Apples, Plums and Wine Tasting

The last few weeks have been a bit hectic for me and Steph. For one reason or another we have had a lot of time together and have kept ourselves busy. One thing we've been making will have to wait a while (until after Christmas) before I do a post about it, sounds intriguing! I will write about what I've been doing this week in reverse order.

Earlier today I dropped Steph off at work, we are down to one car at the moment due to a faulty clutch, and then headed over to one of my good friends house with the intention of going for a walk. I took my foraging bag with me just in case I saw any elderberries or sloes for making wine. We did see plenty of elderberries but they were generally a little too high to reach or through some brambles so we didn't collect any. I was keeping an eye out for the sloes but 3 1/2 miles into the walk and we hadn't seen any. I was starting to feel hungry at this point and as I was walking I saw some windfall apples on the floor. At the side of the path was an apple tree with small red shiny apples. Me and my friend tried one and they were nice and sweet so we started to fill our bags. When I worked my way to the back of the tree I saw that there was another apple tree... And another, and another! In fact there were around seven trees altogether, not all had apples on them but most did. Within about 15 minutes I'd picked enough to fill my bag and eaten about 4 different varieties! My intention is to have a go at making some cider with this 5kg of apples. My friend who supplied me with the Bees earlier  in the year is going to lend me a cider press, if you're reading this I thank you again in advance!

Last night I had a different friend around my house and we did some wine tasting. We started on some elderberry wine that was bottled a long while ago. The last time I tasted this wine it was a little rough but now it seems to have matured nicely and in a few more months I think it will be lovely, if it lasts that long! It's a shame I haven't had time to pick any elderberries this year. Next we moved onto some rhubarb wine that I made this year. It hasn't had ages to mature but was still lovely and also rocket fuel! I only had a few glasses and I could really feel the effects, especially the following morning!

The last section is all about plums! Again I have to thank my friend for this; my dad's plum tree didn't survive moving allotments so we didn't have any this year but Mark let me take as many as I wanted. Within half an hour picking them I'd filled a carrier bag to the point of breaking! I had enough to make a batch of wine and several jars of jam. The best thing about the plums was that there wasn't even a single grub in any of them, when we have made plum jam before we usually see a grub in at least every 10. One thing I noticed when picking the fruit was that there were a lot of Bees on the fruit. At first I thought they were wasps but looking at them they were defiantly Bees. I've not come across Bees on fruit before. 

I'm Back!

After quite a long hiatus I have returned to the blogging world. It's not like I haven't had anything to blog about, on the contrary, I have had lots to write about but due to the time lapsed I think it would be better to bring you up to date with a summary. First off I will give an explanation to my lapse in writing. There were a few factors but firstly was ill health which I will say little of other than our toilet roll expenditure went up somewhat for a period. Then when all was settling down in the bowel department I was hit hard with the loss of a close friend. Along with me loosing my Bees and 3 out of our 5 chickens dying in quick succession I have just not felt like writing. Now I feel like enough time has passed and the amount I need to blog about has built up so I have lots to catch up on.

Anyway onto the summary. I have started a few new batches of wine, 2 made with dandelion, 1 with rhubarb and then a week or two later I made another batch with rhubarb. The dandelion wines are slightly different from one another as I have used red grape juice in one and white grape juice in the other. The recipe is here in the comments section of a previous post. I will write it up eventually and add it to the recipe page (eventually being the operative word). The batches of rhubarb wine are both the same recipe, the only difference is the size of the batch, the first is only 1 gallon but the second batch is 5 gallons! Keeping on the theme of wine I have also bottled 2 gallons of elderberry wine and started drinking it. I'm sure it'll taste better when it has aged more but at the moment it is drinkable and the further down the bottle I got the easier it was to drink although I had a headache at the end!

The land my Dad recently acquired is coming on nicely with more than a little help from my brother in law Lee, although in truth my Dad has done more work than should be expected of a 65 year old! He is a Yorkshire man though so a bit of hard graft doesn't scare him. I have mucked in as much as I've been able to, but due to there being no toilet down there I had a long period where I didn't dare go down there! Between us we have moved loads of clay and exposed the workable land beneath, then covered it in manure in preparation for next year. There is still loads to do down there and now the weather has improved it has got a bit overgrown in a lot of areas but we are working on it a bit at a time and large areas are covered with old carpets for the time being to keep the weeds down. All the trees that were moved down there are coming along nicely but won't produce much fruit this year. This is of little concern, the main thing is that they have plenty of leaves and are putting out new growth. With any luck next year will be a bumper crop!

I never got round to writing up about the last Wakefield and Pontefract Beekeepers Association meeting and now can't remember enough to do it justice. The main subject was on the Warre hive which is a form of top bar hive that involves making tall stack of boxes. One of the big differences with the style of Beekeeping is that rather than adding boxes to the top for the Bees to store honey in you add boxes underneath and the Bees move their brood rearing area down and start storing honey above; this has the advantage that it means the brood is always built on new comb. I may do a more detailed blog about the Warre hive at some point but as my knowledge on the subject is limited I may wait until I know more.

To finish off I will just mention one small last thing....... I have bought a new colony of Bees!!!! Ok, so it is more than a small thing, rather large to be honest and as this post has reached a fair length I will write a separate post for the new Bees!

White Wine

I have recently deviated from my usual deviation of making wine from anything but fruit by making a batch with green grapes to make a traditional white wine! I didn't follow a recipe as such and just "winged it". The grapes were acquired from an abandoned allotment near my fathers. Here is a rough idea of what I used.

• 1.5(ish)kg of grapes
• 1.5(ish)kg sugar
• 1 teaspoon of yeast
• 1 teaspoon of yeast nutrient
• 1 teaspoon of pectolase
• 1 tablespoon of citric acid
• Enough water to make upto a gallon

My method was as usual from making from frozen fruit. I put the clump of frozen grapes in a bowl with the sugar and covered in boiling water. Then when the water was cool enough to out my hand in I added all the other ingredients and covered for a few days. I then strained it all through a muslin square and put in a demijohn. It is now happily bubbling away. I have no idea how nice this will taste but at the moment it smells like white wine so I must have something right!

Once I'd finished this wine I made another batch of elderberry wine but as there is no difference in then recipe and method I've already used then I won't repeat it.

Green Grapes

A few days of fermenting and a little squeeze to release some juice

Getting ready to put in a demijohn!

Elderberry Wine

Me and Steph have recently been out collecting Elderberries to make a batch of wine. The recipe required 1.5kg of Elderberries so we had to do more than one trip to get them but luckily we have an abundance of them near to where we live. Once we had picked the berries we then had to remove them from as much stalk as possible; we managed to do this while Lauren was asleep or otherwise busy causing chaos elsewhere! Hopefully at some point next year we will have a few bottles of Elderberry and Elderflower wine ready together, here is my post of the Elderflower wine. Below is the recipe, a few photos and a bit of a method to follow if you want to make your own.

• 1.5kg Elderberries
• 1.5kg of Sugar
• 1 tsp Citric Acid
• 1 tsp Yeast
• 1 tsp Yeast Nutrient
• Water to make up to 1 gallon

Elderberries ready for processing

Using a fork to remove the berries

Finally got 1.5kg of berries!

Small bits of stalk are ok to go through

1.5kg of sugar

Add boiling water, about 1.5 litre (or a full kettle)

Once the water had cooled I added the citric acid, yeast and yeast nutrient, stirred the mix then covered with cling film and left for 5 days.

After 5 days I put the mix through a muslin square and squeezed it to get more juice out

When I had all the wine mix in the demijohn I added more water so it was a couple of inches off the top and have now left it to ferment

Elderflower Wine - My 100th Post!

I'll start of by giving a quick mention to this being my 100th post. When I started this blog I never expected to actually be still going this long. My expectation would be that I would get bored of it quickly and just use it as a tool for logging my beekeeping rather than writing it in a note book! It has actually turned out to be so much more. In the couple of years I have been blogging I have met new friends through other bloggers and extended the subject range to include home brewing and also increased my writing skills although I still rely heavily on my proof reader and wife, Steph, who is also now an author for this blog. There has been a few time when I have said I will just write a quick blog and ended up writing a several hundred word essay so I will change the subject now and start the real post which is about wine!

In the last few weeks the elderberry trees in the area have started producing their flowers so me and Steph decided it would be a good time to go out and collect the flowers to make some wine with! In just one short walk near some farm land where we live we managed to pick nearly a full carrier bag full of the flower heads. We made sure we left plenty of flower heads on the trees as later on in the year we will probably try to make some elderberry wine as well! The recipe I'm following for elderflower wine can be found here. In the recipe it gives measurements for making either 1 gallon or 5, I am just going to make 1 on this occasion. Below is the list of ingredients copied direct from the website.

The quantities below are for 5 gallons, with the quantities for 1 gallon brews given in brackets.

• 110 heads of elderflowers (24 heads)
• 1kg of sultanas (200g)
• 75g of citric acid (15g)
• 375ml strong black tea (75ml)
• Wine yeast compound (or yeast nutrient and yeast) as per packet instructions
• 5.5kg granulated sugar (1.1kg)
• Stopper/stabiliser powder

After the walk I spread the flower heads on the table at home and left them a couple of hours to let any bugs make their own way off the flowers. When I came back I could see loads of tiny bugs on my brand new kitchen window, I imagine they were from the elderflowers!

The recipe says to use 24 heads that should be approx 1 pint of flowers when they are trimmed from their stalks. I didn't bother to count the heads and just measured out a pint of heads. With the amount of flower heads I had collected there was enough for the batch I'm making leaving 2 pints that I bagged up individually and have popped in the freezer for later.

After I had chopped up the sultanas and weighed out the sugar and citric acid I placed them all in a large bowl with the pint of elderflowers and the tea. I then poured 2 pints of boiling water over it all then covered with a tight covering of clingfilm and forgot about it until the next day.

The next day I added the yeast and yeast nutrient and another couple of pints of water, this time cold water. I then covered it up and left it for 4 days. Each day I opened it a small amount and gave it a small stir.

After 5 days in total I poured the mixture into a demijohn using a sterile washing cloth to filter the debris off, then topped the liquid up to a gallon with cold water. At this stage it had a very inviting smell developing. When I checked it later the airlock was bubbling away nicely. I will now leave it to clear and rack the wine a couple of times and it should be ready for Christmas (which is only 173 days away) but will taste best if left until next summer!

Rhubarb Wine

The time of year has come again when in my dads allotment there is a ridiculous glut of rhubarb. He has about 3 large plants and possibly a couple more smaller ones and each can produce a good amount each week. Within quarter of an hour I'd managed to pick all the stalks I needed to make a gallon of wine with plenty left over to eat and give away. The recipe I used was the first that came up using a google search and can be found here. I took pictures along the way so you can see what I did.

Rhubarb growing in the allotment; this is a tiny portion of what my dad grows.

Just over 1.5kg of rhubarb

Exactly 1.5kg of rhubarb once the ends are trimmed!

Cut into pieces; the recipe says about 6mm but I didn't measure!

Add 1.3 kg of sugar

After a short stirring the rhubarb is already breaking down in the sugar and releasing juice.

Cover and then leave for 3 days.

Each day I took the cling film off and crushed it to release more juice

On the third day I had loads of juice.

Using a new cloth and sieve combination I started straining the juice away.

The juice was collected in a food grade bucket.

What was left over when all the juice was squeezed out of the pulp.

250ml of grape juice was added.

Finally using cooled boiled water filled up a demijohn. I added yeast, yeast nutrient and pectolase enzyme at this stage and it is popping away nicely!

All that remains now is to leave it a few weeks then rack it away from the sediment at least once, maybe twice, then bottle it up to mature or just drink! I'll let you know how it tastes!

Home Made Lager and Other Homebrew

This is my first post of the new year as I have been too busy to write up what I've been up to. You may (or may not) remember that I started a batch of home brewed lager in my last post. Since then I have bottled and started drinking it. I didn't get any pictures of the bottling process as it was a little tricky to keep control of the siphoning tube while getting the next bottle ready and making sure the bottle I was working on didn't overflow! The process was fairly simple and at the end of it I had about 20 bottles with a litre of lager in them. Prior to bottling I had added a teaspoon of sugar to each one to allow it to ferment a slight bit more; this is what gives it bubbles. After that I put the bottles in a box and placed them next to a radiator for a few days then moved them somewhere cooler and like magic a couple of weeks later I had a lager that was not only drinkable but also quite nice!

A box of litre bottles

Bottles after being sterilized

The lids being sterilized

The finished product (and I was worried it wouldn't have enough fizz!)

I have also racked a demijohn of wine and a couple of meads. As it would be a little repetitive posting pictures of it I haven't done so. The wine I racked was my second batch of raspberry. I had a sneaky taste while I was racking and I believe this will be a strong tasting wine, my partner didn't approve too much of it. The meads I racked were a JAO mead and the ginger mead I started in late February last year! The ginger mead is tasting nice but will be better when it has aged a few more months, I intend on bottling it fairly soon. The JAO is looking like the best I have made so far. It is very clear and has a lovely golden colour to it, I didn't taste this one as I have a good idea what it tastes like already. This will be bottled soon also and possibly 1 bottle will be hidden away for 17 years as a birthday present for my daughters 18th!

Wine and Mead Bottled

I have been busy over the last few days bottling and racking some of my home brew. The brews I have done in the last few days have been ones where I was unable to get a initial gravity reading so I won't know how strong they are but that's half the fun.

To start with I bottled my dandelion wine (original post can be found here) as this was a smaller batch and one of the older ones. I have had a sneaky taste of it and so far it tastes quite nice, actually a lot nicer than I was expecting although this could be the flavour of the red grape juice I used. Either way if the taste gets better from what it is at the moment then I'm on to a winner and will make a much larger batch next year. I got 3 full bottles and a part bottle, the part bottle is in the fridge ready to drink and the others I have stored in the loft to age; by ageing the wine I hope to further improve the flavour.

Dandelion wine in home made Demijohn, dilute pop bottle!

Bottles I've been collecting. Soaking to try to loosen the labels. The next step was to sterilize them.

The finished product bottled and now away in storage in my loft. 

The next thing I bottled was the remainder of the second batch of mead I made at the start of the year (again link for that post here). This was a really large batch and I already have 3 gallons of it stored in my earthenware demijohns (link to that post here; in that post it says I have 4 demijohns but actually I had 5) that my granddad gave me at the beginning of the year. That left me with 2 demijohns with the mead in; one of these I have left alone and the other I added more honey to a while ago although I can't find the post that says how much honey was added, oh well! I got 6 bottles from each demijohn and have stored them along with the dandelion wine. I had a small taste of the mead as it was being bottled and it has got some taste, more than it has in previous tests, it may turn out nice after all when it's aged a while.

Bottled up and ready for storage.

The sweetened mead ready for storage.

Once I'd bottled all the mead I had a few empty demijohns so while I had the equipment out I also racked one batch of raspberry wine. This batch has been going since July so is also nearly ready to bottle up but I now have a shortage of wine bottles so will be asking my dad to start saving them again for me. The raspberry wine had developed a thin layer of sediment on the bottom, which is to be expected as this was the second time I racked it, the first time it had a very thick layer of sediment. Next time there will, hopefully, be little to no sediment for when I bottle it.

And finally with the remaining demijohns I had I've made 2 further batches of J.A.O. mead as this is my favorite and easiest to do. I followed the method on this page but as with the last batch of this I made I have upped the amount of honey to 1.8kg so now have 3 demijohns full of this at various stages of development! I hope the extra honey doesn't spoil it but I doubt it will, they are all smelling rather nice and the oldest of the 3 is clearing nicely.

Solidified honey.

Not even 1kg yet. 

1.8kg dissolving in boiled water that has been left to cool for about 30 minutes

This much honey takes a long time to dissolve even with vigorous stirring