Posts Tagged ‘blueberry wine’

The “wee man” has coloured all the labels, and we’ve glue sticked them to the bottles. They look really good on the green bottles!

Did you know that you can count to about 400 while bottling 5 gallons of wine? Well, if you’re six years old and you get “messed up” a few times and lose track, you can.  Ok, the six year old wasn’t actually bottling the wine, but he was practicing his math skills as he looked at the floor and saw five rows of six bottles and knew I was going to fill thirty bottles.

When I began to fill them, David decided to see how high he could count. So I listened to him go all the way to 400, just as I was finishing up bottle number 30.  He continued on past 400 while we corked the bottles – David putting the cork into the corker, helping me push down on the lever, and he’d be reaching for the next cork as I removed the bottle.

So we did bottle 30 bottles of blueberry wine.  I suppose it will soon be time to try another batch of it and use the EC-1118 yeast instead of DV10.  Perhaps it wasn’t the yeast, maybe it was the blueberries, but this batch is just not as good as what I had before.  But it’s in the bottles and the labels have been printed off,  just awaiting the “wee man’s” colouring skills before we gluestick them on.

I think I’ll also try a blueberry wine with a some sweetness to it.  But before I do that, I have black currants and elderberries in the freezer that are crying out for attention.

If David is around when I start making the black currant wine, I’m sure he’ll be beyond 900 from the time I start to the time I pitch the yeast.

If you regularly read (well, read my irregular posting here), you may remember that I started a blueberry wine back in November, 2005. I commented on it, on April 22, 2006, writing,

“… I used DV10 yeast. The specific gravity this past week was 0.990 – very dry – and I’m not sure I’ll use this yeast again for blueberry wine, but we’ll see how it turns out with more time.

First, the bouquet was not very attractive. Admittedly, I only had a quick, little taste – not a mouthful – but I did not enjoy it nearly as much as I did this blueberry wine. There was something I liked about it, but it didn’t beg for more, if you know what I mean.”

Since April 2006, the carboy has been sealed. I figured I may as well check out this wine and see how it’s been doing, three years later. Today, there was a noticeable improvement on the bouquet. I very much enjoyed what my nose was detecting. However, I’m not convinced it will be as good as the other blueberry wine noted above, where I used a different yeast. This batch fermented using DV-10 yeast.

It just doesn’t seem as bold. However, the first blueberry wine needed some time “in the air” before the full flavours came out so perhaps this one will too. One thing I did notice was too much sulfite. I like to sulfite my wines before racking them, and I figured that after almost three years, the quarter to half teaspoon I put in the five gallons of wine would have at least partially dissipated. So I added just over 1/4 teaspoon before racking today. I don’t think I needed to do that at all. I’ll have to learn more about measuring free sulfite levels in wine.

I’m going to rack it a few times in the next day before bottling it to let some of the sulfite dissipate, keep a bottle to try in a couple of weeks (I’ll give it lots of time to decant before drinking) and depending on how the taste test goes, give away some bottles as gifts and cellar most of it. If the taste test does not go so well, I’ll just cellar all of it – don’t want to be giving good friends lousy wine!