Hello Everybody

[mjdtexan]

Hello everybody. Its been a while since I have visited. I am still making wine. I always have something going. Apple wine seems to be the staple around here.


Right now I have apple, apple cinnamon, apple vanilla, and cranberry going. The apple cinnamon and apple vanilla are experiments. I only have one gallon of those two going. I hope they turn out well. Its good to see yall again.


My watermelon experiments were a failure. I will try again next season.

 

[vcasey]

Don't get discouraged with the watermelon. I have read that you may get one good batch for every 10 you toss. But that 1 batch is worth the effort.
I think you'll enjoy the apple cinnamon.
VC

 

[grapeman]

Well Howdy Tex. It has been quite a while now. I was wondering how the watermelons turned out. Did you get a good crop this year?

 

[admiral]

Hi Tex. Why no apple in the cranberry?

 

[mjdtexan]

Well Howdy Tex. It has been quite a while now. I was wondering how the watermelons turned out. Did you get a good crop this year?

Oh yeah, I had watermelons galore. Red meated, yellow meated, and orange meated ones. Everybody around these parts had watermelon, even my chickens (btw-I now have 20 more 5 week olds).


I will do it all again next year. I got a new tiller for the back of my tractor, so I will be doing a much bigger garden next year. Probably a few acres.

 

[Wade E]

What happened with the watermelon, did it go rancid? It is supposedly the hardest because of this. You gotta juice it and keep it cold while you have a good starter going and then get it to temp and then get that really hearty starter in there.

 

[mjdtexan]

What happened with the watermelon, did it go rancid? It is supposedly the hardest because of this. You gotta juice it and keep it cold while you have a good starter going and then get it to temp and then get that really hearty starter in there.

I did that on several batches. I even bought Lalvin EC-1118 because its is supposed to be able to work as low as 50f. If I could find a yeast that would operate at a lower tempature then I would try that. I will get it eventually. When I grow more watermelons next season I will try try try again.

 

[Wade E]

Maybe you need to lager it like a beer!

 

[Waldo]

Im wondering "aloud" if maybe you did it like they do the frozen all juice pails. Have the must, with adjusted SG andyeast already added and then as it warms up the fermentation begins.

 

[gaudet]

Wondering aloud also....

What if you made your starter in a 1 gallon jug and after it was going nicely you fill that jug 3/4s full. Once that was going nicely (airlock boiling), you transfer it to a 3 gallon and "chapitalise" with more melon juice until you got that whole 3 gallon carboy going, then you could rack it once again into a 5 or 6 gallon carboy and continue the process. In other words keep building up your starter from carboy to carboy.....

Its too early but it makes sense to me.......

BTW how long does watermelon juice keep when refrigerated?

 

[mjdtexan]

Im wondering "aloud" if maybe you did it like they do the frozen all juice pails. Have the must, with adjusted SG andyeast already added and then as it warms up the fermentation begins.

I had not thought about that. I will try that next season

Wondering aloud also....

What if you made your starter in a 1 gallon jug and after it was going nicely you fill that jug 3/4s full. Once that was going nicely (airlock boiling), you transfer it to a 3 gallon and "chapitalise" with more melon juice until you got that whole 3 gallon carboy going, then you could rack it once again into a 5 or gallon carboy and continue the process. In other words keep building up your starter from carboy to carboy.....

Its too early but it makes sense to me.......

BTW how long does watermelon juice keep when refrigerated?

Those are good ideas too. They are on the to do list. The watermelon juice does not keep long inside the refrigerator once it is removed from the watermelon for some reason. I had plenty of watermelons though. I will grow more this year. I also am hunting a variety that has more sugar content.