March 2015 Wine of the Month Club

Put mine into secondary this past weekend. SG was 1.000. Going to have to rack soon since there is a lot of sediment.

My Wild Berry Apple is just finishing up going dry in secondary. Another week or so I will be racking and clearing.

Racked mine to gallon jugs on Sunday. The sg was from 1.004 to 1.010. It was interesting that 3 of the yeasts didn't get going for 3 days, but then they "caught up"! Ended up with a gallon, plus a 750 ml wine bottle of each. But it has a lot of lees so after it sets a couple of weeks I'm hoping to have that gallon of each I had hoped to end up with.

added some updates to mine, ive tried to keep them on the one post @fabric mine took 3 days to get going and ended up very very fast fermenting too.

Because I'm super on the ball...

I added the fruit to mine once it was down to 1.030, which was last weekend. 5Lbs of Apricots, and the puree from 5Lbs of strained blackberries. It kicked the ferment up a little bit with the extra sugars and nutrients from the fruit. I will check the S.G. again hopefully tonight, then rack to secondary. I'm hoping to keep the apricots in there for longer, so may have to squish 'em up a little bit.

Also, I'm going to update the Original Post momentarily...

My cyser has been racked and is bulk aging - plan to rack again in June. From there I may backsweeten or just wait another 3 months and rack again.

Had a bit of an interesting turn with this today. I racked to 1 gallon carboys, and ended up with 1 and 2/3rds of a gallon. I airlocked the first gallon (S.G. 1.000) and then stared and stared at the 2/3 one...

What am I going to do with this?? I can't top up with water because I really wanted a good, strong flavour with lots of juice. I don't want to top up with finished wine, again, it would be too strong. Sooooo...my first Franken-Mead!

I added the stuff I've had in the fridge as top-up saves for other batches that are no longer needed:
1) 2 cups of Pear Wine,
2) 2 cups of Brown Sugar Apple Wine
3) 3 cups of Banana Bochet Port

This brought that second gallon up to where I needed it! S.G. 1.000.

BernardSmith said:

If there are any botanists or organic chemists on board they may be able to answer my question about banana peel. Does the peel contain the active enzymes no matter how green or yellow the banana is or is the enzyme only active and activated when the banana is beyond fully ripe and the skin is black? I suspect - but I am not certain - that the increasing sweetness a banana appears to have is due to the breakdown of the starches by the enzymes in the skin because an unripe banana tastes quite bitter and not very sweet at all. So I wonder if there are chemicals in the fruit that leach into the peels that activate the enzymes which then provide the sugars that the seeds need to feed on if they are to sprout...and it is at that sweet spot where really good banana wine seems to occur..

Click to expand...

I`ve actually tried to answer any questions directly on the original post, but, ive learned this about bananas ;-

1). best used, when they are ripe (ie) ready for eating, which maximises sugar content. By this I mean, at the state of maturity you would have eaten them at, ie mostly yellow with not much brown and no green, colour in the skin.

2). the enzyme the skin contains is called amylase.

3). they drop lots of particles in suspension for a few months, producing a slightly brown ish sediment, which drops for along time, ie months.

4). contain approx. 40 % sugar by volume when ripe.

5). produce a quite vigorous ferment.

6). produce a fairly thick consistency drink.

7). the drink it produces is relatively bland.

8). as commercial brewers here in the uk have figured, its best supplimented with a banana flavoured additive.

I looked at all my cranberry jugs and realize I need to do another racking, there seems to be another build up of lees....Hoping to get to it this week. Summers are just soooo busy!

So, I first posted in April 2014 and realized I was in the wrong place! I did rack my cranberry wines to clean carboys the other day. My siphon thing is too large for the openings of the gallon jugs, so have to siphon the old fashion way! In doing so I get just a wee taste of the wines....didn't think too much about them till I did the cranberry made with the Rhone yeast...it was sooooo smooth! I may have to do just a little taste testing before my one year mark to see if some a are ready and some are not ready!

See update here:

http://www.winemakingtalk.com/forum/showpost.php?p=624290&postcount=53




The moral of the story?
Don't throw it out! Play with it a little bit!

Racked the Blackberry Apricot Mead today. Surprisingly - it's still very gassy! Holy Moses!

I thought this would have a significant amount of fruit flavour, but really it's very light. Thinking back I should have fermented to dry, kmeta'd it and sorbated it...then put the fruit in. I think most of the flavour blew out the airlock during the last part of the fermentation.

I've added a touch of vanilla extract, orange oil, and some sugar. And will let it degas in the warmth a bit more. Also to see if my sorbate is working. Then I'll have another taste to see where it's at.