Recipe; Blueberry & Cranberry Rosé

So I have 4 empty DJ's and two empty 5 gallon fermenting bins, and I'll be bottling some wine soon, all of which means I have enough capacity to get some wine on the go again!

Recipe (3 Gallons)

3 Litres Reg Grape Juice
3 Litres Blueberry & Cranberry Juice
2 Kg Sugar
Nutrient
2 Teaspoons Pectolase
3 Teaspoons Tartaric Acid
Gervin D Yeast

And now a gratuitous picture.

I made some movie clips of the whole process, which I'll edit together sometime. In doing so I forgot to take snap shots. By the time I remembered the washing up was done ... so that's why you have an image of 6 cartons of upside down juices ... all rinsed and ready for recycling (I'll just polish my halo :-) )

Method

Basically chuck everything into your sanitised fermenting vessel, make up to 3 gallons, measure the gravity and add a sugar or water to get it where you want it. This recipe came in at 1077, I'm happy with that so I made no adjustment. Give the whole lot a really good sloshy stir to get some air dissolved. Chuck in the yeast, cover it up, stir sloshily at least once daily for a few days then follow your normal procedure of moving to secondary vessels, racking, degassing, stabilising etc etc.

Thoughts

This is a light wine, it'll be ready to drink in as little as 6 weeks. Tho perhaps 8 is a more reasonable expectation. But as with all wine it will improve with age and you'll notice that week on week with wines like these (2 litres of juice per gallon and OG 1070-1080).

I've made an instructional vid (aimed at beginners) for starting this wine. Clicky to watch 

Edit 19th Sept 2010: Final gravity turned out to be 997, meaning 10.9% ABV.

Enjoying a Beverage

.... and while doing the racking etc of the elderflower wine what better accompaniment than a glass or two of wine. I popped the cork on a bottle of Elderberry & Blackberry. Made from the second run on the fruits and lees - reminds me that I must post the recipe and method. It was intended to be a rosé, but turned out to have more body than expected and can hold it's own as a red. Here's a couple of piccies, the first shows the clarity quite nicely, the second tries to show the colour.

3 Gallons of Busy-ness

Finally got around to racking what I call the Original Elderflower Wine. So that's the one with early addition of flowers (primary), acid blend, Sauternes yeast and a little tannin. Gratuitous pic follows

Then I degassed, first by drill/whizzstick (pic below) but also but shaking/swirling by hand.

Finally stabilised and put the DJ's away to be forgotten about for a few months.

Not Slack, Just Away

We've been to a wonderful festival called Buddhafields, in some fields near Taunton. Had a force 7-8 gale on Thursday night! But the festival spirit was unaffected and a great time was had by all. This, of course, means that I haven't been blogging for a week. It also means I've barely been drinking. As you might expect with a name like Buddhafields, drinking was not encouraged. So we took a two bottles of wine with us to drink with dinner. We only opened one, and we didn't even finish that one 'cos the atmosphere was so wonderful anyway that we just corked the bottled after a glass each and then forgot all about it until we were packing up.

Anyway, brewing normality will now resume, and I'll be adding plenty of recipes over the next 4 weeks.

In the meantime you might want to check out some of the wonderful things that we enjoyed at this festival (they also get around plenty of others). Paradox (you'll need a facebook account, then search on "Paradox Brighton"), Lost Horizons, Triban, MMM Massage, Permaculture.

Enjoying the Process

Wow, what a great surprise lay in store for me tonight. Around 2 weeks ago I added pineapple to my Rumtopf, and a couple of nights ago some apricot. Today I picked our blackcurrent bushes clean, me and Mrs CW ate some as fresh as they come, and then I put the rest in the Rumtopf. On opening the lid tho I was met with a heavenly fruity smell. It just makes me want to tuck in to the contents immediately ... but no, I'll wait, this is gonna be a midwinter festive treat!

Improved Mint Wine Recipe

So here is the recipe for the Mint Wine that I bottled the other night. If you follow this exactly then you'll end up with a very delicately flavoured mint wine. So do look out for my thoughts at the end of the post if you want more mint flavour.

Recipe for 2 Gallons

155 grams of Mint Leaves
(70% Garden Mint, 20 % Apple Mint, 10 % Moroccan Mint)
2.2 Kg Sugar
325 G chopped Raisins
Juice of 1 Lemon
Juice of 1 Lime
1 Teaspoon Tartaric Acid
1 Teaspoon Citric Acid
1 Campden Tablet
Yeast Nutrient
Sauternes Yeast

Method

You only want the mint leaves, not stems. So strip them off and then extract the flavour by steeping in hot boiled water 4 times, each time for 15-30 minutes, each time decanting off the liquor into your fermenting vessel. Keep a lid on the vessel you do the extracting in. You may get more flavour by bruising or crushing the mint leaves before steeping. I didn't do this, but will do so next time.

Here's a piccie of the amount of mint you'll need to look like 150 grams (ish). This is the sprigs, not just the leaves. Those bowls are each big enough for the trifle you would have on your Xmas table.

Add all the other ingredients to the steeped liquor in the FV except the yeast. I put my raisins in a muslin bag to make removal easy. Make up to 2 gallons, make sure sugar is dissolved. Cover and leave for 24 hours.

Next day give the must a really give stir and get as much air dissolved as possible. Then add your yeast. This is important because yeast needs dissolved oxygen to multiply. You should stir in this fashion for the next few days. After about a week remove the raisins and move the wine to secondary fermenters with airlocks. From then on follow the usual procedure of racking, degassing, stabilising etc. I needed finings (chitin based) to clear the wine of a haze.

Further Thoughts

When I made the trial brew for this last year I added a sprig of mint to each wine bottle. It looked wonderful and certainly gave much more mint flavour. I haven't done this for the first batch that I bottled this year. But when it comes to bottling the second gallon I think I will. It certainly adds more mint flavour. Alternatively you may go with a gentle but slower procedure for extracting the mint flavour.  Bruise the leaves, bag them up and add them to the primary fermenting vessel without doing any hot water extraction first. Or if you have a wide necked secondary fermenter then you could try a late addition of bruised leaves. Or you could try making a tincture of mint by extracting in a spirit. Perhaps Vodka for a neutral taste, tho if I went this route I think I would use a small amount of cheap cooking brandy as there are raisins in the recipe anyway.

certainly bottling with a sprig of mint works, tho it does give also give the wine a slight green taste, like of nettles.