CC's not so fine WINE diary

[flowerbug]

strawberry can be deceptive. ex-step-dad used to make a lot of wines. some turned out great and others, well, better to use them as draino... glad the cranberry went well!

 

[CrealCritter]

My dollar general apple juice wine is finally bottled. I haven't so much fun with 8 dollars in a long time. It most definitely needs time in the bottle to mellow, but it is quite drinkable even now. At 18.1% ABV, it'll jerk a knot in your dogs tail, I'm telling you what... Phew this is some strong wine. Strongest I've made yet.

It came out clear as day and looks nice. If you remember, i spiced this wine with whole allspice, cloves and cinnamon sticks and let the wine yeast devour the spices for 3 weeks. You can definitely smell and taste all three spices, along with the apple. It's almost like drinking an apple pie, but not as sweet. I drank 4 ounces and it knocked me up side the head.

17 750ml bottles

Stats and label

 

[CrealCritter]

My son in law was over yesterday and we were talking about brewing beer and wine making. He said he liked all the wines I've made but red raspberry. I asked what's wrong with the red raspberry? He said it tastes like cough sryup. I said ok... and I kind of forgot about it until this evening.

So I pulled the cork out a bottle straight from the root cellar. I gave it the old sniffer test, yep most definitely raspberry. So I poured a glass, it looks good, clear and light red like red raspberry should. About the time I was pouring a glass, my wife came though the kitchen. I said here give this red raspberry a taste. She said can you please pour me a glass? As I was pouring her glass, I told her that the son in law said it taste like cough sryup. She said if that's cough sryup, it's the best cough sryup I ever had. I agreed with her.

Just after 3 months in the bottle, it's pretty doggone good already. No it's not sweet like a raspberry cobbler, but it has just enough sweet to overcome the tartness the red raspberries but not overpower them. It's a semi-dry wine. Maybe he just doesn't like raspberries? Or maybe it's a little too high in alcohol @13.6% ABV? The wine does numb the tongue and throat going down and leaves a slightly tart taste in your mouth. But this wine reminds me of how raspberries taste eating them right off the bush, minus the alcohol numbing.

I think it would pair nice with dark meats like lamb and beef dishes, stews, steak, deer, duck, pheasants, quail, beef and chicken fajitas and most definitely chocolate desserts. I can almost taste what washing down a piece of chocolate pie with graham cracker crust would taste like.

 

[CrealCritter]

strawberry can be deceptive. ex-step-dad used to make a lot of wines. some turned out great and others, well, better to use them as draino... glad the cranberry went well!

Every batch of wine and beer I make is draino. All the trub, lees and yeast cake from the bottom of the fermentors goes down the drain to feed the septic tank. After all the beer and wines I've made, I'm quite sure our septic tank is pretty clean. Beer and Wine yeast will devour just about any thing that's a sugar and if it finds starch it will convert it to a sugar to eat. Both yeasts also survives in some pretty extreme temperatures also. So I'm pretty sure our septic tank is nothing but a big nasty yeast orgy.

 

[flowerbug]

i couldn't waste that kind of stuff down the drain! that's all too valuable organic material. worms would probably love it all too buried in the gardens. if i lived closer i'd gladly volunteer to take it and use it. i have buckets of worms that would probably go nuts over it.

i also feed the worms in my worm farm with any food or paper scraps. i just can't think of wasting any $ we've spent on food/vegetables even if we can't eat them the worms can do the honors and in the process turn it all into prime garden fertilizer.

 

[CrealCritter]

Well I'll be doggoned...

I had made up a 5 gallon apple cider wine back this fall, that I thought I posted here, but I can't find it. I kid you not, my wife's Rottweiler eat the little sticky note off of the primary fermenting bucket. Now I have no idea what my starting gravity was so no way to determine the alcohol content

Oh well, I guess the alcohol content is a mystery I know it's at least 12% ABV.

I kind of forgot about it actually, I had it airlocked in with all my brew gear. I have no idea when I started it, but I racked it over the weekend added campden, potassium sorbate and bentonite. It's gravity was .990 totally dry at the time of racking. up juice.

This is just the excuse I was looking for to purchase a PROOF & TRALLE to correctly measure alcohol content of my non back sweetened jacked up juices.

 

[CrealCritter]

It's been a while... My wife brought home a bucket of fresh picked local. I think she's trying to get my on things I like doing. So, why fight it... why not make some wild persimmon wine. I tasted one and man are they sweet this year. We did have one frost already so it stands to reason. Why they taste like candy. For those of you who have never tasted persimmon wine, it's a little different. Imagine plum and peach with slight hint of pumpkin spice and you'll be pretty close to what it tastes like.

Sugar is the variable here, with most all fruit wines the natural sugar content varies year to year.

I think I'll go with a nice light and fluffy, drinking wine, lower alochol content this time. Shoot for around 10% ABV or so. I'll use my hydrometer and stirr in sugar untill the original gravity is about 1.080 or so. If I allow it to finish dry as water at 1.000, it will be about 10.5% ABV, which should be pretty close to what I'm envisioning.

Self created recipe for 1 gallon batch.

3 pounds ripe Persimmons
1 teaspoon acid blend
Bottled filtered sping water to make one gallon probably about 7 ~ 8 pints.
1 packet Montrachet yeast
1 Campden tablet, crushed and dissolved
1/2 teaspoon yeast nutrient
White table sugar to 1.080 starting gravity.

More to follow...

 

[CrealCritter]

What to do during the presidential debate? Well de-stem 15 lbs of ripe persimmons of course. I put 3 lbs in a gallon baggie and mushed them good. Then put 5 gallon baggies in the freezer to freeze solid. Freezing fruit ruptures the cell walls of the pulp, creates more juice but more importantly makes it easier for the wine yeast to ravage. Only use ripe mushy persimmons, If you can pull the stem off easy, it's ripe. Kind of interested to see what color the wine will turn out to be.

More to follow...

 

[wyoDreamer]

I'm really interested in this wine. Persimmon was an ingredient in one of the few wines that I liked, but the winery stopped making it.

 

[CrealCritter]

I'm really interested in this wine. Persimmon was an ingredient in one of the few wines that I liked, but the winery stopped making it.

I made up the must tonight (finished around 9:00 PM, for my reference). I have to wait 24 hours to pitch the yeast. This gives the Campden (sanitizer) time to gas off so it won't kill the yeast when I pitch it. It's what sanitizers do, kill stuff. I think it will turn out to be a light peach color but we'll see. I plan on trying to sprout the persimmion seeds. Everything I've read says they need to pass through and animal first or be fermented. Well I'm fermenting them

Hit my starting gravity. I still remember 1lb of table sugar added to 5 gallons raises the gravity by .010. I was pretty amazed how much natural sugar there was in these persimmions. They we're 1.020 all by themselves in 5 gallons of water, no wonder people call them deer candy. I only needed to add 6lbs of sugar to hit 1.080. easy smeazy...