Thursday 15 October 2009

Fall Fermentation

Well, its been a couple weeks. I'm planning a Reformation Feast this year, so that is coming up early. Need to do a little more planning on that on. Yesterday we made 30 cups of apple butter, froze all of it. We might be making more, but hopefully that will last us throughout the year. For the rest of the apples I hope to make into cider or apples sauce. And maybe some cut up frozen for baking.

It will be sad when all the apples are gone. Its been raining a lot here lately. I did some work on the greenhouse yesterday. Planning for my spring garden is fun, you would not believe all the vegatables we are growing.


But on to winemaking now. I bottled one bottle of my fig port because I thought I was going to send it along with some food to friends in Atlanta who got hit with the flooding. But after tasting it at bottling I thought, why send them a bottle of wine that needs a year of aging? Yes, thats about how it taste, like it needs a year of aging. I picked the figs last year, about this time, and froze them. And it wasn't until December or January that I made it into wine. But I've racked it a few times and added lots of sugar water to it. But every time I added sugar it seemed to ferment it. So this port is between 18-20%. I will post the label on here.

My friend who owns the grape press will be on vacation next week. So I am hoping Sunday that I can get the press, and then later that week make apple cider. He said to make cider with it just take an apple/potato peeler, slice the apples with the skin on, then dice them up a few times and that does a good enough job. So I am hoping the rest of the cider will be done that way.

I am also hoping to pick skuppernong grapes soon. I tried last year to make wine from the grapes but with no way to crush or press them conveinently I didn't do a good job. I ended up adding the one gallon to my dessert blend wine. But I would like to make at least 3 gallons this year.

I should be bottling more wine soon. Especially the cranberry wine I just made, I need to have it ready by Thanksgiving, I will bottle it sweet. I am trying to empty my carboys to make room for cider. I need to bottle my beer also, that needs to be ready for Thanksgiving also.

For next year I would like to have my whizbang cider crusher and press. I looked up how to make a cider crusher and came upon this guys website who invented this way to do it. He uses a disposal to crush the apples, and a jack to pressure to press them. Quite cool.

Well, I'd better be signing off, much stuff to do ahead of me.


English Vintner

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