Recipe; Green Tea & Ginger 2011

Haha! feeling good cos I said I'd be back soon with this ... and I am! I first found a recipe for this wine on Jack Keller's website. Since then I've tweaked it a little, tho not much, it was an excellent starting point.

Ingredients for 5 gallons

200g Sencha (Japanese green tea, loose leaf, brand yamamotoyama)
5 Kg Sugar
6 Lemons, unwaxed (zest and juice)
3 Limes (zest and juice)
500g Sultanas (sundried) washed and chopped.
200g Root Ginger; peeled, bruised & chopped.
5 Campden tablets; crushed
5 Teaspoons Pectolase
4 Teaspoons Tartaric Acid
2 Teaspoons Citric Acid
Yeast Nutrient
Sauternes Yeast

OG; 1091

Method

Ok, this is a fun brew to make, there's lots to do ...
Get a gallon of water on the stove and get the heat on. While it's there put the green tea into a muslin bag. Tie it up but leave as much space in the bag as possible so the leaves can swell. If you're in doubt use 2 muslin bags, they only cost pennies and you can reuse them. Chuck the "tea-bag(s)" into the pan of water, put the lid on and bring to the boil.

 The Green tea, bagged and ready for the pan.

Meanwhile, weigh out or measure all your other ingredients. Wash the sultanas well, then drain them and then chop them. Put them into a muslin bag too, and as with the tea tie it up with plenty of space for swelling. It's best to chop, rather than use a food processor. It's a bit of a chore but broken up seeds, releasing lots of bitter flavours, is worse.

By this stage the tea will likely have come to the boil. Tip the "tea" into your fermenting vessel. Put the "tea-bag(s)" back into the pan, add another gallon of water, bring it to the boil with the lid on.

Now zest the lemons and limes. Take the extra care to remove as much of the pith (the white spongey bit) as possible. This will also release unpleasant bitter flavours, so don't put it in your wine (I use a potato peeler, then a very sharp knife to "fillet" the little pith left from the zest). Next finely chop up your zest and put it in a muslin bad. Don't tie it up yet tho. Then peel the ginger, bruise it (I whack it with the end of a rolling pin). Then chop it finely and add to the muslin bag containing the zest. Tie it up now.

Lemon, lime, ginger and sultana processing ... in progress.

Chances are the second brewing of the tea will be done around now. So pour it into the fermenting vessel, with the "tea-bag". Put another gallon of water onto the stove, add the muslin bag of sultanas and the bag of zest and root ginger. Bring to the boil with the lid on, then simmer for around an hour. If you have want you can also get 4kg of sugar dissolved in another pan of hot water now.

Meanwhile juice the lemons and limes, I use a cool tool, and get about 300ml of juice with minimal effort. A juicer will break up the pips and likely result in pith tainting the wine too. Pour it into your fermenting vessel. Then add the other acids (tartaric and citric). Add the 4kg of dissolved sugar now too.

When the zest/ginger and sultanas have simmered for about an hour tip the lot into your fermenting vessel too. You've got about 4 gallons of liquid in there now, and 4 kg of sugar added. You still have a gallon of liquid to add and some more sugar. But that is for later. Put the lid on it and leave it to cool down (probably the next day).

Next day then ...crush your 5 campden tablets, add the pectolase and the nutrient (follow the instructions on the tub for the amount, there are plenty of brands and amounts vary). Dissolve them in a little water and add to the fermenting vessel. Give it a stir to mix it all properly. If you want to aim for a precise original gravity then this is a good time to measure it. I usually aim for 1090-1095 for this wine. Usually at this stage it's a little above that range, so it's a pretty safe bet that adding 1kg of sugar and 1 gallon of water will bring down it into the range we want. Don't add that sugar and water yet tho. Put the lid on it and come back tomorrow.

Today is the day we really get it going. Add the remaining gallon of sugar solution to reach your desired gravity. Dissolved in warm or hot water is good. Give it a very good stir, get as much air it as possible, I use a whisk and go for it for a few minutes. Measure the gravity, mine was 1091.

Slightly gratuitous piccie. I just love seeing a full 5 gallon fermenting bin. It's not a beautiful colour, but don't worry, it turns out good. Having the hydrometer floating about makes it look like I know what I'm doing.

Now add your yeast and put the lid on. Next day you should be a happy person with evidence of your brew having started. Stir it sloshily, every day, for the next few days. After a week or so remove all the muslin bags and move the fermenting good stuff to secondary fermentation under airlock(s). Then, you know the routine, rack, stabilise, degas etc as usual.

Green Tea & Ginger 2011

I've got my first brew of 2011 started, 5 gallons of Green Tea & Ginger. I'll post the recipe and method and a few piccies soon, very likely tomorrow so don't go far! It's basically the same recipe as for last year's brew. This time the gravity is a little lower 1091 vs 1095. I didn't note which green tea I used last time but this time I did. It's probably not the same tea as last year, but it is Sencha. Also bought smoked green tea for the next brew, probably 3 gallons.

Come back soon for all the details

Piccies, 'Cos I Said I Would Post Some

Some time ago I said I'd post a piccie of the Tanglefoot, or was it the Muscat? Bleh forgot so here's both

So this is the Tanglefoot. As you can see there's a nice layer of bottom fermenting yeast, I do love sauternes for a trouble-free, clean ferment.

And this is the Muscat. Today I added some chitin based finings to it, it's showing no signs of clearing unaided, wonder how it would have done with Sauternes yeast instead of GV5. I also stabilised and started degassing the Vieux Chateau Du Roi.

Sipping

Tonight I'm sipping .... Rosehip & Cinnamon from November 2008. It's a special occasion. Wish i could glug, but early start tomorrow (yikes look at the time!) means I can only indulge in moderation. So what can I say ... it has things in common with Jim Beam that isn't in Jack Daniels (tho i'm a single malt kind of Whisky appreciator). But I do like it for a late night sip! Dry, lemony, sharp edge, nice pucker, lingering aftertaste, fruity and warming. Boy did it take it's time to get here, not one for the impatient brewer.

Got through a small mountain of empty bottle processing too. Soon to come ... a bottling session (3 gallons or so) cos I don't have wine to give to mates at the mo, and I love giving it.

Degassing

Looking through my stats functions i see there are more folks who are interested in degassing (through searches) than  anything else. So a few words about this topic probably won't go amiss.

During the process of fermentation lots of carbon dioxide is released. (sound bad for the planet? well what you make in your house will be more than made up for by the transport of commercial wine to your door). Anyway, that carbon dioxide is mostly bubbled through your airlock into the atmosphere. However a small amount get's trapped, or is dissolved, in the liquid that will become your wine. Eventually that liquid will become saturated with dissolved gasses (mostly CO2). If you don't get active with degassing then it will stay dissolved.

So what?
"Well quite!" is my answer, the result is a wine that fizzes on your tongue. Some call it a frizz.
Personally I love it. It's very gentle, nothing like the intensity of a champagne or sparkling wine. But you know it, dancing on your tongue. But this seems to be something that contemporary tastes frown upon. My response, as always, is to say if you like it then go with it. We, at Critter wines, love it. But if you enter this kind of finished wine to a competition it will be marked down as a fault. Sad but true. So to please them, or to please you, the full-on still wine, finished result, is required.

This is going on a bit eh! So how do you lose that frizz? You degas. In practice this means you either shake your wine or you use a tool like a whizz stick. A whizz stick is something you attach to the end of a common or garden household drill.... and then you drop it in your wine and spin it. But i prefer just swirling/shaking a demijohn on my lap. It feels like burping a baby to me (but i don't have kids). You'll see the airlock bubbling away. If you use a whizz stick then you'll see foam! It's genuinely astounding how long you can do these things for.

So, how long do you continue? well as long as you can be bothered to be honest. Sometimes the airlocks, or whizz stick foaming, will stop bubbling in minutes. but sometimes it just goes on and on .. and on. However long you persist will pay dividends. Personally i'll give it a few minutes per demijohn, per day, for a few days and then give up. The good news is that frizz comes and goes as far as poncey fashion goes.

When is enough ... when you've had enough unless you can't stand frizz, in that case buddy, just keep on going until you get no flow through the airlock when manually shaking and swirling etc. A good deal of brewing is patience and stamina. but set aside you preconceptions etc and you may just find that you actually love that frizz on your tongue. Then you, like me, can give the finger to the ponces and say you like a frizz! long live frizz. Or, equally valid, can say "i like my wine frizz free and will shake it baby!" no matter how long it takes.

It's in your hands, do it how you like it.

Back to Brewing

After all my excitement over getting a new vid completed and live, tonight I returned to some physical brewing. Washing and removing labels, metalic neck sleeves etc from a dozen or so bottles. Then sterlising, rinsing, drying. Major zzzz's. Then doing similar with 3 DJ's. Then some fun, in a very basic sort of way ... pouring the Tanglefoot into them. It's been on the go for around a week now. Will likely post a piccie tomorrow. Looks like cloudy real lemonade. Smells, well not pleasant, but not bad, and it's a familiar smell that isn't the harbinger of a doom laden result. So all is fine.

Also checked on the Vieux Chateau Du Roi. Its been on the go for about a month, according to the instructions it should have finished fermenting after about 20 days. Well it's still going, albeit very slowly. Smells good tho. The time thing is not a worry tho, generally speaking more time is your best mate in achieving good quality ... and that is a great reason to brew heaps. You won't be able to drink it all, and so the excess gets time to age properly. So what are you waiting for? go get a brew on  ;)

Blackberry Wine Vid

Here it is, the promised vid posted when time allowed. This is for making blackberry wine on the pulp. Hope you enjoy the vid and the music, the Lucky Wonders. Find out more about them here on youtube or here on facebook or here on myspace

I used a better camera this time than for the quickie wine , little handheld Panasonic CCCD camcorder. It's an improvement on the olympus compact camera, tho i do think the olympus is cool.

New Video!

So the new video is live on youtube
It's Blackberry wine, on the pulp. I'll upload it here later, in the meantime you can follow the link to youtube, enjoy

critter wines vid on Blackberry wine

500 Hits!

hey, we've done it, got to 500 hits ...

thank you all for helping to reach a landmark.

It was a funny thing, my you-tube wine making vid was heading for 1000 views and it was a close run thing which would get their respective magic numbers first. This blog got there first.

oh by the way there is a new vid coming very soon ... blackberry wine on the pulp.