Wednesday, August 14, 2013

wine update

I racked the blueberry wine into the carbuoy last night. Not really sure of the alcohol content since there was too much berry goo to take measurements, but we'll see. It's been ~ 2 weeks so I figure primary fermentation shoudl be nearly doneby now, if not done already. Next racking in a month or so I'll have a look at the SG and make sure it's fermented out. I managed to not get blueberry goo everywhere and tried to keep everything clean and sanitized as I did my best to squeeze some of the juice out of the floating blueberries and not get get too many in the carbuoy. Used a strainer and a cheesecloth. Hoping I didn't muss with it too much to contaminate it. We shall see. Messy business this winemaking...

Also started some apricot wine. Apricots were cheap at the market on the weekend so I set up a 1 gallon batch with the following recipe:
2 Lb apricots (20 decent sized apricots, washed and cored and diced up)
1/2 Lb chopped golden raisins (1 1/2 c)
3 Lb sugar
juice of 2 lemons
1 t pectic enzyme
7 pints (14 cups) water
1 campden tablet
1/4 t tannin (didn't have so didn't add...may add a bit of tea when I rack it)
EC-1118 yeast
I combined the raisins sugar and hot water (I boiled it first) and stirred to dissolve the sugar. Then I chopped and added the apricots and lemon juice and other items except the yeast and stirred and let it cool covered overnight. Tomorrow I'll pitch the yeast. We shall see what happens...

Plan on starting up some strawberry beer on the weekend. The cider seems to be slowing on it's fermenting and is starting to clear. Man, I feel like a distillery here...I'm going to need some help with all this hootch!!

No comments:

Cunning Plans

 Life is wierd ya know. It seems a lot of things have been hitting me hard lately. Been distant from people, including my partner who is dea...