Posts Tagged ‘Winemaking’

This weekend, I racked (transferred) the cherry mead from the fermenting bucket into a glass carboy, to get it off the fruit and start clarifying.  I started with a bucket because it has more room top for bubbles while fermenting and it is easier to get all 12 pounds of cherries in and out.
Materials:

carboy
airlock and [...]

The Cherry Mead stopped bubbling this week, so it took about 4 weeks to ferment completely. Any time now it can be transferred (racked) into a glass carboy and allowed to clarify. It smelled great while bubbling, so I have high hopes for it.
The chickens started laying the week before Christmas. I brought the chicks home [...]

These are the cherries that we harvested back in July.   There are 12 1/2 pounds.  I wasn’t ready to use them at that time, so they were frozen.  To thaw them, I put the bags of cherries in a large metal bowl and kept them in our “cold room” for three days.
Our cold room is [...]

The Sunday before last was mead and cyser (cider with honey) day. I racked a mulberry mead, made a mead with this years grapes and made a cyser. I spent about 2 1/2 hours in the kitchen, most of it was washing or sanitizing equipment. Brewing is mostly about getting everything clean, [...]

Erroll, of WashingtonWineMaker.com stopped by and recommended I put bird netting over the grapes. I had thought about putting up something to keep the deer out, but forgot about the birds.
I attached some boards to the top of the posts, then attached 1 inch deer fencing. The fencing is 7 feet wide and comes [...]

Early this morning I noticed that grapes are starting to change color.
I have not been happy with the results of my pruning. I tried to follow the advice in From vines to wines and prune them down to only one bud on the shorter vines. The weather has been so dry; all the leaves [...]

Erroll of WashingtonWineMaker.com stopped by some time ago. He has quite a bit of information on wine making and gardening, with a “Northern” grower perspective.
WashingtonWineMaker has only been on the web since April 2007, but already has posts on vinticulture, tomato wine, rhubarb wine, mead and maintenance & cleaning.
I’m interested in how his tomato [...]

Cherry Mead was bottled last weekend. It’s always nice to have somethine special for all those summer get togethers.
The mead was made from about 13 pounds of honey and some frozen, pitted cherries (a few pounds), White Labs WLP715 Champagne Yeast and water to make 5 gallons. The batch was started on July [...]

I bottled the Dark Mead today. It’s almost a year old. The alcohol has broken down nicely. The spices contribute a very nice flavor. It is too sweet though. My wife suggested mixing it with sparkling water, and that works great.

The grapes are long enough to make it up to the trellis, so it’s time to install it.
I picked up some Aluminum wire are the hardward store and ran it between the posts.
The galvanized steel wire had a “caution: contains a chemical known in the state of California to cause cancer”. Yikes! That’s lead! Be [...]