The first batch of pumpkin spice was so delicious that Mary B said I should make more. She doesn't want us to run out in the fall. So I followed the same recipe and steps as the first batch. As with all things there are always slight deviations.
Notably, I started with about a half gallon less water. The first batch was a bit unwieldy so less water made it easier to work with. I added the remainder of the water during the step where I heated the mixture and added sugar and honey.
Another noteworthy item is that when I was heating the mixture to add the sugar it started to boil over a little. It never scalded but I think it got hotter than the first batch.
Finally I eyeballed the spices more. I'm sure that I added more spices than the first batch.
It's been brewing for 2 weeks now. It started out thicker than I remember the first batch but has liquefied a lot now. Fermentation seems pretty rapid and it smells very good.
I plan on letting this one sit on the pumpkin pulp longer than the first batch since it didn't seem to have a negative effect.
- 8/26/2017 I let it sit for a long time. It seemed to ferment for much longer than the first batch. I took it off and bottled it. I don't remember the date but just realized that I didn't finish this blog entry. Life gets busy sometimes :-)
11/23/2017 Thanksgiving - Had this and the V1 batch at Thanksgiving and everyone liked it. The V2 batch didn't bubble in the glass. Maybe it finished more completely. Both were very tasty and had their own character but were very similar in taste so I guess the recipe is good.
Friday, March 10, 2017
Thursday, February 23, 2017
Maple Syrup Wine 2/19/2017
This weekend we were having pancakes and Charlee says, "I love maple syrup. Can you make wine from it?" Of course, it's mostly sugar. So I didn't even look this one up. I just used what I knew from making mead. I went for approximately 25% sugar content by weight.
- 4 cups maple syrup
- 1 cup sugar
- Box of raisins
- Water and yeast
- Yeast nutrient
Nothing fancy. I didn't even heat the water on the stove since my tap water get's pretty hot. Maple syrup has 53g sugar for 4 tbsp. 16 tbsp. per cup which makes 212g per cup. A pound of sugar is 450g. So 4 cups makes 848g or 1.8 pounds. A little extra sugar to get to 25%. I was too excited to actually take a hydrometer reading.
I mixed the hot water and maple syrup in the gallon jug and poured the raisins in. I heated a little water in the microwave to melt the cup of sugar and poured that in along with the yeast nutrient. Rehydrated the yeast and pitched it in. Within an hour it was bubbling pretty aggressively. Depending on how it tastes when it finishes I may back-sweeten it with sugar or maple syrup.
3/5/2017 - It's still bubbling pretty well. I could see a fair amount of old yeast at the bottom and so I siphoned it into a new bottle to let it settle and continue fermenting. It has a slight bourbon taste. Very enjoyable. Unsure if I'll back sweeten or not. I'm not a huge fan of sweet wines anyway.
1/24/2018 - Opened this to have with a Christmastime pork meal. Wonderful. Finished it off over the next couple of months. I really liked the character and taste. Although expensive I may make a small batch of this again. It was really good.
3/5/2017 - It's still bubbling pretty well. I could see a fair amount of old yeast at the bottom and so I siphoned it into a new bottle to let it settle and continue fermenting. It has a slight bourbon taste. Very enjoyable. Unsure if I'll back sweeten or not. I'm not a huge fan of sweet wines anyway.
1/24/2018 - Opened this to have with a Christmastime pork meal. Wonderful. Finished it off over the next couple of months. I really liked the character and taste. Although expensive I may make a small batch of this again. It was really good.
Friday, February 3, 2017
Pumpkin Pie Wine February 5, 2017
This one may be weird but I got to thinking what other things can be fermented and thought there are a lot of pumpkins every year. I looked online and sure enough you can ferment pumpkin. All of the online recipes said to use chunks of pumpkin but I don't have any of that so I decided to go with canned pumpkin puree.
Ingredients:
Ingredients:
- 3 cans (6lb) of pumpkin
- 5 cups (2lb) of sugar
- 2lb honey
- clove
- allspice
- nutmeg
- cinnamon
- ginger root
- raisins (recipes say they add body and mouth feel)
The basic idea is to make the pumpkin taste like pie, then add sugars and let it go. The pumpkin has very little sugar, 15g per can hence the large amounts of sugar and honey. I think this one will get bottled until the fall.
I took a gallon and a half of water and added the pumpkin in a large pot and heated it. Add the spices and let it boil for a few minutes. This is to kill off anything weird. Most of the recipes that I saw had a step where you let the mixture sit for 8 hours. I assume this is to leech the flavors out of the pumpkin. I had to work so I let it sit for 24 hours on the stove with a lid to keep anything weird out of it.
I didn't want to water the mixture down further so I scooped out a couple quarts of the liquid and put it in a saucepan on the stove and heated but didn't boil. I added more spices since I thought the first batch of spices was a little on the weak side. Once the mix got up to 180º I added the sugar and kept stirring until the sugar was no longer granular.
My estimation was that I have around 1.5 gallons of liquid. Maybe a little more. That's 12 pounds. Honey is about 80% sugar so with the 2 pounds of sugar and the wee bit in the pumpkin I have a total of 4 pounds of sugar. That's 33%. I'm sure in reality it's less though.
I added the pumpkin, sugar mixture, raisins, and honey to a 3 gallon carboy. I hydrated my yeast and threw it in and mixed really well. Overnight, by the morning, the airlock was bubbling away. I removed the airlock and covered with a towel to let some air get in if it needs to in order to keep the yeast happier. I plan on stirring it daily during the rapid ferment just to keep things mixed.
My only concern is the thickness of the concoction. This might be why recipes don't use puree. After the first ferment I plan on straining through fine mesh if it doesn't settle out on its own. It may though. In the picture below you can see that some settling had already happened. This morning though the settling had mixed up again, probably because of the fermenting.
2/10/2017 - I've mixed the concoction daily after work. It was a very nice pumpkin yeast smell. It's still pretty thick so it's hard to tell how much fermentation is happening. So I've been putting the airlock on after mixing and can see that it's still fermenting pretty rapidly. I've been covering it with a cloth and will go to the airlock full time when fermentation slows down. This morning I noticed that it is clearly separating. This is a change possibly brought on by the fermentation process. Time will tell.
2/19/2017 - Around 2/12/2017 I got tired of waiting to see if it was going to separate so I siphoned what I could into a gallon and pint+ jugs. I tried squeezing the pulp through cheesecloth but it was too thick so I put it in a gallon jug and have been watching it. It's still fermenting which I think is due to the sugar getting into the pulp. This weekend (the 19th) I siphoned off the wine and checked its gravity. It's at 1.000 and hasn't moved for a week. I racked this wine to see if it will settle out any more. I don't think it will and am fairly convinced that it's completely done fermenting. It's delicious! Mary B says I need to make another batch because it's so good. There's probably a good glass full of wine that came off of the extra pulp. I'll use that to top off the wine when I bottle it or I may just drink it.
2/26/2017 - It didn't seem to be settling any so I bottled it. I ended up with a gallon and a quart. I kept the quart set aside so I can taste it to see how the character is changing. I put the rest in some nice wine bottles with corks. We plan on not touching these until the fall. Let's see if we can wait that long.
11/23/2017 Thanksgiving - We had this and the V2 batch at Thanksgiving and it was a hit. Everyone liked it a lot. Theresa says that it needed maybe more cinnamon. When she mixed it with a little ginger ale she said the flavors came out. So, next time I make it I will add some fresh ginger.
2/10/2017 - I've mixed the concoction daily after work. It was a very nice pumpkin yeast smell. It's still pretty thick so it's hard to tell how much fermentation is happening. So I've been putting the airlock on after mixing and can see that it's still fermenting pretty rapidly. I've been covering it with a cloth and will go to the airlock full time when fermentation slows down. This morning I noticed that it is clearly separating. This is a change possibly brought on by the fermentation process. Time will tell.
2/19/2017 - Around 2/12/2017 I got tired of waiting to see if it was going to separate so I siphoned what I could into a gallon and pint+ jugs. I tried squeezing the pulp through cheesecloth but it was too thick so I put it in a gallon jug and have been watching it. It's still fermenting which I think is due to the sugar getting into the pulp. This weekend (the 19th) I siphoned off the wine and checked its gravity. It's at 1.000 and hasn't moved for a week. I racked this wine to see if it will settle out any more. I don't think it will and am fairly convinced that it's completely done fermenting. It's delicious! Mary B says I need to make another batch because it's so good. There's probably a good glass full of wine that came off of the extra pulp. I'll use that to top off the wine when I bottle it or I may just drink it.
2/26/2017 - It didn't seem to be settling any so I bottled it. I ended up with a gallon and a quart. I kept the quart set aside so I can taste it to see how the character is changing. I put the rest in some nice wine bottles with corks. We plan on not touching these until the fall. Let's see if we can wait that long.
11/23/2017 Thanksgiving - We had this and the V2 batch at Thanksgiving and it was a hit. Everyone liked it a lot. Theresa says that it needed maybe more cinnamon. When she mixed it with a little ginger ale she said the flavors came out. So, next time I make it I will add some fresh ginger.
We drank it at Thanksgiving 2017. Very tasty!
Monday, January 16, 2017
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:
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.
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.
Sunday, January 8, 2017
Welches Wine 1/8/2016
For Christmas my beautiful and amazing wife got me some wine making stuff. Very excited. First wine is usually Welches. It's like writing a Hello World application for coders.
Ingredients:
Heated water in microwave and put in sugar. Cooked till hot enough to melt sugar. Cooled it to 90° and poured some off and added yeast to get started. I've been using my infrared thermometer and assuming that it reads a little cooler than the actual liquid temperature. This isn't rocket science after all.
I warmed the juice a little and added to the jug and added water. Checked temp and kept it at around 80°. Made sure yeast starter was fizzing and happy and poured it in. Poured on yeast food, mixed, and topped off water. Checked gravity at 1.040. Put in fermentary with a balloon on top to watch process.
After a day the thing was cooking like crazy! After 4 days the balloon stopped growing. I tested the gravity and it was at about zero. I'll take it off of the old yeast today (1/12/2017).
After reading some things online I wonder if I disrupted the yeast with the balloon. I should have used a cloth. We'll see.
1/14/2017 - After 2 days the gravity hasn't changed so I'm ready to bottle it. There was still some yeast sediment settled at the bottom of the jug so I siphoned it off into another jug and got some bottles ready. I had a little taste from the bit that I pulled for the gravity test. A little light on taste but you could taste that there was alcohol in there. Actually tasted pretty good for a first try. I bottled it up and set it in the basement I'm resigned to not tasting it for 30 days to see how the flavor changes. This has been a really fun experiment.
2/14/2017 - We decided to have some of this with Valentine's day dinner. It was a little on the light side but the flavor was great. Excited to see if it will change with more time.
Wine in second ferment with airlock:
Ingredients:
- 1 Can frozen juice
- 1 packet of wine yeast
- 1 cup sugar
- 1 tbsp yeast food (no idea what it is but why not try it)
Heated water in microwave and put in sugar. Cooked till hot enough to melt sugar. Cooled it to 90° and poured some off and added yeast to get started. I've been using my infrared thermometer and assuming that it reads a little cooler than the actual liquid temperature. This isn't rocket science after all.
I warmed the juice a little and added to the jug and added water. Checked temp and kept it at around 80°. Made sure yeast starter was fizzing and happy and poured it in. Poured on yeast food, mixed, and topped off water. Checked gravity at 1.040. Put in fermentary with a balloon on top to watch process.
After a day the thing was cooking like crazy! After 4 days the balloon stopped growing. I tested the gravity and it was at about zero. I'll take it off of the old yeast today (1/12/2017).
After reading some things online I wonder if I disrupted the yeast with the balloon. I should have used a cloth. We'll see.
1/14/2017 - After 2 days the gravity hasn't changed so I'm ready to bottle it. There was still some yeast sediment settled at the bottom of the jug so I siphoned it off into another jug and got some bottles ready. I had a little taste from the bit that I pulled for the gravity test. A little light on taste but you could taste that there was alcohol in there. Actually tasted pretty good for a first try. I bottled it up and set it in the basement I'm resigned to not tasting it for 30 days to see how the flavor changes. This has been a really fun experiment.
2/14/2017 - We decided to have some of this with Valentine's day dinner. It was a little on the light side but the flavor was great. Excited to see if it will change with more time.
Wine in second ferment with airlock:
1/2/2018 - This wine actually turned out very nicely. After 11+ months in the cellar I pulled it out to celebrate the new year. It was light but the flavor had grown a little. It actually had a little more kick than I remembered and is really pretty. I may make this again as a simple table wine.
My First Ferment - 12/26/2016
For Christmas 2016 I got a basic mead kit and a couple of pounds of honey. Fascinated with the idea of making your own hooch this was a really cool gift. I followed all of the directions to a T. The mead looked great. I posted a bunch of pics to FB. We drank some after a week on New Years eve. It was delicious. A little sweet with not too much kick. I didn't check the gravity before putting it up.
One week later I checked the gravity and it was zero so I guess it was done. Even better the second week. Tasty with a slight sweetness and an alcohol zing. Not too much. Very enjoyable. A gallon went a long way. I was drinking it while I made my next batch of fun.
After thinking more about it and reading some wine blogs I can see that what I actually did after the first week was take the wine off of the old yeast. I didn't know I was supposed to do that so this was a happy accident.
This was a great first ferment. I think I'm hooked now. In my next batch though I am going to save a bottle to the side and drink it after a couple of months to see what a difference it makes.
Here's what the batch looked like on New Year's eve.
One week later I checked the gravity and it was zero so I guess it was done. Even better the second week. Tasty with a slight sweetness and an alcohol zing. Not too much. Very enjoyable. A gallon went a long way. I was drinking it while I made my next batch of fun.
After thinking more about it and reading some wine blogs I can see that what I actually did after the first week was take the wine off of the old yeast. I didn't know I was supposed to do that so this was a happy accident.
This was a great first ferment. I think I'm hooked now. In my next batch though I am going to save a bottle to the side and drink it after a couple of months to see what a difference it makes.
Here's what the batch looked like on New Year's eve.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)