down with the Grasshopper.

Unless you get stuck.

My good friend Jorgen bailed me out today, and I partially repaid him with some wine.  This morning Lisa and I bottled 6 gallons of Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc.  This New Zealand wine we made from a kit with QA 23.  It is a little tart, but hopefully it will settle down in the bottle.  Lisa's favorite wine.

Anyway, once pulled from the muck I went on to finish the pool beds, the liriope bed, the elderberry beds, and the grasses around the drive.  And the feather reed grass is not yet up.  In all, a good start to the garden year.

Tonight we're having steak we paid way too much for last night at the YMCA auction.  Although we resolved this morning to drink more of our homemade wine, these steaks require a red, and I don't have anything worthy.  So we've opened some wine club reds, a Spanish garnacha (Grenache) and a Cab from Argentina.

Don't find yourself in this mess.

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!