2016 Wines - Chapter 1 - Blackberry

We had our best ever blackberry haul in 2016 and September is the time to start making wine. Forty-two pounds of blackberries were dosed with K-meta thawed in two buckets.

Twenty-four hours later the berries were gently crushed and combined. SG was 1.042, and with 1.77kg sugar brought up to 1.085. pH 2.98 adjusted with 2.5t calcium carbonate to 3.28. Added 3t of pectic, 3g of Opti-Red, and we let the temp come up.

The next day we pitched a starter of 71B, and it took about 24 hours to form a nice cap. Fermaid K was step fed and after 6 days we were near 0 Brix and we pressed the must.

Yes, I filled the airlocks

We got about 2.5 gallons of free run and almost 4 gallons after pressing, about 11# per gallon. The pH is 3.03, probably from the additional acid released by the blackberries. I was aiming for a little higher than that, but hey, that's blackberry. Backsweetening will hopefully balance that out. We'll try to keep this wine protected from the light to preserve its color, but last year I had to blend a little elderberry to make this wine look good.

Freezer Full

Blueberries and Blackberries have come and gone.  We're at 45# of blueberries and 90# blackberries. Elderberries are still coming in, and we are at ~35# and counting. I can harvest from the yard, and I don't have to run out to my secret spot. Just as well, someone else discovered it this year and we would have been competing for the berries.

We've run out of room in the freezer. With this amount of elderberries, I'm looking for a way to make elderberry rosé without doing the first run so that I can get more of the rosé per pound of elderberries. I don't have the magic formula yet.

The surprise of the day was Barlett pears. I found these on the ground today and we have another 4-6 still on the tree. This is the first year we've had any pears, and I'm going to have to do some pruning of this tree to keep them within reach.

If I count this as a berry, I'm back to quad-berry estate wine

The persimmon wine has cleared quickly and easily.  I racked it today, we have about 2 and 1/3 gallons. There is hope for this wine.

Making Room in the Freezer

The freezer is filling up. I estimate we've got 40# of blueberries, 76# of blackberries, and the elderberries are just starting to ripen up. Presently we're still bagging 1.5-2# per day from the backyard.

Part of this mornings blackberry haul

So to make room in the freezer I had to remove some leftover persimmons. I have never made a drinkable persimmon wine. But having had some luck with bananas in second run wines, and not having tried bananas in persimmon wine, I decided to give it a try. This will be a 2 gal batch.

10# persimmons
24oz white grape concentrate
All of the leftover frozen overripe bananas I can dig out of the freezer (only four)
Sugar: ~4#, aim for OG 1.085
GoFerm
Fermaid K
Tannin: 1/2t
Pectic enzyme: 8t divided
50/50 mix of citric and tartaric acid to pH of 3.5 preferment
1/2 cup oak chips 
3 gal water
Optiwhite
Bentonite on day 3

The fruit is thawed, hit with Kmeta, bagged, and then heavily dosed with pectic overnite. Using K1-V1116. Smells like bananas. Stay tuned.

I'm calling this caramel colored.

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.

Dave's Smoked Salmon

My brother, upon learning I now have a BGE, sent me his favorite smoked salmon recipe. We gave it a go.

The fish is soaked in a brine with bay leaves and maple syrup overnight. Then the next morning you form a "pellicle" on the fish by drying it in front of a fan for 4 hours.

The fish becomes tacky. The thinner parts looked as if they had been smoked already by the time this step was complete - they were translucent and firm. The fish then went onto the grill. The BGE was easy to dial in at 200F.

The recipe says to baste hourly with maple syrup. It took only three hours to get to the desired internal temp of 145F.

Delicious! We'll do this again when Jake gets home. Thanks Dave!

Notorious BGE

For Father's Day I got a Big Green Egg. I practiced a couple of times, then went whole hog on 13# of pork butt. Here's how it went down.

Started with two pieces of bone-in pork butt. They were dried, coated with mustard, then liberal application of butt rub. Then they went into the fridge overnight.

I loaded the Egg with charcoal and fired it up. My one mistake with the Egg was allowing the temp to get too high at the start. My thermometer did a 360 it got so hot, probably 800F. So it took some time to cool it off. I put them on at about 325F and did 1 hour/pound (about 6 pounds each) at 300F. It is crazy easy to lock in the temp on the Egg. My temp didn't vary more than about 15 degrees for the entire 6 hour smoke.

After about 4 hours I wrapped the pork in foil and let it finish to 200F. I didn't add any charcoal the whole time and when I went back out to cook steaks last night, there was still about half of the charcoal left.

The meat pulled off easily. It had a little less smokiness than I would like, so next time maybe more chips or even a few chunks of wood. But these butts made for a great Saturday supper with Shawn and Suzanne.

Tomato mozzarella salad, apple cole slaw, and pulled pork 

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.