Happy new year to you all. I hope that last years brewing was full of successes and that you have some of last years brews laid down for consumption this year. Feel free to use this blog to tell me what you've achieved. I moderate all comments so don't be put off by your's not appearing immediately. It'll take me a day at most to publish it.
2012 for me is likely to be about brewing the familiar, and improving on it. I've done a lot of experimentation for the last 2 years. Getting with the times with the quickie brews for example. And also expanding upon the range of ginger wines i make. My target was to make 50 gallons and i just achieved this with a 10 gallon dash in december.
So as i see it just now i'll be making a big batch of orange wine sometime soon. Then i need to find the best of the simple quickie wines and repeat them. Adding complexity ... Elderflower done in a quickie style and all variations on ginger wine quickies will also be done. More tanglefoot is definite, and i'll be hoping for a good berry foraging season this year. As for experimetation well every year i aim to make silver birch sap wine (or sycamore). Perhaps this year i'll achieve that aim.
Sunday, 8 January 2012
Wednesday, 14 December 2011
Fruitastic Magic - Recipe
So have you made a country wine on the pulp?
Are you looking at all that pulp and thinking "what a waste"?
Yeah that bugs me too, and so I really enjoy making wines with a 2nd run on the pulp. This is one I did with the pulp from the 5 gallon brew called Berrylitious. 2nd run wines are great fun to make. It feels great for so many reasons; it's so easy and it's as cheap as chips because all the fruit was probably heading for the bin/compost bin. It'll still end up there, but via a 2nd run everyone is happy.
Ingredients for 5 gallons:
Keep the pulp from your "parent" brew in the fermenting bin. Cover it up tightly and as soon as possible use it as follows.
Pour on the grape juice and grape concentrate. Add a couple of gallons of cold water. Dissolve the sugar in about a gallon of hot boiled water, and then add it to the fermenting bin. Dissolve the acids and nutrient in cold water and add them to the fermenting bin too. Finally add the oak chips and make the volume up to around 5 gallons. Give it a good stir and cover tightly.
Some of you may be asking ... "where's the yeast?". Good question. The answer is that there is plenty of yeast mixed in with the fruit pulp. So when you add your other ingredients it'll fire up in a flash without needing a new yeast addition.
My gravity came out as 1064, which is pretty low and will make a wine of about only 9.5% ABV if the volume of liquid is actually 5 gallons. Of course the volume of liquid will probably turn out to be around 4 - 4.5 gallons and so, on topping up to 5 gallons, the resulting wine will be around 8% ABV if I use water to top up. I'm aiming for 10.5 - 11.5% so at the stage when i transfer the must to secondary fermentation (under airlock) I'll make up the volume to 5 gallons with a sugar solution.
A useful figure for trying to get your ABV where you want it .... Adding 18g of sugar per litre of wine will add about 1% ABV. Of course I'll also want to increase the volume so it may take some fiddling about to get it precisely where desired. Usually I can't be bothered with such precision. If I get the gravity to a point where I reckon my wine will be anywhere in the range 10.5 - 11.5% ABV then I'll be happy to leave the fiddling about there!
Those of you who come here often will probably think this looks like a quickie wine, and that's what I'm aiming for. I want to be drinking this in the spring ideally, tho the addition of oak chips may not help in that regard.
Update 12th June 2012;
What can I say, wow, this is a real hit, fruity, easy drinking. I've been drinking it for about a month already and it's definitely ready. Guess I got a bit lucky with the oak chips, but I didn't overdo them so it's not too much of a surprise. Given that it's a second run wine I'd urge you to try doing this, it's very economical and if buying frozen fruit stretches your budget then a second run will rectify that.
Are you looking at all that pulp and thinking "what a waste"?
Yeah that bugs me too, and so I really enjoy making wines with a 2nd run on the pulp. This is one I did with the pulp from the 5 gallon brew called Berrylitious. 2nd run wines are great fun to make. It feels great for so many reasons; it's so easy and it's as cheap as chips because all the fruit was probably heading for the bin/compost bin. It'll still end up there, but via a 2nd run everyone is happy.
Ingredients for 5 gallons:
- Pulp from Berrylitious
- 5 Litres Red Grape Juice (Sungrown)
- 245g Can of Grape Concentrate (Young's definitive white wine enricher)
- 3 Kg sugar
- 2 Teaspoons Tartaric Acid
- 2 Teaspoons Citric Acid
- Yeast Nutrient (2tspn Nutrivin, Brupak)
- 20 g Oak Chips (Young's; French Oak)
Method
Keep the pulp from your "parent" brew in the fermenting bin. Cover it up tightly and as soon as possible use it as follows.
Pour on the grape juice and grape concentrate. Add a couple of gallons of cold water. Dissolve the sugar in about a gallon of hot boiled water, and then add it to the fermenting bin. Dissolve the acids and nutrient in cold water and add them to the fermenting bin too. Finally add the oak chips and make the volume up to around 5 gallons. Give it a good stir and cover tightly.
Discussion
Some of you may be asking ... "where's the yeast?". Good question. The answer is that there is plenty of yeast mixed in with the fruit pulp. So when you add your other ingredients it'll fire up in a flash without needing a new yeast addition.
My gravity came out as 1064, which is pretty low and will make a wine of about only 9.5% ABV if the volume of liquid is actually 5 gallons. Of course the volume of liquid will probably turn out to be around 4 - 4.5 gallons and so, on topping up to 5 gallons, the resulting wine will be around 8% ABV if I use water to top up. I'm aiming for 10.5 - 11.5% so at the stage when i transfer the must to secondary fermentation (under airlock) I'll make up the volume to 5 gallons with a sugar solution.
A useful figure for trying to get your ABV where you want it .... Adding 18g of sugar per litre of wine will add about 1% ABV. Of course I'll also want to increase the volume so it may take some fiddling about to get it precisely where desired. Usually I can't be bothered with such precision. If I get the gravity to a point where I reckon my wine will be anywhere in the range 10.5 - 11.5% ABV then I'll be happy to leave the fiddling about there!
Those of you who come here often will probably think this looks like a quickie wine, and that's what I'm aiming for. I want to be drinking this in the spring ideally, tho the addition of oak chips may not help in that regard.
Update 12th June 2012;
What can I say, wow, this is a real hit, fruity, easy drinking. I've been drinking it for about a month already and it's definitely ready. Guess I got a bit lucky with the oak chips, but I didn't overdo them so it's not too much of a surprise. Given that it's a second run wine I'd urge you to try doing this, it's very economical and if buying frozen fruit stretches your budget then a second run will rectify that.
Racking - a piccie
I know, I'm bad, I have neglected my blog and even when I've been good I haven't put in enough piccies. So here is a piccie of racking in progress. This is the Ginger & Lemon Grass quickie wine being racked from the 5 gallon barrel into 5 single gallon demi-johns.
Tuesday, 13 December 2011
Berrylitious - Recipe
Some months ago me and the better half went down our street (which is a quiet cul-de-sac with little traffic) and grabbed about 3kg of elderberries. The were stripped from their sprays, washed, bagged, and then frozen.
I hoped that I would do another blackberry forage and make my usual Blackberry and Elderberry wine, but alas I missed out on the blackberries.
So what to do? Straight elderberry wine takes an age (like 3 years +) to become a delight. I have nothing against laying down a bottle or two for some years, but gallons??? Not my style. It therefore had to be a mixed fruit wine. So that meant visiting some freezers for some bargains. And we found some. This recipe is a first for me, it's a mix of many berries, currants and cherries too. I have no idea what it'll be like but I expect a red with lots of body and fruitiness.
The fruits, still frozen, were tipped into a 5 gallon fermenting bin. Yes it is a heap!
Sugar was dissolved in a gallon or so of boiled and still hot water. This was tipped over the fruit. Then the volume made up to around 4 gallons with cold water. The acids, campden and enzyme were dissolved in water and then added to the fermenting bucket also. It was all given a serious lengthy stir and then left, tightly covered, for a couple of days. Mashing the fruit was not a concern to me as the freezing and thawing should have served the same purpose.
When I came back to it I made the volume up to fill the bucket and stirred well. The gravity measured 1092. That's quite high, but as the volume of solids was significant I wasn't worried. I added the yeast nutrient and yeast and covered. Each day the must was stirred sloshily to get some air into solution. After about a week the must was transferred to a barrel to ferment under an airlock.
The volume of liquid I got at this stage was around 20 litres, somewhat short of the 23 litres that more or less makes a gallon. If I made this up to 5 gallons with the addition of water alone then the true gravity of the original must would have been 1081. Assuming this ferments out to a gravity of around 995, which is normal for sauternes yeast in my experience, then the wine would be close to 12% ABV. This is fine for me, so that's what I did. It's now sitting under an airlock and measures about 5 gallons.
(Hold your horses if you make this wine, all that pulp is still useful. The next post will tell you what to do with it if you want to make a Rosé).
In about a week I'll transfer this to 5 single gallon demi-johns because I'll need the 5 gallon barrel for something else. when it stops fermenting then I'll rack, degas and stabilise. It'll probably need something like 6-12 months before it'll even be worth trying, but hopefully next winter there'll be plenty of big-bodied fruity red wine to drink.
Update 12th June 2012;
Well this must be the biggest surprise I've had for some time when it comes to brewing wine. I said that I hoped it would be good to drink in the winter, but here we are in summer and it is ready, and it is delicious too. Very fruity, nice body, nice feel, the cherries stand out form the background, but not so much that it tastes like cherry wine. My intuition tells me that the elderberries were crucial, and so I'm pretty staggered that it's ready so soon. Not complaining tho I may be missing a red wine when winter comes around cos the chances of this lasting til then are slim!
So fellow brewers, if you have a lousy blackberry season (or just miss it) and if waiting years for a straight elderberry wine isn't your cup of tea, then grab yourself some frozen berries to go with your elderberries and you'll be laughing.
I hoped that I would do another blackberry forage and make my usual Blackberry and Elderberry wine, but alas I missed out on the blackberries.
So what to do? Straight elderberry wine takes an age (like 3 years +) to become a delight. I have nothing against laying down a bottle or two for some years, but gallons??? Not my style. It therefore had to be a mixed fruit wine. So that meant visiting some freezers for some bargains. And we found some. This recipe is a first for me, it's a mix of many berries, currants and cherries too. I have no idea what it'll be like but I expect a red with lots of body and fruitiness.
Ingredients (for 5 gallons):
- 3 kg frozen, foraged Elderberries
- 3 kg frozen sweet dark cherries (sainsbury's)
- 3 kg frozen mixed summer fruits (sainsbury's)
- 4 kg Sugar
- 5 Teaspoons Pectolase
- 3 Campden tablets (crushed)
- 1 Teaspoon Tartaric acid
- 3 Teaspoons Citric acid
- Yeast Nutrient (nutrivin, Brupak)
- Sauternes yeast (Ritchies)
Method
The fruits, still frozen, were tipped into a 5 gallon fermenting bin. Yes it is a heap!
Sugar was dissolved in a gallon or so of boiled and still hot water. This was tipped over the fruit. Then the volume made up to around 4 gallons with cold water. The acids, campden and enzyme were dissolved in water and then added to the fermenting bucket also. It was all given a serious lengthy stir and then left, tightly covered, for a couple of days. Mashing the fruit was not a concern to me as the freezing and thawing should have served the same purpose.
When I came back to it I made the volume up to fill the bucket and stirred well. The gravity measured 1092. That's quite high, but as the volume of solids was significant I wasn't worried. I added the yeast nutrient and yeast and covered. Each day the must was stirred sloshily to get some air into solution. After about a week the must was transferred to a barrel to ferment under an airlock.
The volume of liquid I got at this stage was around 20 litres, somewhat short of the 23 litres that more or less makes a gallon. If I made this up to 5 gallons with the addition of water alone then the true gravity of the original must would have been 1081. Assuming this ferments out to a gravity of around 995, which is normal for sauternes yeast in my experience, then the wine would be close to 12% ABV. This is fine for me, so that's what I did. It's now sitting under an airlock and measures about 5 gallons.
(Hold your horses if you make this wine, all that pulp is still useful. The next post will tell you what to do with it if you want to make a Rosé).
In about a week I'll transfer this to 5 single gallon demi-johns because I'll need the 5 gallon barrel for something else. when it stops fermenting then I'll rack, degas and stabilise. It'll probably need something like 6-12 months before it'll even be worth trying, but hopefully next winter there'll be plenty of big-bodied fruity red wine to drink.
Update 12th June 2012;
Well this must be the biggest surprise I've had for some time when it comes to brewing wine. I said that I hoped it would be good to drink in the winter, but here we are in summer and it is ready, and it is delicious too. Very fruity, nice body, nice feel, the cherries stand out form the background, but not so much that it tastes like cherry wine. My intuition tells me that the elderberries were crucial, and so I'm pretty staggered that it's ready so soon. Not complaining tho I may be missing a red wine when winter comes around cos the chances of this lasting til then are slim!
So fellow brewers, if you have a lousy blackberry season (or just miss it) and if waiting years for a straight elderberry wine isn't your cup of tea, then grab yourself some frozen berries to go with your elderberries and you'll be laughing.
Update on Apple & Grape Juice quickie
So, some time has passed since I had the first sample of the apple & grape juice quickie wine. Then it was complex and not a pleasure. Now it has rounded and is ok in terms of quality, but it is probably going to be one that has the marmite factor. There is a taste of corn about it, not overpowering but definitely there. The flavour of apples lingers long as an aftertaste. The colour is something else, delicate straw/pink, and its clarity is ok too.
Would I do it again, yes. It was great fun doing the picking, pulping, pressing etc. But I need to investigate the strange corn taste. So far my googling hasn't yielded anything very useful, the most likely contender being Dimethyl Sulphide, but it only fits this in one regard so i'm not sure that I've nailed it. The good news is that the wine is young, so time may come to the rescue.
Would I do it again, yes. It was great fun doing the picking, pulping, pressing etc. But I need to investigate the strange corn taste. So far my googling hasn't yielded anything very useful, the most likely contender being Dimethyl Sulphide, but it only fits this in one regard so i'm not sure that I've nailed it. The good news is that the wine is young, so time may come to the rescue.
Wednesday, 16 November 2011
Ginger & Lemongrass Wine update
oh this Ginger & Lemongrass Wine is just uber, so if you want to make a delicious wine in time for xmas then click the link and start right away. Like today. If you want it for new year then you have no time to lose. it'll be great for on the table after you drink ...the fizz and a posh bottle. it's table wine quality, really.
Big white, with fruit flavours, especially citrus like (no surprise there), which means acidity (but not too much), astringent, and has body. if you spent around £5 per bottle on a selection of white wines and compared it to this then this wouldn't come last! Next time, more ginger tho. Final gravity 994, which means 11.4% ABV. It's got nice nice balance to it, and i reckon that it'll come together very well in the next few weeks. But right now it's still a delight.
£30 - £50 will get you all the kit you need to brew 6, 12 or 18 bottles depending on how you spend your money. ingredients will cost you about 30p per bottle. You can claw back the investment in your first batch if you aim high and go for 18 bottles, 3 gallons. And that's if you have no kit and have ot buy everything. and in only 6 weeks. I'd recommend this and you won't regret it. c'mon, it's easy, click the link and find out more.
I have 4 empty demijohns now, so the chances of getting another brew started soon are good. Maybe it's time to dig out my foraged frozen elderberries. Yup, probably, so i'd better get to the shops and see what frozen berries they have. Stay tuned.
Big white, with fruit flavours, especially citrus like (no surprise there), which means acidity (but not too much), astringent, and has body. if you spent around £5 per bottle on a selection of white wines and compared it to this then this wouldn't come last! Next time, more ginger tho. Final gravity 994, which means 11.4% ABV. It's got nice nice balance to it, and i reckon that it'll come together very well in the next few weeks. But right now it's still a delight.
£30 - £50 will get you all the kit you need to brew 6, 12 or 18 bottles depending on how you spend your money. ingredients will cost you about 30p per bottle. You can claw back the investment in your first batch if you aim high and go for 18 bottles, 3 gallons. And that's if you have no kit and have ot buy everything. and in only 6 weeks. I'd recommend this and you won't regret it. c'mon, it's easy, click the link and find out more.
I have 4 empty demijohns now, so the chances of getting another brew started soon are good. Maybe it's time to dig out my foraged frozen elderberries. Yup, probably, so i'd better get to the shops and see what frozen berries they have. Stay tuned.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
