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!

Wakefield and Pontefract Beekeepers: September Meeting

The time of year has come again when my local association hold their Winter meetings. Although as I write this it is near to the October meeting, I am only just writing about Septembers! I seem to have less time to write lately and I'm putting this down to my daughter; she has an in built sensor that detects when I get the laptop out and then just wants to climb all over me thus making writing rather tricky!

This months meeting was a little bit different to any I have attended before in that rather than there being just 1 speaker, the room was set out with multiple tables, each with a microscope set up. The purpose of the meeting was to get a look at microscopy. The first table I sat down at was all about pollen and looking at how different plants produce different pollens. We also looked at a few different parts of the Bees anatomy such as the mandible mouth parts.

The next table was all about looking at the contents of the Bees guts to see if any diseases are present. The main disease we were looking for was nosema. The first thing that was needed to be done to check the Bees gut was to mash the Bees up using a pestle and mortar and then add a small amount of water. A sample of the liquid is then studied under the microscope; I believe they were 900x magnification. The presence of nosema can be identified as small rice grain shaped cells within the liquid. Each sample that we looked at had nosema present  but only in small amounts.

After we had spent about an hour looking through the microscopes we did the raffle. The last thing for me to do was to pick up something that I had ordered from one of the members, which was a 25kg sack of sugar. This is a huge amount of sugar however in Beekeeping and home brewing a lot of sugar is used and this was at a bargain price!

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

Apiary Inspection 18/09/12

Last Tuesday was one of the rare occasions when I had a little time off work and Lauren was with her child minder, so I took the opportunity to brush up on my hive inspection skills with Ian.

We arrived at the apiary in the morning to bright sunshine and a bit of breeze after a heavy rain shower earlier in the morning. We could see a lot of activity around both hives as we suited up and approached them.

I inspected the hive that contains Queen Beelinda. There were about 4 heavy frames of busy and healthy looking bees; I spotted the tell-tale white dot on the back of the Queen, but unfortunately there were no stores of food. I did also find one very mouldy frame which I thought contained dead brood and pollen.

Ian inspected the other hive which has a double brood box and found much the same but with no mould and some stores.

Close up of mouldy frame

Mouldy Frame

Both hives are going to be fed now with sugar syrup (or fondant as the weather gets colder) until the spring, when hopefully the weather will be better than this year!

Vegetable Mission

My father has recently gone on holiday and left me in charge of watering his tomatoes in the allotment while he's been gone. I also took the liberty of helping myself to some of the harvest. Some of the produce is from my seeds but most is my Dad's however he always grows more than needed. Next year we aim to get more involved with the planting and weeding of the allotment.

In the above picture there are tomatoes, potatoes, carrots, spring onions, borlotti beans, beetroot and achocha. The potatoes are of the variety desiree. I'm not sure of the variety of the spring onions, carrots, tomatoes or beetroots. The beans are borlotti beans and are similar to kidney beans only not red; they are creamy white with red dashes. The spiky green things are called achocha; they grow on vines and have taken over 1 of my dads greenhouses, they are kind of like a cross between a cucumber and a pepper but are reported to have several health benefits including lowering cholesterol and anti inflammatory effects. Another great thing about them is that they are none hybrid seeds which means that I can keep the seeds and grow them every year, with hybrids there is no guarantee that your seeds will grow from year to year. 

I will be growing as much as possible next year and hope to report on my success (and failure) as well as showing what we have done with some of the veg.