Re: what are you making?

I'm taking brix, pH and acid readings every few days now. It's getting close to harvest. This year I will make three wines;

Chambourcin/NY73/Baco Noir blend Vidal/Chardonel/Vignoles blend fermented cool Cabernet Franc/Cabernet Sauvignon blend

All these blends will be fermented together from the start. I'll only have small amounts of the Chambourcin, Vignoles and C. Sauvignon this summer from newer vines but I find these blended wines more complex and better tasting than individual wines fermented alone.

Bill Frazier Olathe, Kansas USA

I have 6 gallons of fresh Strawberry 12 gallons of fresh Blueberry 6 gallons fresh Blackberry.. fermenting In another 2 weeks I will be getting fresh juice here and will make at least 32 gallons more. Tom

This is my first year...

I have 3 gal local strawberry (secondary)

6 gal watermellon (secondary) 3 gal local blueberry (primary)

Concentrates

1 gal strawberry raspberry 1 gal raspberry white grape 1 gal orange pineapple

Many more concentrate and concentrate blends in the future (girlfriend works for Welch's :-) )

On the slate Blackberry (still picking, middle of season here) Elderberry (still green) Concorde (from own yard, still green)

Greg Erie, PA

This year, I bought some 3 gallon carboys, so instead of making a lot of 1 gallon batches, I only have a few larger batches:

3 gal dandelion wine 3 gal tea wine 5 gal Australian Semillon kit wine (so that friends can stop making jokes about all the "funny" wine I make)

I still want to do some 1 gallon batches - maybe mint or oregano. And maybe one more 3 gallon batch of pear or apple if my trees cooperate this year.

I just started a batch of blueberry - my third year of doing that...still picking season here, but it's become one of my favourites.

I have pear and peach that I've not done much with because of time and have just forgotten about them in the carboys, but just racked them off lees...so I hope to do something with them soon.

I have frozen strawberries in the freezer as well as some rhubarb (do I hear a blend coming?) - so sometime soon I hope to do something with that.

Jalapeno, perhaps in the fall. Also, a local farmer can get me tons of carrots if I woudl like to at least try carrot wine.

And oh how I wish my source for blackberries was available, but alas...it isn't this year. That has become one of the best wines I've ever made and tasted.

So far this year:

Wild Mustang 15 gal Blueberry Melomel 5 gal Orange 3 gal Cherry 11 gal Welch's red 3 gal Welch's cranbery/raspberry 3 gal Welch's white 3 gal Blackberry/Merlot 6 gal

I think are may be another one or two but that's it off the top of my head. Afterall, the year is only half over.

Ray

I've got in secondary now:

6 gallons RJ Spagnols Cru Platinum Aussie Shiraz kit 12 gallons of 2004 native pear (just finished primary last week) 8 gallons of 2004 fresh strawberry 11.5 gallons of 2003 native pear 3 gallons of Dole pineapple 1 gallon of frozen strawberry 2 gallons of apple (from concentrate)

Also, within past month bottled 6 gallons of B-K Selection Pinot Noir kit.

We've got several aging -- but consistently quite productive -- native "cooking" pear trees, and look forward each year to 10-20 gallons of pretty good wine.

Bart

Well, we've been doing a major home remodel this year, so have slacked off quite a bit in the winemaking area. My peach wine from last year is still bulk aging. Probably read to bottle but I'm lazy. I have a dry oaked concord (from juice) that has been done fermenting for a couple months and is due for racking. I have a couple meads still bulk aging from 2001. I just started my 2004 rhubarb vintage, but I can't seem to get the fermentation going. I tried my first kit . . A reisling. It is beginning to clear now. All are 5 gallons or larger.

I just bottled 2.5 gals of Dried Apricot Mead, which I guess should really be called a Melomel.

On January 10th I started with 6 lbs of dried, unsulfured Turkish apricots, added 2lbs 15oz of golden raisins, added boiling water to cover and let them soak overnight. At that point I think I would have been better off to chop the reconstituted fruit, but what I did instead was to puree it in a food processor.

I then added 2.5 gals of water, 5lbs of honey, and 5 ozs of sugar. The must was a bit thick, with the honey and pureed fruit, and even after straining, I'm not sure my hydrometer reading was accurate, but I thought I had 21 Brix at that point. I also added 1/8 tsp of potassium metabisulfite, 6 tsps of acid blend, 30 drops of pectic enzyme, 3 tsp of yeast nutrient, and 1/2 a packet of Red Star Premier Cuvee yeast, added directly to the must in a 5 gallon plastic primary fermenter.

I sat this on a heating pad, and the fermentation seemed a bit slow to start, but by Jan 13th it was quite active. Then, the fermentation slowed down ... to a crawl. On Jan 24th the hydrometer still read 8 Brix, but I still saw bubbles. I left it alone, changing the water in the air lock every few weeks, and the fermentation continuted for months!

On August 1st I took a closer look at the wine ... the fermentation had stopped, and the wine had partially cleared, but was still a bit murky. I took a taste, and the sugar and acid was too my liking. I should have done a hydrometer reading at this point, but I didn't ... I'm guessing by taste that fermentation might have halted at 1 Brix (which makes me wonder if my initial reading of 21 Brix was low).

The only problem was that the wine was disagreeably bitter. I started doing some research into eliminating bitterness ... I considered fining with milk or gelatin, but finally I found a resource that recommended Polyclar AT PVCC for removing bitterness, and decided to give that a try. I don't know what Polyclar's shelf life is, but I had a bottle that was several years old that was sealed and stored in a refrigerator, and I decided to give that a try, figuring that Polyclar is basically inorganic nylon.

I knew that one problem with Polyclar was that it was difficult to completely remove from a wine without filtering, and I only have an old gavity filter that doesn't work very well, so I didin't want to filter. From the same resource, I'd read that a topping of Betonite was sometimes used to help precipitate out the Polyclar. So, I racked the wine mixing with 1/8 tsp of potassium metabisulfite, and then added 1 tsp of the Polyclar dissolved in some warm water, stirred well, and then added 3 Tbsps of Betonite slurry (that I keep in a sealed glass jar, prehydrated).

Ten days later (August 10th), what a change! The wine is very clear, and the bitterness was dramatically reduced. Typical "fluffy" betonite lees have settled reasonably, so I racked the wine again, added 1 tsp of potassium sorbate, and topped off with distilled water, and bottled the wine into clear bottles. It's a nice amber color, and there were 2 glasses left over after bottling, which I chilled and sipped with my significant other. Quite yummy!

Well, I just finished bottling 6 gal. of plum wine, and currently have:

13 gal Welchs Concord 6 gal Peach 6 gal Mead 6 gal Welchs Niagra

Last month, I bottled 6 gal of rice wine, but I don't think I'll bother with that again. It's OK if you'll drink anything which I generally do, but there are better uses for a carboy, if you ask me. B-{)

I started in 2001 after our peach, plum and apricot trees dumped a lot of fruit on us. What a wonderful hobby. B-{)

-- Kirk

Hi......here's what I've got bulk aging.......

1/ 3 gal. zinfindal.....fresh grape 2/ 4 gal valiant ....fresh grape...my own 3/ 1 gal rhubarb 4/ 1 gal welch's 5/ 2 gal zinfindal false wine 6/ 3 gal riesling....kit 7/ 8 gal cab.sauv....kit

....about being too lazy to bottle,....I usually bottle 1/2 of a 23 litre kit and put the rest in a smaller carboy to bulk age for a few more months ....works For me....andy j.

I'm really curious what your impressons are of the dry oaked concord wine. I made a dry wine from concord grapes once (I had grapes, not juice), and I just could not get past the "foxy" taste of what resulted. I decided at that point that concord grapes were for meant for dessert wines, and that first batch was mainly consumed in sangria (where it worked quite well).

zHUSc.39105$ snipped-for-privacy@twister.rdc-kc.rr.com,

I just counted my wines in progress and have:

2 6-gallon carboys 6 5-gallon carboys 5 3-gallon carboys 1 2.5-gallon carboy 11 4-liter jugs 9 1-gallon jugs 2 3-liter jugs 1 .5-gallon jug

for 37 batches totalling about 79 gallons in progress. Too many to list contents. Of these, about half are adaptations of other recipes, a quarter are "new" recipes, and a quarter are old standards. I'm drinking a vanilla bean mead as I write....

Jack Keller, The Winemaking Home Page

I have 2 gal. Jalapeno, 1.5 gal black raspberry, 1 gal dandelion, and 1 gal red currant It's blackberry pickin' time here and the elderberries are starting to look dark. Last year I made 15 gal of elderberry. Hope to get more this year. Apples look good this year, too All this is from my back yard and surrounding neighborhood. Cool, huh?

Wow , vanilla? I was wondering how that tasted?

Roger, the vanilla flavor is pronounced, but not excessive. The nose is heavenly.

The first time I made this I kept the beans in too long and the flavor was too intense for a mead, although it would have been good for a cordial or even a wine. The trick is to allow the mead itself to blend through....

I used clover honey and Madagascar vanilla beans, about 9-10 inches long each. I used three beans to the gallon and left them in the post-fermented mead for 66 days. ABV is about 11.5%.

Jack Keller, The Winemaking Home Page

My current "in-process" inventory includes:

6 Gal Pinot Noir (Grand Cru kit) 6 Gal Bordeaux (Grand Cru kit - destined to become Port with appropriate additions of Everclear and sugar) 5 Gal Noble (Muscadine) from local grapes 10 Gal DeChaunac/Blueberry (the DeChaunac was way too acidic, so I blended 50/50 with Blueberry with no acid added)

Upcoming fermentations:

5 Gal Apricot 5 Gal Muscat

The minister of my church has a large crop of Muscadines, so guess where I'll be?

Regards, Gary

Hi all, I have currently going...

54L of Alicante from 2003 harvest still bulk aging (the other 60 or so Litres is being consumed daily) 23L of VDV Valpolicella 23L of VDV Australian Shiraz 23L of VDV white Zin 23L of Gewertztraminer (Vineco kit) 23L of Cru Select Sangiovese/Merlot 11.5L of port (Vineco kit) 4L of banana wine (Jack Keller site recipe, sort of...) 4L of blueberry (frozen blueberries, Jack Keller site recipe)

Its a lot of wine but there was a new u-vint store in Georgetown, Ontario called Wine Not that has a half-price special on kits!!

I'm also looking forward to this falls apple and pear harvest and maybe some grapes if the birds leave us enough! All from the backyard.

Regards, Al