Elderberry wine

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Doug,

Have you been out looking for berries this year yet? Mike and I took a ride on the side by side last weekend. Elderberries are doing very well up here this year. I am looking at a bumper crop. Also, choke cherries are looking pretty promising, also. I'm thinking I am going to do an elderberry choke cherry wine.
 
Doug,

Have you been out looking for berries this year yet? Mike and I took a ride on the side by side last weekend. Elderberries are doing very well up here this year. I am looking at a bumper crop. Also, choke cherries are looking pretty promising, also. I'm thinking I am going to do an elderberry choke cherry wine.


I've been checking since the middle of June. If flower quantity is any indication, it will be a very good year. Found a bunch of new locations this year.
 
Back sweetened the Elderberry last night to 1.004. Pretty darn good if I do say so. I want to check the acid and SO2 levels this weekend then get ready for bottling.

I need to call Lafitte Cork and Capsule and order some corks.
 
My wife and I picked about 15 lbs two nights ago. I am guessing we will get 50-75 lbs from the plants we have in our yard. It inspired us to taste or elderberry wine from 2013, it was well worth the wait. Great nose, long lasting finish. Hints of cherry, light oak. I'm glad we have lots of bottles of it.
 
berries are just now forming around here, I'm usually about a week or two behind ffemt128. Lol, so I wait for to say he is starting to pick then I start watching closely!
 
yes ma'am, all elderberries justcoming intotheir green state they should fill out and be black soon, as for black berries only about 10 to 20 % are ripe shamefully dad my nephew and I have ate most every one on a 1 mile loop,,
my pears are loaded but a little small, my peaches are young. like i'll only about 20 peaches or so, mom has done stated hinting,, oh well, I guess she'll win, but both my neighbors pears and granny smith apples are loaded, we've been getting a little dusty between rains this year, but good lord willing and thecreekdon't rise I should ,ok, how bout you miss Julie, is fruit looking good there,, I hope your season is a god one, I've seen a few muscdines this year but nt lots of them I know this is a bad time to plant but I found 4 elderberries around 4 feet tall so I dug em up and replanted them in my back yard, 3 of the 4 looks like they'll make it and I found 3 more on the pastrture , how does it look around your place are the fruit and berries looking good, I hope so, I really do..

Dawg





Doug,

Have you been out looking for berries this year yet? Mike and I took a ride on the side by side last weekend. Elderberries are doing very well up here this year. I am looking at a bumper crop. Also, choke cherries are looking pretty promising, also. I'm thinking I am going to do an elderberry choke cherry wine.
 
Dawg,

Yes fruit is looking very good this year. I won't have apples cuz we did a big trim but I'm good with that, got a pile last year. Our oldest lives in Monroe, NC and has a good 30 ft muscadine vineyard that is completely loaded and if the deer haven't gotten to the fig,mshould have enough for figgie pudding and a batch for wine. Also, for the first time my Niagara grapes and Catawba grapes are producing so I should have enough to make a 5 gallon batch of each. And concord is overflowing, plenty for a batch of jam a a couple batches of wine.
 
hey Arne.
I've been buying some stainless steel to make a fermenter stirrer, i'm told 304 is not considered food grade, but 303 is, i'm at the mercy of what i'm told on this subject, never been my element of knowledge, so am I being lied to or not,
Richard



Okay, that makes sense!

Geek alert! I am going to be geeky for a moment and discuss the magnetism of stainless steel. Please just ignore this if not interested. I fully understand that almost no one will care, and it has almost nothing to do with elderberry winemaking, but I am stuck inside until this rain lets up!

The magnetism (or lack thereof) in steel and stainless is interesting. Normally, metal atoms "want" to be as close together as possible, and so adopt a crystal structure (that is, the arrangement of the atoms) that allows this. There are two such structures, but we will only deal here with the one called face-centered cubic (FCC).
You would naively expect pure iron to be FCC to allow the atoms to pack as closely together as possible. However, there is one problem: iron atoms (Fe) have a magnetic moment, and the FCC structure does NOT allow these magnetic moments to all line up. (Magnetic moments "want" to line up, that is, they have lower energy that way.) Therefore, it turns out to be more favorable (lower in energy) for the atoms to take on a different crystal structure, called body-centered cubic (BCC), even though the atoms are not packed in as closely as possible. The consequent alignment of the magnetic moments of each atom makes iron ferromagnetic.

[Note to experts: I am not going to go into the addition of carbon to iron to make steel, i.e., pearlite, cementite, etc. Even in steel, it is the remaining FCC iron that makes it ferromagnetic.]

Now, how do you make stainless steel? You start adding nickel (Ni) and or chromium (Cr) to the regular iron steel. This makes the steel "stainless" because the oxides of Ni and Cr form a layer on top of the steel that prevents further oxidation. (This is why the wires in your toaster, for example, are a Ni-Cr alloy.)
However, Ni and Cr have much smaller magnetic moments than Fe does. If you add enough Ni and/or Cr, the energetic "payoff" from having the atoms arranged in a BCC structure (to allow the alignment of the magnetic moments) is no longer sufficient to overcome the energetic payoff of allowing the atoms to pack more closely in an FCC structure. Thus, the atoms rearrange into an FCC structure, and the magnetic moments are scrambled, and you lose the ferromagnetism. This is how the 300 series of stainless steel is formed.

However, if you add only a little Ni, the BCC structure remains. (Many of the 400 series grades of stainless are made this way.) Because the BCC structure remains, the magnetic moments can all align, and the material will be ferromagnetic.

Because of the low Ni content, 400 series stainless is cheaper to make. It is appropriate for applications where only mild resistance to oxidation is needed, like furniture or the skin of stainless steel kitchen appliances. So, if you have ever wondered why refrigerator magnets stick to some stainless steel refrigerators, but not others, well, now you know!
 
do muscadine need cut back like grape vines I got a couple trees that are 5 to 6 feet thru, they have the biggest vines up to around 4 inches thru, on other trees I have woody vines 1 to 2 inch or so thru, I've never had muscadines on them last couple years I cut a few smaller ones back that could hurt a horse I've lived here since 88 never not 1 muscadine, yesterday out checking black berries I saw muscadines on two different cut back vines these I think was cut 2 years ago, I hate cutting big vines, nature an all you know, but I do have several 1 an 1/2 to 2 inch as long as I know I wont kill them, and do they discus this on the grape vine growing forum.
thank you
richard




Dawg,

Yes fruit is looking very good this year. I won't have apples cuz we did a big trim but I'm good with that, got a pile last year. Our oldest lives in Monroe, NC and has a good 30 ft muscadine vineyard that is completely loaded and if the deer haven't gotten to the fig,mshould have enough for figgie pudding and a batch for wine. Also, for the first time my Niagara grapes and Catawba grapes are producing so I should have enough to make a 5 gallon batch of each. And concord is overflowing, plenty for a batch of jam a a couple batches of wine.
 
Muscadines can be pruned very similarly to grapes. I've cut mine off 6 inches above the ground and they've almost always sent out new shoots from the sides of the stump and/or the root. Prune for production after winter is over in early spring. On last year's wood leave 2 to 4 buds. On the shoots that grow from those buds will be this year's muscadines.

I'm not saying you want to cut them off a few inches off the ground, but if a rabbit gnaws the vine and damages it or you run over it with a mower or winter damage kills it down to a foot off the ground, you have to cut it off.
 
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I am very interested in the elderberry and concord, please let us know how that is.


We bottled the elderberry and concord wine recently. We are a little disappointed in it. It does have a nice elderberry taste, with a hint of concord underneath it. But it is missing something, not exactly sure what that something is. I don't have the PH and TA numbers from pre-bottle. We probably won't be doing it this way again.
 
Elderberries are looking promising this year. Still raw but lots and lots of them. I'm looking to make 2 six gallon batches, and pick enough to put in the freezer for another 2 six gallon batches come spring time.
 
and just like that, the birds got to the berries before me...

Yeah, I went out the other day to check on a couple of concord vines we have over an archway. Reached up to pick one, heard a rustle in the leaves of the vine and next thing I knew a squirrel was running away from my feet. Varmits!! Picked everything that looked ripe right then and there.
 

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