My experience so far. . .

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Bodenski

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This post is probably of little interest to anyone but me, but I'm bored and feel like writing!

First off, I am an immediate gratification kind of person. I don't like to bake cheesecake, since you have to wait until the next day to eat it. I wouldn't have even gotten into home fermenting, but I have 2 brothers and a brother in law that keep posting their brew projects on Facebook. Since I'm not much of a beer drinker, I decided to make some apple cider from store-bought juice.

My first country wine was made by adding a gallon of apple juice to the lees from my first racking of the cider. I thought "I'll add some fruit to this, it will be awesome!" I put a cup or two of the lees along with a half pound of defrosted frozen triple berry mix into a gallon glass jug, and topped it off with apple juice. I posted a picture on Facebook, and one of my friends told me what was going to happen. I quickly learned my first mistake in wine making!

Luckily I had it sitting in an unused shower in my basement. Once I finished cleaning up the mess the next morning (and taking all of the fruit out of the bottle) I let it go. But I was intrigued by making wine, so I decided it was time to read more, and try something else.

Next up was a blackberry port recipe I saw on Jack Keller's website. Now I've never had port, but it sounded interesting. So I bought a bucket for fermenting in (learned from previous mistake) and bought a bunch of frozen blackberries from Walmart. Following his recipe, I transferred to secondary after only two days, since the SG had dropped low enough. (I think this was mistake two. I really should have let the fruit sit in longer to help make sure I got maximum flavor extraction from it.) This has now been racked several times, and I've tasted a little bit along the way. I had not been impressed with the taste. But this last weekend I stabilized it and added the grape juice concentrate the recipe calls for. Wow, what a difference! It's sweet, but not obnoxiously so. I also added some oak chips to it, but I couldn't taste the oak when I tasted it. (I want to get some spirals, but this time I just used some chips from the local HBS.) This will get bottled in 2-3 weeks, and I'll have to see how patient I can be to keep from popping them open too early. I like it already, and if it gets better with time that will be awesome!

Since I realized after starting that that I was going to be impatient, I decided to brew a Dragonblood next. That was started around halloween, and I only have 1 beer-bottle sized bottles left. TBH I should have let this age a little more, but I wanted to show it off during Thanksgiving and Christmas. That was a mistake, especially at Thanksgiving I think. It needed more time, but wasn't bad.

Since then, I've also done a cranberry wine and a blueberry wine. The blueberry was frozen blueberries from Walmart. (Cranberries are also store-bought). The cranberry one I think will be great. The blueberry one I have more concerns about. My brother used to work in the micro lab at a Coors brewery. He thought he smelled something off in the blueberry wine when I racked it while he was visiting. He's had much more experience looking for spoilers than I have, and I couldn't tell what he was smelling. I'll keep plugging away, but I'll have to see how that one ends up. It's another Jack Keller recipe, and I'm supposed to add 1 cup grape concentrate at the end. (It's his full-bodied semi-sec recipe.) I haven't added the concentrate yet, so I can't tell the full flavor profile right now. I'll add that in a month, and bottle a month after that.

The last fruit wine I made was a cran-apple wine. I used the skins leftover from the cranberry wine, along with another pound of cranberries. This isn't nearly as red as I had hopped for, and the cranberries are noticeable but not quite forward enough for me. I tried to see if I could find frozen cranberry concentrate in the local store to help bring that more forward in the final version, but I haven't found any in the couple of stores I looked at close to here. I'll look again when it's aged a few more months. If I wanted to make a real cran-apple wine, I should have started with more fresh cranberries. Another lesson learned I think.

On top of the country wines, I've done one 1-gallon kit of Pinot Noir, and made a batch of JOAM. (I can taste the pith too much in that. I hope that decreases with aging.) I've also got another 3 gallons of apple cider aging, and I plan on waiting longer before drinking these. This summer I hope to hit the local farmers markets and get some wines going from local fresh fruits. Not knowing what fruit wines I'll like best I plan on experimenting some.

Only other upcoming brew project is I want to get a bucket of juice to make a bigger batch of wine. I am thinking about the chilean juice buckets. (Oh, and I want to make a gallon of apple cyser.)

Sorry for boring the 2 or 3 of you that are still reading this. :h I hope to keep something aging at all times, and right now I have two empty gallon jugs. I hope to not go above three empty jugs, so I better start finding my next recipe!
 
Wine making teaches discipline and rewards patience.

Exactly, in wine making patience is essential. Without it you might as well just open a can of juice, leave it on the counter for a couple of days and drink it. It's been a hard road for me to learn but the best thing has been getting distracted by other things going on and realizing that it's been two weeks since I even looked at that carboy.
 
Sounds like you've been bitten by the bug. Here in NoVa, there are plenty of peaches to be had in summer. They make some pretty good wine.
 
Funny thing is you saying you are "instant gratification", yet you make wine and won't bake.

I got into making biscotti (among MANY other things), as of late, due to just what you say you are into. With the baking of biscotti, I can eat it the next day, unlike wine, where I have to wait months.

Still a nice read. Looks like you have learned from mistakes and are progressing right along.
 
Funny thing is you saying you are "instant gratification", yet you make wine and won't bake.

I actually cook/bake quite a bit. And I even (grudgingly) make cheesecake, but I hate the 24 hour waiting. (My wife and I are on the Atkins diet, and we make it with splenda instead of sugar and without a crust in cupcake tins. It works well and is more or less on the diet in the later stages.)

I love to grill, as there is a lot of immediate gratification in that. And as some comedian (I can't remember) once said, "Men only like to cook when danger is involved."
 
Gotcha, wasn't following the "instant gratification".
 
while reading your adventure I kept thinking, he will try a kit, now he will try a kit, OK, now he will try a kit...you surprised me, you didn't try a kit.

stand closer to the wall, it is easier to bang your head that way!:h

try a kit!
 
while reading your adventure I kept thinking, he will try a kit, now he will try a kit, OK, now he will try a kit...you surprised me, you didn't try a kit.

stand closer to the wall, it is easier to bang your head that way!:h

try a kit!
My Pinot Noir was a kit. And I might go the kit route for my next "real" wine. My LHBS doesn't have kits for country wine, and I was more interested in those for some reason. I think because I thought my wife would be more into those. (She's not much of a wine drinker.)

I have coworkers that make wine and it's always from a kit. I bet it's more consistent than what I make, but I'm still having fun!

(And as an aside, I used to travel a lot for work. We had a standard bit of paperwork we used to travel with. One was a "portable forehead impact zone" you could hang on any wall to show you where to bang your head!)
 
Sounds like you've been bitten by the bug. Here in NoVa, there are plenty of peaches to be had in summer. They make some pretty good wine.

Oh YEAH ! Peach is one of my favorites. My 3rd batch is aging now. Picked up 36lbs for $15.00 last summer from a local roadside stand. Bought their 'overripe' peaches. Plan on making a habit of that. Overripe just means they have reached their highest sugar content and are ready to ferment. Cut off any mold and leave the bruised spots and soft spots - nothing wrong there. In the end I had:
4lbs of pits and very few bad spots
4 lbs saved for smoothies
28 lbs into 4 gallons of wine.
 

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