It’s definitely an excellent wine. After all was said and done, I got about 25 bottles out of it. I think next year I’ll be doubling the amount. I still have a Reisling, cider, and coffee fermenting. And the rasinette, well, it still stinks.

Kentucky Rasinette

The wine, as I’ve written before is being plagued by some horrible SO₂ problems. The problems stem from a couple of things. 1. The cleanser I used to clean the carboys wasn’t rinsed off well enough. 2. the yeast I used (EC-1112) apparently either releases sulpher or something. In any case, it still smells vaguely like a fart. I’ve racked it once, and that helped, so I plan on racking it a couple more times. it has seemed to dissipate somewhat by itself anyway, and it’s starting to smell like wine — fairly good too.

Strawberry 2003

This one is done, and is waiting for me to finish designing the labels so it can be bottled. We tried it last night, and everyone loved it. it turned out very excellent, but a little too sweet for my tastes — it’s still wonderful. I purchased a bottle of Huber Winery Strawberry to compare too, and everyone agrees that mine is light years better. So within a week I’ll be bottling about 28 bottles of it (I have to admit, I’ve prrobably had a bottle’s worth during the whole process). It’s very good!

Coffee

Saturday I made a pot of coffee. I had 1/2 a pot left over. I duped it in a gallon jug, adeded yeast nutrient, sugar (LOTS), acid blend, and water. let it sit for 24 hours, and added yeast. it’s fermenting. I’m hoping for a low-alcohol Kaluha. who knows!

Reisling

This is my first grape wine. I purchased Reisling concentrate from my local wine making shop. My wife is a big fan of Reisling, and I like it alot as well, so this is going to be the first one. I added the concentrate, about 4 gallons of water, bentonite (to help precipitate the crap), and yeast. it’s fermemnting at about 65 degrees, and is quite happy so far. Should be done in about 2 months.

Coming Soon: Hard Cider

it’s apple time! Rather than go through the pain of crushing apples with my hands again, I’m going to make a gallon of hard cider. I purchased a gallon of cider from Huber’s, and once I get the srawberry out of the gallon jug, I’ll dump the cider in, adjust the acid and sugar, and ferment away! Hopefully it will turn out good, and I’ll make a 5 gallon batch next year.

Coming Soon: Red Red Wine

Not sure what red grape I’ll use. Very possibly Syrah, but I might make a Chianti. I purchased a load of port bottles (little stubby green bottles), but I think Chianti might look real good in them. Have to fill them with something.

The way it’s going, I’m going to have to build some shelving to store all the wine once its all done! I have about 80 bottles worth in various stages.

On other similar fronts — I thought my rasinette may have gone bad, but I now beilieve I just added a bit too much campden tablet or didn’t rinse out the sterilizing chemicals from the bottle — it had a horrible rotten egg smell, but after letting it sit awhile, it’s smelling much better. Not nearly as good a smell as the starwberry though!!

So we decided that since I was visiting Arizona, we should meet, and trade some wine. It was great.

We went to a nice restaraunt named BYO Bistro, where you’re encouraged to Bring Your Own. Which we did. A botle of Rasinette, and a bottle of Applevino. We tried various assortments of foods with them – clams, bruchetta, etc. The rasinette was wonderful. It was nearly identical to a Port made by Meier’s Wine cellars in Ohio. Quite alot like the Cream Sherry as well. A very wonderful desert wine, a good compliment to any meal! In any case, it was excellent, and I’ll be making a batch of my own very soon.

It was a great night, great food, great wine, and a great new friend. We should meet again!

Stawberry wine is next.

I bought a 2 gallon apothecary jar to ferment the wine in. pictures to come.

First, I began with 40 pounds of apples. Fuji, Gala, and some other apple that I don’t remember, but it looked good. And they were cheap.

Using our handy dandy super slicer shredder thingamabob (I’m sure you’ve seen them) some places call them mandolines.

Not to the not-so-careful: These things are sharp. Ask my thumb.

So I sliced up about 30 pounds of the apples, and put them in a nylon bag, in the primary fermenter, which in my case is a white plastic garbage can. I added water, pectic enzyme, yeast nutrients, acid blend, and tannin. Unlike Chris my production uses a buncha chemicals. This isn’t a bad thing, just a choice. The pectic enzyme stops the oxidification of the apple must, the yeast nutrient makes sure that the yeast has the proper mix of food – the do eat more than just sugar. The tannin balances the flavor, and the acid blend helps loads of things along the way.

I tied off the nylon bag, and dropped it in the container. It sat for a little more than 24 hours.

I added about 1/2 gallon of Jucy Juice White Grape Flavored Juice. It was the only brand that didn’t have any preservatives in it, which would have killed the yeast. I’m sure you’re thinking “It says Flavored, I bet it doesn’t actually have juice in it.” I thought that myself, but I concluded that it says flavored because it also contains apple juice, in addition to the primary ingedient of white grape juice.

So that was poured in, and the process of squeezing the juice out of the apple must began. If you’ve never squeezed the juice out of apples, let me tell you, it’s hard. I could probably crush a diamond with my hands now. A potatoe masher came in handy in squeezing the last drops out.

I also used a funnel with a filter in it to filter the goop away from the juice. Turns out, the goop is applesauce. Quite good applesauce. I added some sugar, and canned it.

Back to the wine. After the juice was extracted, the SG was 1.036 — far too low. I added 8 pounds of sugar to bring it up to 1.088, which will result in a wine with approximately 11.7% alcohol content, again a nice level for table wine.

I added some yeast (Premier Cuvee, a generic dry wine yeast), and now it sits, and ferments until it reaches 1.040 SG, at which point we will rack it into the 5 gallon glass carboy container. Tune in next time.

Some of the pictures from this escapade, and the rest