June 2014 Wine of the Month Club

[ksvet06]

june 15 2014 "mulberry wine"

here is what I use

4 lbs mulberries
2 Cans Welch's Grape Juice
3 Pounds White Granulated table sugar
1 tbs. Lemon/Lime Juice for the acid substitute (Optional)
White Labs Red Cabernet Yeast
1 gallon water

First I cleaned and sanitized everything that might touch the ingredients and then juiced
the mulberries. Add the juice to the bucket and the pulp in a cheese cloth and in the bucket it went.
Then I add the two cans of grape juice with 6 cans of water to the bucket and topped it off with the
rest of the 1 gallon of water in the recipe. Then I add the sugar and measured s.g. and was at approximate
s.g. of 1.100. Shooting for around 14.9 abv. Then i added sodium metabisulphite to the must to kill any natural
yeast. let it sit for 24 hrs. Next day I added the yeast nutrient and pectic enzyme and stirred the must up really well. Last but not least I rehydrated the lavlin yeast and added it the must.

day 1 1.100 s.g.
day 2 1.071 s.g.
day 3 1.041 s.g.

 

[Jericurl]

Finally!

I knew this was going to be a busy month.
I've finally caught up enough that I could make my June wine and start my Oregon Pinot Noir kit.

Ok,
here is the recipe I'm using, more or less taken from Keller's website.

Cactus Flower Wine

2 quarts firmly-packed cactus flowers

1 11-oz can 100% white grape peach juice concentrate (something happened to all the other plain white grape concentrates in the freezer)

1-3/4 tsp acid blend

1/8 tsp grape tannin

1 crushed Campden tablet

1 tsp yeast nutrient

Water to a little over 1 gallon

Sugar to SG of 1.00

In 12(ish) hours I will add pectic enzyme and 12 hours after that I will pitch yeast.
It doesn't specifically call for pectic enzyme, but this cactus stuff turns into ghost busters slime if you look at it sideways. I'm not taking any chances.

 

[Jericurl]

Rae,
How is the dandelion wine coming along? I've been checking all my local beekeepers and it looks like they are all just doing wildflower honey, no single varietals to be found!

Kim,
Oh that sounds yummy. I've got to look into doing something else with blueberries. What color is it? Are you going to try to color it to a true blue?

BuffaloFrenchy,
I'll be interested to see what yours does. I've heard that the sweetness in the maple gets eaten up and all that is left is a very strong woody flavor. Are you going to backsweeten at all?

BRGriffith,
Oh wow, that sounds/looks fantastic. I'm betting it's going to be a very bold flavored, eat it with steak kind of wine.

Winesleeper,
Yeah, yeah, yeah! Poke fun!
JK, I know what you mean though. I haven't been at this a year yet, and I'm still mildly surprised when something is drinkable and I haven't poisoned anyone yet.

ksvet06,
Sounds pretty interesting. Have you tasted it yet?
I'm thinking with the mulberries and all those cans of concentrate it's going to be a pretty full bodied wine.

 

[ksvet06]

J ericurl
I think you might be correct. No I haven't tasted yet. Gonna take mulberries out tonight. Gonna be interesting

 

[vernsgal]

whew I finally got it in the bucket!
This is what I've done so far:
1st I brewed the tea in 2 liters of boililed water (set aside for 1/2 hour)(I used Rooibos de Provence, see pic for description)
- in primary pail I added 2 tsp. bentonite to 2 cups warm water stirred til well blended
-added 1 liter blueberry concentrate , 1 liter Red Grape concentrate, 5 1/2 liters water,170 g raisons, 2 tsp acid blend and 1 g fermk.
- stirred well then added tea
- SG was 1.072 so I added 3 c simple syrup (2 cups sugar) SG 1.094
I'll wait til later tonight for it to cool down some more then add the yeast( Vinters Harvest R56 )and redo the SG.I'm sure it'll change when it cools
I'm going to use the wild bluberries (see pic) in an fpak later on. Still undecided whether to oak
Jeri I love the thought of going blue, not sure if I'm able but something to look into

 

[the_rayway]

Kim, that sounds super yummy! I've heard that batchelor's button flowers can dye your wine blue, but considering you already have so much purple going on, I'm not sure it would help. Maybe with a white wine?

My Dandelion is happily sitting in it's little jug, clearing quite nicely so far. I still don't have a new phone with camera, so you'll have to take my word for it! Need to get on that. Jeri, if you're still interested in some Dandelion honey, send me a PM and we'll figure something out.

Will update on S.G. once I've checked it again.

 

[BRGriffith]

BRGriffith,
Oh wow, that sounds/looks fantastic. I'm betting it's going to be a very bold flavored, eat it with steak kind of wine.

Absolutely, lately I've been thinking about how to make something just like that with just store bought ingredients. Hopefully it works out!

vernsgal: That looks awesome! I've really been in to blueberries myself lately, so that goes right along with my tastes.

 

[Stressbaby]

Well this thread picked up didn't it?
I thought I was last one to the party!

Elderflower Wine
Elderflowers, 2 cups
1 can Welch's white concentrate
1# 10oz sugar
1 Campden tab
Fermaid K
GoFerm
1/8t tannin
1.5tsp acid blend (but likely will need to be adjusted)
7.5 pints water

Sort of going by Keller's second recipe but his volume is always a little short and his acid is always low so will adjust accordingly. I'm skeptical about 1 pint of flowers but I can always top it up with some St. Germain!

 

[Stressbaby]

Elderflower Wine Update:
SG was spot on at 1.088. I have found that floral wines using 1 can of Welch's concentrate very consistently come in at 1.085-1.090 using 1# 10oz of sugar + 1 can concentrate per gallon.
pH was closer than usual for a Keller recipe at 3.44. I added another 1/2 tsp acid blend to get to 3.34 for this wine.
Pitching D47 this morning.

 

[Jericurl]

Hmmmmm.....don't have time to dink around with it right now but I gave my batch a good stirring.

It was very.......snotty.

I'll be getting the petals out of there when I get home from work and see what else is going on.
It still smells fantastic though.

 

[vernsgal]

Hmmmmm.....don't have time to dink around with it right now but I gave my batch a good stirring.

It was very.......snotty.

Mmmm snotty wine

 

[Jericurl]

Snot.
Pure snot.
This is going straight in the compost bin in the morning.
I tried to get pictures but I couldn't stop gagging enough to get a decent picture.
Manthing was useless. He couldn't stop laughing long enough to help me.

Gross.
So, so gross.

 

[the_rayway]

Ugh. Snotty wine.

Good luck with that taste test! Lol.

 

[vernsgal]

Snot.
Pure snot.
This is going straight in the compost bin in the morning.
I tried to get pictures but I couldn't stop gagging enough to get a decent picture.
Manthing was useless. He couldn't stop laughing long enough to help me.

Gross.
So, so gross.

well that's one recipe I know not to try! ( You know it's funny but it's snott)

 

[Jericurl]

Kim,
I'm still shuddering.


So I couldn't let this month go without trying another batch.
I only have 1 quart of cactus blossom left in the freezer, so not enough to try to troubleshoot and figure out why it turned into gel so fast and so completely.

So i'm basically making a variation of Dragon's Blood to serve as my June wine. It's 5 gallons instead of 1 gallon. But I don't think anyone has really messed with elderberries in Dragon's Blood so it still counts as an experiment to me, lol.
This will be my Skyrim themed wine. Dragon's Blood, Elderberries, I'll somehow make it dovetail with dragons and Elder Scrolls!

1 lb plums
12 lbs blueberries
5 lbs strawberries
9.6 oz elderberries
1/2 of the large bottle of lemon juice
sugar to 1.10 SG
7 tsp french oak powder
The usual suspects for nutrients etc.

I didn't add any acid or tannins for this one.
I figure the lemon juice takes care of the acid and the elderberries will probably add enough tannin.

 

[winesleeper]

Strawberry Wine Update

the_rayway & Jericul – please !!! don’t take it as sarcasm, I was just talking out load about how I’m not a risk taker and therefore my monthly experiments are just plain old standard recipes. I really enjoy reading about the monthly wine experiments and hope someday I will step out on the edge. But for now, I’m just trying to finish my strawberry wine that is orange not red. So I have read about winemakers using red food coloring or red unsweetened Kool-Aid. Which one should I use and how much? The final SG was .990 so I will back sweeten it to 1.010 before bottling. Currently I’m waiting for the sparkolloid to its thing then I will rack it for ageing.

 

[Stressbaby]

Winesleeper,
Just my 2 cents here...if that were my wine, I'd top off the carboy with some of the wine in the 750 and move the remainder to a 375 or a beer bottle or something else. You have a lot of head space and I'd be concerned about oxidation.

 

[the_rayway]

Winesleeper: we are just kidding you, no worries.

I've heard that strawberry turns orange or yellow unless you use the really red, ripe to the stem strawberries. Maybe they do not have enough natural dye? I wouldn't bother with editing the colour personally, but you may want to try a few drops of beet juice to bring out the pink if you want colour. I always worry that food colour or other things may not be stable enough in wine to dye properly. That is an entirely un-scientific statement and just my opinion.

I finally got a new phone (yaay!) so below is a pic of my Dandelion Mead. Looks like a dandelion colour, clearing nicely, with an...interesting smell so far. Haven't tasted it, and I need to get an S.G. reading soon. I'm always a bit 'relaxed' with the meads on finishing S.G. as I've had a few that really take their time in secondary.

It's time for end-of-month updates isn't it? How is it already July?!? June washed away in a haze of rain for us, so I still feel like we're really behind in the garden and stuff. Just did my first batch of jam for the year last night: Rhubarb Orange. Yum!

 

[Jericurl]

lol,
I managed to be a week early on this thread, and two days late on July! Geez. Let me get a little coffee in me and I'll finish up this one and start the next.

Raelene, I canned my first stuff of the year this week as well.
Roasted red peppers and a few half pints of sandwich onions.

 

[the_rayway]

Awesome! I'm totally jealous that you have garden produce. The only thing I have ready is lettuce and rhubarb so far this year. Usually I've got those by the beginning of June.

WIll PM me your recipe for sandwich onions? I'm very interested