Plum Wine

On the 19/08/11 I started a batch of plum wine. In the background of the first photo there is a few jars of plum jam we also made. By the fact we made over 20 jars of jam and still had enough left to make wine you can get an idea of the amount of plums we collected. We have been back since and it doesn't even look like we've taken any. If this wine is nice then next year I will make a much bigger batch.

The recipe I used for the wine can be found here in full but I will go through what I did. I started off by removing the stones from the plums to make up 6lb of fruit. I then poured over 2 pints of boiling water and crushed the fruit a bit to start releasing the plum juice. Next I added a teaspoon of pectolase when the juice was cool; this helps break the fruit down. I then covered the mixture and left it overnight. The next day I dissolved 3lbs of sugar in 2 pints of boiling water and added that to the fruit mix, which was then left 48 hours. The next step was to add the yeast and put it all into a demijohn. Before putting the juice into the demijohn I strained the mix through a sieve. If I do this recipe again I will use something much finer to strain the liquid from the fruit; this is because a lot of the pulp must have also gone into the demijohn as when I woke up the following morning there was a lot of pulp that had been pushed up by the fermentation over night, the airlock was full and some of the mush was over the kitchen table. I managed to clear this up and there wasn't too much of the mix lost. I did take a gravity reading using my hydrometer so will be able to work out the alcohol level at the end. The reading was 1.08 which will give a final alcohol level between 10 and 15 %, I will now leave the wine a few weeks then rack into another demijohn.

The wine in the demijohn, the pulp at the top is the same as what overflowed after the first night

Racking

Due to recent death of my mother this is my first post in a couple of weeks so my blog has fallen behind a little. She was an exceptional mother and grandmother who always encouraged me to do the things I'm passionate about so would have wanted me to carry on with my blog. I have several things I would like to post about and the first is the racking of my mead and wine.

I had several days at racking as I have a lot of mead on the go at the moment. The 30 litre batch that I started at the beginning of the year was split into 4 demijohns a few months ago so that took a couple of days to rack. This batch is just a straight mead with no other flavourings apart from 1 of the demijohns which I added extra honey to sweeten. Though I didn't have a hydrometer to begin with I have since roughly worked out the starting gravity or S.G. to be 1.060 and the current gravity is 0.97 which would give a ABV OF 12%. This batch is also clearing nicely and will be bottled next month and then set aside to age, hopefully this will make it taste nicer!

The dandelion wine, which is in a 3 litre pop bottle, was also racked and that has a nicer smell than it had before! The colour is still similar to red wine, due to the red grape juice added, but it appears a little clearer. No gravity readings have been taken at any point on this wine so will be a wild card when it is drunk.

The lemon and ginger mead I started in March was the next. This had a S.G. of 1.090 and is now about 15-16% ABV. I did mention in a earlier post that I would bottle this at 12% but as it's already gone over I will now leave for it to run it's course. I didn't taste this while racking so am unaware if it's got a nice taste yet but in time will find out.

Finally I bottled my second batch of JAO mead. This followed the same recipe as the first batch I did but am unsure what it tastes like yet as I haven't tried it yet. I didn't write a post about this when it was started and  haven't recorded the gravity at any point so again I am unable to tell how strong it is. Oh well, that just adds an extra layer of fun when drinking it!

The dandelion wine.

Racking from the earthenware "johns"

MEAD!!!!!!

Raspberry Wine

As there was a huge glut of raspberries again this year, along with jam, we decided to do a batch of raspberry wine. I did a quick Google search and came up with a recipe found at this link. I didn't fully follow the recipe but used it as a guide.

A small section of raspberries, there is about 30 metres of them!

8 kilograms of berries!

We started with a huge container of raspberries and started straining the juice out for use in seedless jam. First off we filled a muslin square with berries and once a knot was tied in the top we started squeezing the juice out. When we had 3 kilos of juice we put that to one side and used that to make the jam. What was left in the muslin was then squeezed out into a bucket along with 7 pints of water, a crushed campden tablet, a teaspoon of yeast nutrient, half teaspoon of pectic enzyme, half teaspoon of citric acid and about enough sugar to bring the mix's starting gravity to 1.092. I then left the mix over night and then squeezed the bag before adding a teaspoon of wine yeast. After 5 days the mix had reached a gravity of 1.020 so I squeezed as much juice out of the bag as I could and then racked it into a glass demijohn and added a airlock. I will now leave it a few months before racking again.

The mix in the fermenting bucket with the hydrometer to measure the gravity.

The wine in the glass demijohn.

Dandelion Wine Fermenting

After leaving the dandelion brew for 4-5 days in a covered bowl it was time to put it in a demijohn for fermenting. I used a sieve to scoop off as much of the dandelion "debris" as possible and then poured the remaining liquid through the sieve a few times for good measure. 

I then poured the remaining liquid into a demijohn (in this case a 3 litre dilute pop bottle). Before the dilute pop bottle I used a larger glass demijohn but this was too large for the amount of liquid I had. At this point I was panicking slightly as I have used the same amount of sugar as I should have used for a larger batch, meaning there is a higher sugar content. This will mean a sweeter wine which is no problem! At this point I should have taken a S.G. reading so I could work out the alcohol level at the end but didn't have time so will play it blind.

The next day I had a look at the mix and am happy to report that it is bubbling away quite happily. Now I need to wait a couple of months before racking the wine, then maybe another rack followed by bottling the wine and finally leaving for upto a year to develop. I will update as I go!

Mead!!!!

I have finally bottled my first batch of mead, the JAO. It produced approx 3.5 Litres. The recipe I followed doesn't mention adding anything to stop secondary fermentation, however I added a campden tablet prior to bottling just to make sure no further fermentation took place. I did this as I really don't want exploding bottles of mead; one reason being I've waited a long time for it but more important is I don't want to risk hurting anyone, especially my young daughter.

This picture shows the bottled product. These are 1 Litre bottles. The mead at this point is rather cloudy but I'm advised that it will clear if left a couple of months and the taste will be better. I'm not sure I will be able to wait this long as I have already opened one of these bottles!!

In these 2 glasses are the last bits to be syphoned out of the demijohn. It is cloudier than the bottled product as part of the sediment was sucked through the tube. It was still very tasty but had a slight off taste that my unrefined palate couldn't name, but I'm putting this down to the sediment as further drinking from the bottled product had a much nicer taste and cleared appearance. If I was to try to describe the taste of the bottled product I would say it was sweet but not overly sweet, with subtle orange flavour and a warming after taste. I will certainly be making more!

The hard part now is saving at least one bottle to allow to mature. It's recommended to leave at least 2 months but I'm not sure I'll be able to. As I consider this batch a success next time I may make a larger batch, that way I would have more chance of saving some to mature. Also when I finally get some bees and am harvesting my own honey, the mead produced should be better quality. At the moment I am still using bulk commercial honey.

Update on Second Batch of Mead

While searching the net for more mead recepies I came across the following guide on High Wycombe Beekeepers Association website

2 lb. honey in 1 gal. gives S.G. 1.060, potential alcohol 7.8%.
3 lb. honey in 1 gal. gives S.G. 1.090, potential alcohol 12%.
4 lb. honey in 1 gal. gives S.G. 1.120, potential alcohol 16.3%.

Dry Mead: Starting S.G. 1.085-1.105. Finish S.G. 0.990-1.000.
Medium Mead: Starting S.G. 1.105-1.120. Finish S.G. 1.000-1.005.
Sweet Mead: Starting S.G. 1.120-1.130. Finish S.G. 1.005-1.015.

Using this bit of info I tried to work out roughly how much alcohol my second batch of mead would produce. I started off working in litres and kilograms so my first step was to convert to gallons and pounds.

Using google to convert:-

6kg > 13.2lbs
30L > 6.6 gal  (in my original post it says 25L but later I checked and it was closer to 30L)

This would give a 2:1 Honey:Water ratio and approx S.G. of 1.060, potential alcohol 7.8% which is much lower than I originaly thought. I should really have used upto twice as much honey in the mix. Due to this and the lack of activity over the last few days in the recently racked mead I will be doing a hydrometer test on it soon. If the gravity reading is 1.005 or less then I believe the fermentation will have stopped and the mead will be ready, even though slightly weaker than anticipated.

Ginger and Lemon Mead

I have started another batch of mead. This one is very experimental and again I haven't followed a strict recipe. This mead (as it contains honey, lemon and ginger) will be called medicinal mead!


To start this one off I copied instructions I had found for making a yeast starter. This involved putting a teaspoon of wine yeast in a jam jar with a couple of teaspoons of ginger and a couple of teaspoons of sugar. I then gave this a good shake and then added the juice of a whole lemon. The next thing to do was to put a piece of kitchen towel over the top to stop dust getting in. Within half an hour it was fizzing quite happily.

The next day I added another couple of teaspoons of grated ginger and the same amount of sugar. By this point it was fizzing like a freshly opened can of ginger beer and smelling like one as well!! I left the jam jar for about 12 hours then made the mead. To start I boiled a large pan of water and left it to cool; this is done to get rid of the chlorine in the water. I then weighed out 1.5kg of honey. This was easier said than done as all my honey has now solidified and I did bend a spoon or 2, I eventually went for the wooden spoon option. The honey was then dissolved in about 2 litres of the pre boiled water which was still warm so dissolved fairly easily. This honey water was then put in to a 1 gallon demijohn. The juice of 2 lemons and the rind from 1 was added into the demijohn along with a handful of sultanas and about a tablespoon of grated ginger (I didn't measure this and just added to taste). The last thing to go in was the contents of the jam jar. When all the ingredients were in I put further water in the demijohn to make it up to 4.5 litres.

Using my newly bought hydrometer I then took a gravity reading that was 1.080; this is known as the specific gravity or SG. When the mead has fully fermented I will take a further reading and then be able to work out roughly how much alcohol is in the brew by using a formula. The formula is quite complicated so I will be using an online calculator. About half an hour after adding all the ingredients and looking on the Internet at different SG levels I decided my level wasn't quite high enough so I added sugar to make my SG level 1.090. After I applied an airlock I checked back on it after about half an hour and found it to already be bubbling away very happily, almost worryingly fast!

I will now leave this in a warm place for a few months and then rack it and take another gravity measurement. If the alcohol level is 12% or above I will probably bottle it then.

This picture was taken a day after everything was put in the demijohn and you can see a layer of foam forming at the top as it is fermenting so rapidly. The bottle that is partly in the shot, to the right of the main bottle, is my first mead which is still not quite ready.


I would also like to add a note thanking my proof reader and editor, Steph, for the work she does correcting my grammar before I publish new posts. She has started writing her own blog about chickens, I think you should follow this link and have a read!