Archive for the ‘Fruit’ Category

If kiwi fruit are on sale at your local grocer, you might want to give this a try. A kiwi melomel, or perhaps more descriptively, a fruit mead.

This is my first melomel of the year with part of the 90 pounds of honey I recently had delivered. Of course, I’ll be making even more melomels and meads with the honey, and hopefully will have time in the next week or so to get them started.

A couple of other notes – I meant to write about two Christmas gifts that I received. My business partner, Wendy, is awesome at finding unique and great presents and this year was no exception. She knows I love to read, and the first gift was the book, “The Heartbreak Grape: A Journey in Search of the Perfect Pino Noir”. I’m looking forward to reading this book which was short listed for the Canadian Governor General’s award, as well as nominated for the James Beard Book award. I’ll provide a review when I’m finished reading it.

The other gift from Wendy was exquisite. Somehow, she managed to find a dozen hand-blown (mouth blown? I don’t know the proper term) glass airlocks, each about 6″ high. Apparently at least 40 years old, these airlocks are really nice, and I’m looking forward to using them. Of course, I’ll be using them with carboys that are mostly out of reach when long term ageing is desired, so there is little risk of breaking them. What a great Christmas present!

A few more sips of my wine, and I’m off to bed.

Back in July, I began a blueberry wine according to this recipe. I made one gallon, specifically for drinking with whatever we were going to eat for dinner on Christmas Day.

I was remiss in not sampling the wine in the past two months so I was not sure what it was going to be like. I had also never bothered to bottle it, instead allowing it to bulk age in the one gallon carboy which I poured from into our wine glasses at dinner time.

Being the host, I asked Wendy to take the first sip . She tried it but wasn’t too sure as she had just been munching on some food and asked me to try.

I was disappointed. The wine seemed far too thin to enjoy with dinner and I was thinking I’d have to open a bottle of Vieux-Chateau Du Roi. However, knowing that it was all friends and family sitting around the table, and there were no wine snobs present, I decided to serve it regardless.

The color of the wine was a brilliant cranberry red – perfect as a Christmas color. It was also very clear even though this wine had not been filtered. So as far as appearance goes, this wine was excellent.

On the nose, well… with the dining area filled with the odour of thyme, sage, rosemary, and steaming turkey, it was difficult to detect much of anything. At first.

Something interesting happened though. After about ten minutes in the glass, the wine had improved dramatically. As the blueberry wine had been exposed to oxygen, the the “thinness” disapeared, there was a much nicer mouth feel, and more complexity found on the tongue. This wine definitely is one that would benefit from decanting like a good red grape wine would.

And as the evening wore on, and we had started out with a gallon which meant plenty for all that were interested (except my mom, who was driving), each glass improved upon the previous.

I did quickly pour some into a 750 ml bottle which I gave to my mom before she left so she could continue to enjoy the wine that the rest of us would be sipping on throughout the rest of the evening when she arrived home – which of course cut down on the amount the rest of us were able to consume.

Although I had pies and icecream ready for dessert after dinner, none of us were able to even think about finding any spare square inches in our belly; none of us had hollow legs either so dessert was declined by all.

I did however open an “ice style” blackcurrant wine for dessert – a heavenly delight called “Black Iced Passion” from the Scotch Block winery. A wine that you want to hold on your tongue for as long as possible, and yet at the same time look forward to it drizzling down your throat.

Ah, wonderful!

But returning to my homemade blueberry wine – almost the entire gallon was consumed, and alas, I’ll have to wait another six months or so before I the next batch I made will be ready. But this time, I decided to make five gallons – 30 bottles, which I’m sure will be appreciated gifts, as well as a special occassion wine and I’ll also be able to lay some bottles down for further ageing.

There is also some evidence that blueberry wine has even more of the health benefits than red grape wine. It’s been reported that blueberries contain one of the highest amounts of antioxidant compounds which possibly ward off heart disease, cancers and other diseases. When made into wine, these antioxidant compounds remain to be beneficial to the human body. More information here.

An observation on the blackberry wine I started on the 17th of November. Using this recipe included using Lalvin DV10 yeast.

As I noted the other day, I racked it from a primary into a secondary fermentation vessel 9 days later. After I finished racking, there was no sign of any further fermentation going on and the Specific Gravity was 0.092 – that’s about as dry as it’s going to get, I’m sure.

This is my first use of DV10 yeast and I’m wondering if it always provides such a quick fermentation.

The blueberry wine which I started a couple of days earlier had a starting Specific Gravity of 1.104. Nine days later, the SG was 1.020.

After racking, the blackberry wine also was an interesting colour – very close to a blood red. Mind you, that’s with a lot of “stuff” still mixed in before it starts to settle.

I made it in to Winemakers today, and friendly, pretty Debbie asked as soon as I walked in, “Oh, you’re here for your air locks and bungs?”

Someone reads my blog – thanks Bob!

So I picked up a few extra airlocks, bungs and a couple more carboys. Recently Debbie pointed out to me that the “Mexican” carboys, although stouter in shape, have about a half cup less volume than the Italian ones. That is handy for wines that you don’t want to top up very much, so I purchased one of those as well as another 19 litre carboy.

Unfortunately, one of the products I was hoping to get was not in stock – the large size “Hops Boiling” bags.

Basically the same as cheesecloth, but better. At least for my use. What I like about the large size is that it fits tightly around the top of a plastic pail, and then the rest of the “bag” sits inside the pail. This means that when I have a fruit wine like blueberry, I can pour one pail into the other that’s been fitted with the large size hops boiling bag. It catches all the larger size bits of fruit while allowing the juice to pass – and then after, I get in a good wrist workout by slowly squeezing the fruit that is left in the bag, pressing the remaining juice right out of it.

That was my plan for this evening with the blueberry wine that I started last week. I headed over to the grocery store and picked up some cheesecloth, figuring I could rig something up from that, but truly it is not wide enough to work well.

So, I thought I just try racking with the syphon tube. That wen’t “o.k” for awhile, but then bits of blueberry would get stuck in the tube, and it became a pain to try to massage and caress the tube in order to get the flow started again.

After about 30 minutes (yes, the flow was quite slow), and the pail was about a quarter full, I decided to try my funnel with the screen filter. That didn’t work so well, as the filter is so fine, that it got clogged.

So then I used a large hunk of cheesecloth inside the funnel, and poured from the pail into that. That worked, kind of. I finally got all the blueberry wine into the carboy, with of course, some berry pieces in there as well. But that’s ok.

What did surprise me though was the amount of wine I actually had. If you’ve been following my blog, last week when I started this, I used 12 1/2 lbs. of blueberries, which took up quite a bit of space in the pail.

I estimated I’d have to add at least half a gallon, perhaps even a full gallon of water later to bring the total amount of liquid to five gallons.

Not so. The amount of pulp that I took out was relatively small to the amount of space those blueberries took up in the first place. I’m estimating there’s about 1.5 litres of headspace right now in the carboy – which I’m not topping up just yet as the Specific Gravity was a bit higher than I had thought it would be at 1.030 – so I want room for the continued fermentation that I expect.

Anyhow, it was all a bit of a mess, with splashes here and there, a funnel to clean, some kitchen utensils that I also used to press the berries, and two pails later. It also took me longer than I expected so I’ll leave the racking of the blackberry and black currant wines until tomorrow.

I did however rack a 4 week Zinfandel kit, that I’ll bottle in the next few days. I’m going to set aside some bottles for longer ageing so I also added a 1/4 teaspoon of sulphite to that after it was racked. I’ll probably bottle that in about two or three days.

Well, after the past few days, I’ve got barely room to stand in my winemaking area. I’ve got primaries everywhere, carboys up on the counter and the floor, and I’ll have to wait a bit before starting anything new methinks. Or else I’ll be put out of the house for taking it over!

In addition to the blueberry wine I started the other day, I’ve also started a blackberry wine and a black currant wine. The blackberry wine was based on a recipe I found in a book, while the blackcurrant wine was mostly based on my own whim after doing some research on blackberries.

The recipes are here:

Blackberry Wine

Black Currant Wine

Most of the black currant wine recipes that I found on the Internet were more for a port style wine, which is not what I want. The one or two others didn’t seem to take into consideration the high pectin content of black currants and the fact these berries have pretty tough skin. We’ll see what we end up with!

I think, for the next week or so, I’ll be monitoring specific gravity levels, doing some racking, and lots of reading. Wendy will be happy – after I clean up the juice spills that seem to be all over the kitchen. It’s a pain when the plastic bag (even though it was heavy duty plastic) decided to leak while I was thawing berries in the fridge. Good thing today is garbage day.

Took a quick peak at the blueberry fermentation this morning – and the DV10 yeast has certainly got a vigorous ferment going on.

The crushed blueberries have formed a cap similar to that of a red wine fermenting with the skins, so I’ll be punching down that a few times a day with the trusty 2X4.

The odour of fermenting blueberries is quite nice. If I were a fruit fly, I’d be attracted to it.

One of those days when I should have had the camera. Well, I didn’t get as much accomplished that I had originally hoped, but in the end, probably accomplished much more in different ways that I hadn’t planned on.

This evening, I had hoped to start about three separate batches of wine, and I began with the blueberry. Now, my three year old son David just loves blueberries. I was wondering what he was going to do when he saw me pour approximately 12 and a half pounds of blueberries into a pail – ah, I’ve got a great little kid! He just wanted to help, and help he did. We made a bit of a mess, but who cares? And more on the mess as well, in another paragraph or two.

I explained to him that I was going to make wine from those blueberries, and he just demanded to help, “I’m a big helper, Dad.” And yes he was.

After we got all the blueberries into the pail, I got out a big old piece of 2X4 and started crushing. David had to help with that as well. So we both smashed that 2×4 down into the berries, splashing as we did, but it was fun. David watches too much “Dora The Explorer” I think; he was saying the Spanish words for “up” and “down” every time we lifted and crushed. The kid is teaching me stuff!

Because I was using this recipe here which was originally made for one gallon, I quintupled the ingredients as I want to make five gallons of blueberry wine this time.

There’s about 10 cups of sugar in a 2lb. bag, but it was more fun to count each cup.. and that was David’s way of helping with that as well. All the way up to 24? Well.. David can count that high, but he got tired of that after about 16 cups. Don’t blame him either.

We mixed it all up, and if you ever need someone to stir and stir, and not stop stirring, even when Daddy says, “Ok, that’s enough stirring,” well give me a call. I’ll be the agent for the best must stirrer there is that never gives up.

At that point though is when I realized I didn’t have enough yeast nutrient, pectic enzyme or acid blend to start the other batches I wanted to start. So David and I took out our “handy dandy notebooks,” figured out what we did have, and stirred what we needed into our blueberry must.

Now, 12 1/2 pounds of crushed blueberries does take up a bit of space in the pail, and even after I press it later, it’s not quite going to make 5 gallons of liquid. With the 4.5 lbs. of sugar that I added, the specific gravity was at about 1.088 – however, after taking into consideration that there is going to be some topping up to do next week, I increased the sugar until I reached a specific gravity of 1.104. I lost count of how much extra sugar I added, but my goal was not really to record sugar quantity, but to get the specific gravity up to a decent level (as far as I could tell) taking into consideration that I’ll be topping up after pressing the berries, probably next week.

Now as far as the package I received in the mail: A few weeks ago, when I went to the Scotch Block Winery and had the opportunity to speak with winemaker Fred Bulbeck, he recommended that I use Lalvin DV10 yeast for blueberry and/or raspberry wines.

I’m no yeast expert, but I like to learn and experiment and take other people’s advice from time to time. And after tasting Fred’s black currant wine, I figured his advice was something I’d not ignore.

So in today’s care package from California was DV10 yeast. I actually bought some in a bulk quantity – so I measured in about 2 teaspoons into a starter solution before adding it to my must.

David helped with the whole process, a few times looking at his own “handy dandy notebook,” and making his own notes as I did in mine. Ah yes.. clean up time.. well, the great little helper never left my hip, as soon as we went to clean up the splashes of blueberry juice on the floor, there was David, taking the paper towels right out of my hand, saying, “Dad, I can do it for you.” Oh, he might have taken about 5 minutes longer than I would have, but he got up every little spot.

Every winemaker needs a little helper like that.

Anyhow, if you’re interested in the actual details, here they are:

Approx. 12.5 lbs. blueberries
Approx. 6 lbs. of sugar
5 tsp. yeast nutrient
7 tsp. acid blend
5 tsp. pectic enzyme
Water to fill up to the near top of my just over 23 litre pail.
2 teaspoons DV10 yeast.

Beginning pH: 3.6 (I’ll likely want to drop that a bit, but it’s real close to the 3.5 upper limit)
Beginning SG: 1.104

5 Hours after I pitched the yeast, there are noticeable signs of fermentation going on.

Say yes to lots of blueberry wine for Christmas in 2007! And a great dad and son team making the stuff. I’ll have to have him help me design some neat labels for this.

Here in my part of Ontario, Canada, it was a gorgeous sunny day although on the cool side. I decided to go for a drive and take along my three year old son David to a small winery that I have seen signs for but never visited.

The winery, named Scotch Block, is located about 40 minutes from my home, just outside of Georgetown, Ontario. I had a couple of reasons for visiting. First, I intend on participating in this month’s Wine Blogging Wednesday. This month’s theme is ” drink a wine of which 250 or fewer cases were made.” It’s being hosted by Gastronomie on the 2nd of November.

According to winemaker Fred of Scotch Block, pretty much all of their wines number far less than 250 cases with some being limited at a total of 1,000 bottles. So, I wanted to see what I could find that looked interesting. In fact, I picked up three different wines, but for Wine Blogging Wednesday, I’ll be sticking with one in particular as it best meets the guidelines for price.

The other reason I wanted to go there as to pick up frozen fruit. I was able to get about 8 pounds each of gooseberries, black currants, and blackberries (similar to a mullberry). Unfortunately they were out of elderberries, at least according to the girl I spoke with who worked there. The winery is located at a popular farm for produce and it was packed with people wanting to purchase pumpkins and other autumn products, so I’m wondering if the girl was just too busy to check the large freezers for me. I found it curious that they had so much other frozen fruit available, but no elderberries, which probably would have been harvested just last month.

I’m sure you can imagine what I plan on doing with this fruit. If you guessed, “bake pies,” you are wrong! Some years ago, while visiting the home of a pastor of a Canadian Reformed Church, the pastor poured me a glass of his homemade black currant wine, and it was delightful. So I’m going to see if I can make some decent wines out of the black currants and other berries I purchased.

I was also priveledged to be able to talk with the Scotch Block winemaker, Fred. Fred provided me with some very helpful advide including his own recommendations of yeast strains to try. I’ll have to see if my local wine making shop will order them for me.

For those following my wine making adventures, with all the recent nonsense going on I neglected to mention that I started a new batch – from Raspberries. The recipe for this is basically the same as the Blueberry wine recipe that I started the other day. I’ve noticed that I have visitors that have found their way to this blog using search terms on Google that include “wine making recipes.”

So for the benefit of those, here is the recipe that I used:

3 pounds of raspberries
4 1/2 cups of sugar, mixed into water to produce a gallon
1 Teaspoon of yeast nutrient
1 Teaspoon of pectin enzyme
1 Campden tablet
Yeast

The above ingredients, (except of course for the raspberries, sugar and water) may be obtained at your own local wine making supply store.

Again, this won’t be ready for 6 months or so before I can bottle it. I apologise for the long delay that will occur before I taste this!

Oh, I should mention that indeed I used nylon stocking in which I put the crushed raspberries. The proprietor at my local convenience store did look at me funny when I purchased pantyhose from him, and made some joking remarks at my expense. I think he believed me when I told him what the pantyhose was for.

Tonight was the night I “degassed” the white wine I had started on the 19th of June. The Specific Gravity measured in at 0.994, so we’re looking at a wine around 10 or 11% alcohol. I have to admit that I did not like the taste of it when I began siphoning it into a primary fermenter for degassing and and adding the Potassium metabisulphite. I’m wondering if the elder flowers in this batch have given it a taste that is too “heavy.” At the same time, it’s not chilled either.. and white wine always tastes better chilled.

But anyhow, I did spend some time on degassing it, and will continue to do so for the next couple of days. I know that for some, it’s a pain to syphon and rack, but I prefer to do that for the next couple of days, at least once per day, as it helps to remove the sediment.

I also started two new batches tonight as well! I’ve finally decided to try making a wine from the berries, and not a wine kit. Ever since I was a kid, I’ve liked blueberries, and I wonder what blueberry wine will be like. So, I bought a few pounds of pure frozen blueberries, followed a recipe I found in a book, and started a gallon worth of blueberry wine. If it turns out enjoyable, for about 7 or 8 bucks, I’ll have about five bottles of wine.

I thawed the frozen blueberries and then mashed them with a potato masher. According to the recipe I have, I made up a solution of 4 1/2 cups of sugar and a gallon of water, then added a teaspoon of “yeast nutrient,” a teaspoon of “acid blend,” and a teaspoon of “pectic enzyme.”

Mixed it all together, then poured it over my mashed up blueberries in my primary fermenter. Mixed that up really well, tried to determine the specific gravity, but I’m not so sure I have an accurate reading as pieces of the fruit were floating in my sample. But from what it read anyhow, I’ll have a wine of about 14 or 15% alcohol. I do think though that the reading was a little high, due to the floaty bits of fruit in my sample.

I’m only making a gallon of this, as I have no idea if I will like blueberry wine, and I didn’t want to make five gallons of something I might not enjoy. This is more of an experiment for me, and even though it will be at least six months before I can bottle it, I thought I’d just make a small amount now, and if I enjoy, I’ll make a larger batch later.

I also plan on trying some wine from raspberries too.

For blueberry wine, according to the recipe I have, about 2 1/2 pounds of blueberries are required. I bought two 600 gram containers of frozen blue berries, and used about one and half containers of them.

Raspberries, for one gallon of wine, seem to require about 3 lbs. of berries.

I also started a white Chamblaise wine this evening, from a Grand Cru kit. I am told this is similar to a Chablis. A wee bit sweet, and goes well with cold food, like cold pasta salad, chicken pasta salad, and similar.

I eat a lot of salad!

Before adding the Bentonite, the specific gravity of this was 1.180. That means I should, if all goes well, end up with a wine of about 11 or 12% alcohol.

I also need to head back to the wine supply store to pick up a new plastic pail and spoon. My long plastic spoon broke this evening, while stirring my Liebramilch while degassing.

I once enjoyed a very nice black currant home made wine. So, along with the raspberry, I want to try both a honey mead and black currant in the next week or two as well. Making wine from the pure fruit takes a good bit longer than from a kit, but this is becoming an enjoyable hobby for me, and now that I have all the equipment and ingredients necessary, I’m looking forward to experimenting, trying new things, and coming up with my own recipes to see how it all turns out.

If anyone wants to help pick dandelions next spring, and pick off the petals, (it takes about 3/4 POUNDS of dandelion petals to make one gallon), let me know. A pound of dandelion petals seems like an enormous number of picked dandelions to me. And of course, I won’t want dandelions that have been treated with weed spray either.

Oh, I forgot about Mullberry wine. Mullberries are similar, if not pretty much the same as Blackberries, and I know a tree that produces tons of mullberries, near a beach on Lake Huron. In August, I’ll try to get out there, and pick pounds and pounds worth, and try some mullberry wine as well.

Any other ideas or suggestions? I’m off to bed, while I let my yeast work, eat up sugar, produce alcohol for me, and turn stuff into wine.