Recent content by poppysue

Smoke, I'd be willing to bet your wild cherries arealso choke cherries. All Cherry species have poisonous foliage, bark and seeds. Icopied this off the interenet.... "Cherry and its relatives can be easily identified by examining the base of the leaves. There are one or two small bumps...

How about ripeness of the cherries? I went out this morningwith my bucketbut now I'm thinking maybe I should wait a couplemore days. Some of the clusters lookblack-redbut others are more red-red. I know the more ripe they are the better... but will it hurt the wine if some of them are under...

Northern winos, You have inspired me to try my luck with the chokecherry. I have a nice Canadian Red Chokecherry tree in my yard and the berries arepretty muchripe now. I figure I should get my butt out there tomorrow if I want to get some before the birds eat them all. Can you give me a...

I'm interested in hearing more aboutoaking the blackberry. I have a 6 gallon batch that has been sitting for over a year (prbably close to 2 years now). I bottled a 3 gallon batch and decided it's not my favorite flavor - I've had no desire to bottle another 6 gallons so I've let it just sit...

What yeastwould you recommend for a blueberry? I was going to use Pasteur Red because that's what I have - but if I buy new I might as well get my best option.

Thanks for you responses. Duh - I didn't even know they had expiration dates. I have one package of Flor Sherry that expired in Dec. '06 - I think I'll chuck that one. The others are Jan., April, and June of this year. I'll do as advised and make starters first with them. I have been...

How long is yeast good for? I have a couple of packages in my fridge that are a yearor soold. Is it safe to use them?

Gosh - I'm so confused! I never would have been able to figure that on my own. Thanks for all the help.

I just bottled my first batch. It's a batch of rhubarb and I need some help help figuring my alchohol content... if possible. It started out with an SG of 1.090 and fermented out to .996. I got nervouses about how fast it fermented out.... so I added another 1 pound of sugar (to 2 gallons of...

Martina, I'm interested in the lemon Balm wine you made. How did that one turn out? I've seen recipes for "Balm" wine... but I never sure what kind of "balm" they're refering too. I have lemon balm & bee balm in my garden. Was thinking I might give one or the other a try.

I'm in Maine too. The variety is 'Beta', which I planted because it's supposed to be extremely cold hardy. I only have 2 vines on a trellis... but they've been there 10 or 12 years. It'd be nice to replace them with a disease resistant variety but I don't think I'd ever be able to get them out...

And before you know it... there are no good grapes left.

Then the berries start to turn brown and shrivel......

Not that I'm proud... but since I had my camera out I thought I'd post a couple pics of the black rot on my grape so you all can see how nasty it is . These vines have had the disease for as long as I remember. I'ver never really made a big effort to cleanthem up, other then spraying with a...

I started my batch today. I decided to try 1 gallon for starters. If I like it I'll make a bigger batch next year. I filled a pot with blooms and brought them inside to clean and remove petals I tasted each different cultivar before I added it to the pot. There were probably 2 out...