I Have A Dream - January 16, 2017

The other day I woke up with an idea in my head.  It turned out to be this batch of wine.  So, since I made it on Martin Luther King's holiday I'll call it, "I Have a Dream".  The basic idea is a tart cherry wine.  After reading some more blogs on wine making and trying to get a better understanding of the chemistry of it I came up with the following.

Ingredients:

• 1 can cherry pie filling
• 1 bag of cherries
• 1 1/2 cup of cranberries for tartness
• 3 cups of sugar (evaporated cane juice)

Something that I realized with my last batch of wine is that I likely didn't have enough sugar in it.  That's why it finished so early.  So this time I decided to use some chemistry and make sure the juice was high-sugar.  I started with the can of pie filling, no preservatives of course.  It said that it contained 28g of sugar per serving, 7 servings per can.  That makes about 196g of sugar for the can.  A pound of sugar is 453g.  A gallon of water is 8 lb.  So, by my calculation, if I wanted 20-25% sugar, I need 2 lb total sugar.  So I added 3 cups (200g ea) of sugar.  This comes to close to 800g of sugar which is about 1.75 pounds.  I figured there was probably other sugar in the bag of cherries so this seemed like a good calculation.  Now, the process.

I cooked the bag of cherries in some water to soften and to get the juice out.  It took about a half hour and I used a potato masher to mash up the cherries throughout the cooking.  I poured off the juice through a strainer and used a spoon to squeeze as much juice as possible.

I added the pulp back to the pan and added the canned cherries and a little water.  Since they were canned this didn't take long to soften up.  I strained the whole thing and got as much juice out as possible.  All total I got about 1/2 a gallon of juice.

I needed some more sugar and water so I heated 6 cups of water in the microwave continually adding the 3 cups of sugar to make a sugar syrup.  I cooled this in a water bath until it was about 130º and poured it into the jug with the cherry juice.  I also added a tbsp of the cherry pulp.  I figured it would add some complexity to the flavor, what do I know!

I tested this mixture with the hydrometer and it read approximately 23% sugar.  1.115.  Now the online chart lists this as 15.6% potential alcohol.  My hydrometer says 23% so, again, who knows.  What I do know is that compared to the wine and mead that I made, this is very syrupy.  I think the corn starch may throw the numbers off a little.

I made a small batch of sugar water and cooled it to 90º and soaked my yeast for about 15 minutes until it was bubbling.  Then I added it to the jug.  That almost filled it to the top.  The jug was at around 90º.

I decided that for the first ferment I would ferment it in the kitchen.  I't's winter so the kitchen is at 70º most of the time, colder overnight but never below 60º so the yeast should be happy but not too active.  After an hour there was already some bubbles on the top so I think the yeast are doing what they are supposed to do.  I covered the jug with a cloth and a rubber band.  I read that a balloon (like the last batch) is bad because it keeps oxygen out.  Again. we'll see what this does.  It's all an experiment.

Can't wait to see if and how this batch is different from the previous ones.  Not at all ready to try a five gallon batch of anything yet.  I'm having fun with these small batches.

1/17/2017 - Something interesting happened.  All of the cherry parts and sediment floated to the top.  It looks like there is fermentation going on because I can see some bubbles.  However, it seems pretty slow.  I'm putting the airlock on tonight so that I can watch it better.

1/19/2017 - All of a sudden the wine started fermenting rapidly.  It seems happy.

1/23/2017 - Still fermenting rapidly but I'm an impatient sort and I used the excuse of getting the juice off of the cherry parts.  I tried siphoning and it was going very slowly.  When I got to the bottom I could see why.  The bottom of the jug was very thick with yeast and cherry parts.  I strained out the cherry parts and poured much of the soupy stuff back in.  I didn't want to interrupt the fermentation.  I checked the gravity and it is right at 1.000.  Further along than I thought.  It's a very pretty color.  I tasted some and I think it's delicious now.  It will really be great later after it's done.  I put the airlock back in and it seems that the fermentation is still happening.

1/28/2017 - The airlock says that the fermenting is done.  Gravity says that it's below 1.000.  Time to bottle it up.  I don't have the space to rack it for months prior to bottling and frankly, I don't care if it's cloudy.  So I bottle it.  I found that there was lots more goop in the bottom of the jug than I thought.  In the future I think I need to make a slightly larger batch or remove the goop after the first ferment.  I think it was probably corn starch etc.  It bottled really pretty and there was a little left over.  I sipped it with some roasted almonds.  Delicious.   This will be really tasty after a few months.  I'm excited to see how different it can be after sitting.

12/20/2017 - I've had this wine a few times over the year.  Last night we had it with roasted root stew.  It was almost 11 months old.  Wow.  Delicious, really very good.  The alcohol level is nice and high but not overbearing.  Very good with the meal.  Joyce and Vince even liked it.  I think I will make a 3 gallon batch next month.