RIP Kari

It is a good day for some greenhouse work, rainy and cold.  For the most part, the greenhouse is coming alive.  There is mostly good news.

It looks like we may have our first Psidium myrtoides, purple guava.  Grown from seed given to me by Sadhu at Govardhan Gardens, these plants are probably 4 years old.  They have proven extremely difficult to manage in containers, with a pendulous habit and a stubborn refusal to grow as a tree.  The first one bloomed a few weeks back and it looks like we got fruit set.  Too early to jinx it with pictures.

I've found the key to T.R.Hovey papaya, and that is heat...aimed directly at the pot.

 

Lychees are blooming, and for the first time, some overlap between Sweetheart and Brewster.  I'm not convinced I'll have any fruit set yet.

One little limeberry is pumping out fruit like crazy.  A few ounces last year went into the Tutti Fruiti wine.  We should have a bit more this year.

And finally, RIP Kari.

Spring Cleaning

Last weekend we bottled 3 gallons each of lychee, starfruit, and lemongrass mint wine.  The starfruit and lemongrass are sound, but the lychee is potentially really good.  We'll hold these for summer - the pool opening is just 3 weeks away.

Lisa is thrilled to be bottling

We have been busier in the yard than in the cellar.  Beautyberries and grasses are cut back, amsonia cleaned up, we've gotten through the first round of weeding.  I realized that for the last couple of years I've been spraying my agastache 'Honey Bee Blue' thinking it was a weed. It seems pretty widespread, so I suspect it'll be back one place or another.

Mulch started going down yesterday.  The pearlbushes made it through their first winter.  They look a little lonely but with a final height of 10' I'm not going to be too impatient.

Three little pearlbushes (two shown)

We've discovered that the self-seeded asparagus wakes up a little earlier than the original behind the chicken coop.  The first shoots of the season have been eaten, looking forward to more.

I hacked paths into the blackberries so hopefully the harvest will be easier.

Haskaps are blooming.  I ordered 5 more plants to fill in the little bed east of the garage.  I can already taste the 2018 haskap wine.

Results are In!

Last year I threatened to enter the Kansas City Cellarmasters Wine Competition but didn't get around to it.  This year I sent 4 wines.  The wine I honestly expected to do the best did not medal.  More on that in a later post.  But I did win three medals, including First Place in the vegetable flavored wine category.  The award is a $20 gift certificate to St Louis Beer and Wine Making which may or may not be the same as St. Louis Wine and Beermaking, I'll have to look into that.

I went to the cellar to get a bottle for a picture, and found that I had sent my last bottle of 2014 starfruit (carambola) wine.  This wine was made with 7# fruit/gallon, ended at a final pH of 3.44, and was backsweetened with 70g sugar/gallon.  As to color, two judges found it "excellent" and "great" while a third found it "inky, should be lighter."  On taste, despite the 70g of sugar, judges found it "close to being dry" and "close to dry but OK."  One taster thought the acid and sweetness were good, while another thought that the acid and tannin were too high and were distracting.  I wonder if some of the judges weren't quite familiar with the taste of carambola.  Overall score 13.83, a "sound wine." I think 5-6#/gallon is probably enough fruit for carambola wine; going forward, I'll be sure all seeds are out, and won't be shy about backsweetening this wine.

I honestly didn't have great hopes for the hibiscitrus wine. I may have mislabeled it as 2014, I'm pretty sure I sent the 2015.  There's not much to this wine - hibiscus flowers and whatever citrus I had growing in the greenhouse.  Used Booster Blanc and QA23.  The acid addition was straight citric, no acid blend used. It cleared, I used a little grapefruit rind in the secondary, backsweetened with 40g/gal sugar.  The color was rated as "nice" and "great."  One judge thought it "sharp" while another thought that the acidity was not as prominent as expected.  The finish was thought too short by two judges, while one thought the finish was "too grassy" and not floral enough.  I'm not sure how to fix that.  The overall score was 14.67, a "sound wine."

My third batch of lemongrass ginger wine saw further adjustments.  The second batch was far to gingery because the crystallized ginger I used was so strong.  So I dialed it back to only 80g of crystallized ginger.  This turned out to be a little short, as I ended up tweaking with a small dose of ginger extract in the end.  The lemongrass was upped to 500g for 3 gallons, and I added one Meyer lemon, along with white grape concentrate for body. Yeast was K1-V1116, acid additions 50/50 citric/tartaric, and it was backsweetened with only 25g/gallon sugar.  Aroma was "aromotic, grassy, earthy;" one judge noted "slight lemon" and another "strong lemon."  The acidity was "bright" with a
"nice lingering lemongrass" finish.  Overall score was 16.5, a "very good wine" which placed first in the vegetable wine category.

2015 Varieta Tropica

The 2015 Tutti Fruti Freezer Leftover wine is down to 1.002 today so was moved to carboy.  Color is actually better than expected but I think will still be a very pale rosé when all is said and done.

I hope it doesn't overflow into the airlock too much

Emptying the Freezer

Today I undertook a New Year's Day Tutti Fruti wine. This wine is inspired by Ben Hardy, who annually on Christmas empties his freezer and ferments all of the leftovers with the expected results. I may go with a more pretentious name, however. Varieta Tropica sounds good perhaps.

I'm going for high volume of fruit for this 1 gallon batch.

• 4# 12oz strawberry guava
• 3# 15oz june plums
• 1# 14oz annona, combination of sugar apples and one cherimoya
• 5oz jaboticaba
• 5oz hibiscus sabdariffa flower candies
• handful of limeberries
• handful of phalsa berries
• 42g dried lemongrass (equivalent to 2000g fresh lemongrass)
• 2 quarts water
• 12oz white grape concentrate
• 1tsp pectic
• 1 Campden tab
• 1/4tsp Optiwhite
• 1/2tsp citric acid
• 6.5 ounces sugar

I boiled the lemongrass in 1 quart of water, strained the water into the primary, and repeated with the second quart of water.  Then I crushed all of the fruit and added to the primary, along with the Campden tab, grape concentrate.  

June plums have big seeds

Once cool, I added Optiwhite and pectic enzyme.  The initial pH was 3.56, adjusted to 3.48 with 1/2t citric.  The grape concentrate had lots of tartaric crystals, hopefully they don't dissolve and cause it to be too sharp.  The O.G. was a surprising 1.062, adjusted to an early 1.080 with just 6.5 ounces of sugar.  

We'll let this sit for 24 hours, then pitch QA23.  By throwing everything in, I have lots of seeds and skins and so my intent is to press this off early, maybe three days, and hope for the best.

New Year's Eve Experiments

Suzanne remarked that one does not generally use guests as guinea pigs when testing a new recipe.  I'm not sure whether it is fearlessness, foolishness, insensitivity, or malevolence, but I had no problem trying out 4 new recipes on Shawn and Suzanne on New Year's Eve.

The risk was reduced because we went with all appetizer recipes, and two of the four recipes came from my foodie friend Jim.  We started with a recipe from Jim which I later to be popular on the web, and a quickie, grape jelly-chili meatballs.  You whip together 2 12 ounce bottles chili sauce with a 32 ounce jar grape jelly, and dump it in the crockpot over 2 bags meatballs, frozen.  We split between two pots, one for veggie meatballs for Allie.

Next up two new recipes we found. Tiny Tomato Tarts use a pie crust filled with tomato-basil mixture and finished with a three cheese and mayo topping, baked in the oven.

Next Grapefruit-Squash-Goat Cheese flatbreads, adapted from here.  We tweaked by swapping the butternut squash for roasted beets.  This recipe was just OK, there wasn't enough sweet and salt to balance the acid in the grapefruit.  But not bad.

We finished with another favorite of Jim, Russian Cream Parfaits.  2 cups sour cream, 3/4 cup sugar, and a little vanilla whipped together and layered with fresh fruit.  I used blackberries and raspberries and topped with some grapefruit zest.

Delicious.  Happy New Year and Go Blue!

Carambola Chips

If I had more starfruit, and carambola wine weren't so good, I'd make these all the time.  Slice them thinly and liberally dose half of them with chili powder before putting them in the oven.

2 firm-ripe carambola 
2 cups sugar
2 cups water

Slice star fruit crosswise with slicer into 1/16-inch-thick slices.
Bring sugar and water to a boil in a 2-quart heavy saucepan, stirring until sugar is dissolved. Add star fruit, then remove from heat and let stand, uncovered, 15 minutes. Pour star fruit into a sieve set over a bowl and drain 15 minutes. 
Put oven rack in middle position and preheat oven to 200°F. Put liner on a large (17- by 11-inch) baking sheet, then arrange star-fruit slices in 1 layer on liner (discard extra along with any broken slices). Bake until dry, 1 to 1 1/4 hours. Immediately transfer chips to a rack to cool.