Exploding Apples?!

Here is a slightly edited e-mail sent to me from one of the recipients of the (supposedly) NON-carbonated cider:

"Hi,

I went into the basement this afternoon to do laundry. Smelled something.....nice..... rather fruity.
Checked the potatoes - no rotters.
Checked the jelly - all of it OK.
Followed my nose (and [the dog]) around the corner - to the "wine cellar".
The 1000 Apple Cider had blown it's [sic] cork.

Not a problem. I put towels over what was on the floor and am drinking what was left in the bottle.
It's quite good. I'm sad that so much of it is on the floor.

Love, [L.]"

Uh oh. This means our stabilizing chemicals didn't work the way that they should have, or that we bottled too early. So when we added our sugar, it kept fermenting and therefore carbonated, generating pressure on the cork and causing it to blow. We're lucky we don't have glass all over her basement floor.

Problem: We bottled about five gallons total of the apple cider! If I remember correctly, four of those gallons were of the exploding variety, the last of the not-wanting-to-carbonate variety (why is this backwards?!).

Other problem: Joe is away on vacation in Canada. He probably doesn't know right now that his basement may be doomed to an appley mess, so I may have to consider calling his mother in the morning to warn her that she may start hearing some explosions...

Bottling Grape and Cider

Oh no, we're down to our last carboys! Now we have to decide what to make next!

This is the final color of our grape wine. Gorgeous! It darkened up since the last time we took a look at it.
Bottles of grape wine, ready for labeling. We left it unsweetened since after a taste test we realized that it still seemed quite sweet. Also DELICIOUS. Seriously, we were very pleasantly surprised by the flavor of this booze. We've titled this batch "The Forgotten Carboy" since it sat around way longer than it was "supposed" to.

Here's what it looks like in a glass.

This is the color of the cider getting ready for bottling! Isn't it awesome? It smells and tastes like cider, which is a very good thing. We bottled a few gallons into beer bottles to carbonate until ready for drinking, then took the rest of it, sweetened it, and stuck it in wine bottles. This batch is titled "Thousand Apple Cider" since it took a ridiculously long time to prepare.

And here's the box Joe packed up for me so that I can share it with family. It's a jumble of all the wines we've got. I gave one carbonated and one sweetened cider to Dave, my fiancé; the requested bottles (and then some) to my parents; and one carbonated cider, one sweetened cider, and one grape wine to Dave's parents. Whew! Free booze sure disappears fast!

Maybe up next: Dandelion wine (dandelion heads courtesy of Dave's parents), peach wine (once peaches are in season), and something possibly involving rhubarb... This has turned into quite the project! My mom is now considering starting to make wine herself, and I'd LOVE to help her do it. I think if she wants to start this summer I'll start her off with cider since it takes such a short amount of time and I can help her with the bottling before I leave the state for graduate school in August.

Bottling Strawberry, Racking Grape and Cider

This was back on the second of April. Sorry it's taken me so long to post all of these! I'm splitting them up into three posts to sort of try and break up the information a little.

Here's the strawberry, ready for bottling! Just look at that color!This is the yeast poop from the Welch's grape after racking it for the final time. We've decided that it's the most beautiful poop we've ever seen.

This is the cider after a couple weeks. It was off to a good start! After racking, the bottom looked like yeasty apple sauce.

Bottles of strawberry wine, all corked! These are the unsweetened bottles. We kept one gallon for sweetening.

These were the labels I drew for the sweetened strawberry wine bottles. The strawberry drawn on there is extra sweet, so he wants a hug. The strawberry on the unsweetened bottles is just happy looking.

The End of Cinnamon

Well, I'm sorry to report that...there it goes. The cinnamon just never took off fermenting. So we dumped it.We tried to boil some of it down to syrup but it tasted disgusting. We decided to dump that as well. Better luck next time?

For the record: Cinnamon wine = failure!

Apple Cider

I post here today with the sad news that our cinnamon wine is not turning out very well after all. Joe and I have decided to dump it. We didn't get the chance today because we spent too much time dealing with apples (I don't want to look at another apple for a week), but we will figure out what to do with it tomorrow. I will explain later.

Since our cinnamon sugar water is biting the dust, we decided to make some cider next. We went and got 51 lbs (that is not a typo) of red delicious apples and 2 lbs of honey. Then we went back to his place and got to work...grueling, awful, appley work. Here are the apples ready for rinsing in the sink, gorgeous looking and perfect for luring Snow White into her sleepy pseudo-grave:

That's 15 lbs right there. To the left is the cheesecloth and cutting board, ready for chopping, juicing, and straining into this gigantic pot on the stove:

POT OF DOOOOOM! We sliced the apples into quarters and put them through this poor juicer from the 80's which seems to use centrifugal force to get the juice out. The leftovers are everything fibrous and look completely disgusting (and according to Joe, they didn't taste that good).

By the time we were FINALLY finished juicing, we had 4-5 gallons of brown apple juice, strained through the cheesecloth and heating to 60-70 C. We were supposed to simmer it for 45 minutes, and Joe might do that later tonight, but he had to get to work so we didn't have time. We had spent all of our time slicing and juicing. That's almost 3 hours of work. By the time we were finished we were soooo sick of apples.

Since he had to get going, we took the apple juice off the stove and threw it in a big bucket to ice it back down again. I added the honey while it was still warm, which might also help to keep it from oxidizing further. I will return tomorrow to rack the strawberry and grape wines, and to finish off the cider.

We are going to try to make this without sulfonation, and part of the 5 gallon batch will be carbonated, the other part not carbonated. The carbonated part is bound to have stuff at the bottom of the bottle when it's ready to drink. We are thinking that in a mass production setting, artificial mechanical means are used instead of natural ones for carbonating cider so no one gets grossed out by the yeast poo at the bottom of the bottle.

Whatever. Whimps.

When it comes time to top up to 5 gallons, I'm going to inquire about using our failed cinnamon wine instead of water. We could have an apple cider with a hint of cinnamon! Or we could boil some of it down into syrup to use for pancakes and such. Or we could just toss it if we suspect it's no good. We'll see - I will keep you posted.

Stuff from the other weekend

The weekend before last, Joe and I racked all three of our wines. Here is an update of how our strawberry is going:

Doesn't that color look AWESOME? For some reason it reminds me of watermelon Jolly Ranchers. See all the yeast poop at the bottom? Here's how our grape is doing:

Don't you LOVE that color?? Actually, all three of our wines have very interesting and cool colors. The pictures just don't do them justice. Our grape wine is this gorgeous purple. It also smells (and tastes) fantastic so far. On to the cinnamon then!

First, we had to boil cinnamon sticks. Believe it or not, this all started from about a handful, and with the water, they blew up to chunks of bark that made the entire house smell like potpourri.

Afterward, we made a cinnamon syrup out of it with tons of sugar, the cinnamon water (throw the bark away), and hot water. Then you just throw it all in and wait 24 hours before tossing in the yeast.

I did go to Joe's place just last night to rack the cinnamon wine since we accidentally waited over a week to do it (not too big a deal). There was just one problem: our specific gravity was really high! It's supposed to go down over time, and we had waited especially long. So we went ahead and tasted it and realized we didn't taste any alcohol at all. Our other two wines tasted boozey right away, but this still tasted like cinnamon syrup. Thinking that perhaps the yeast hadn't had enough natural nutrients it would normally get from fruit to grow, we mixed together some yeast energizer (super nutrients for cases like this) in warm water, then threw in another packet of yeast to be safe. We decided not to airlock and we're going to see what happens in a week or so. On the bright side, the wine, paired with the yeast and energizer, now smells like cinnamon French toast.

A final picture for your enjoyment. Don't these look delish? They smell great. All three wines are currently sitting in Joe's basement inside the boxes the jugs come in to prevent too much light exposure, these two with airlocks, the cinnamon open with a towel over it. Pictures of cinnamon wine will come whenever Joe gets around to uploading them and I'll let you know how our little yeast buddies are doing.

Sorry for the delay!

Joe and I worked with the wines last weekend but I just haven't had the drive or willpower to write until tonight. So as I sip on too much Dancing Bull cabernet sauvignon, which is the drink fueling this entire post, I shall tell you our tale.

We racked (siphoned) our strawberry wine into a glass secondary fermenter with an air lock. Here are some pictures of that process:

Joe got this handy dandy nifty tube thinger that siphons the liquid into the jar with the use of gravity. Kind of like how Mom and I used to change the water in the fish tank when we had one.

At the top of the tube that Joe is holding there is a pump which starts the siphoning.

The finished fermenter. We just watch it now and in about 4 weeks it should be good and clear (literally clear) to rack again. That means we leave all the yeast poop at the bottom and keep the good stuff. Joe texted me today to tell me the strawberry wine looks weird, but I'm not sure whether I should believe him because he has been threatening to send me terrifying texts about the wine that would make me have a neurotic episode.

Because apparently, that's funny.

We also spooned some of the strawberry gunk off the top before racking it. It looks like this:

And I swear it tastes about 5,000 times better than it looks. Very boozey though. I only took a spoonful of the pink water liquid, and then decided I really couldn't get past the looks of it to go for a second dip.

After we were done with the strawberry, we began making the Welch's grape wine. We used 12 containers of concentrate, another 8 lbs of sugar, and some water. Soooo much sugar. I think it might end up producing a dessert wine of some kind. Joe's report tells me it smells great at the moment.

Here's the concentrate thrown into the primary fermenter. Mmmm. Grapey. That lump in the center is one which didn't quite thaw out properly before I tossed it in. Meanwhile, in the background, Joe was busy boiling 4 L of water so we can dissolve the sugar necessary for yeast noms.

The murdered concentrate containers. Why is it always my job to murder the fruit? I do it while laughing hysterically, too, which can't be a good thing...(I'm mostly kidding).

The chemical mixture of tannin, preservative, yeast nutrient, etc. This stuff smells disgusting. Seriously. Pungent and nasty. You put the concentrate in the primary fermenter, put in the water and dissolved sugar, stir, and then pour in this stuff, and you get...:

Tadaaaaaaa. The finished product, ready to ferment for the next week or two. You're supposed to stir it every day, but Joe's just going to stir it every other day on the presumption that too much oxygen is a bad thing. When it stops fermenting, we can rack it like we did the strawberry wine, leaving some of the sediment behind...though to be honest, I don't think we'll get as much sediment with this one since we didn't use solid fruit.

So there you have it. Two developing wines hanging out in Joe's house, just waiting to be drunk a year and a half from now. Or so. Next wine: Cinnamon!

Yes, cinnamon. I know that sounds bizarre, but we are too curious to resist.

It's Official!

The jury (of four to six, if I'm counting all the people who gave input) have come to a decision. The next wine we begin to make, starting possibly this weekend or next week, is...drum roll...WELCH'S!

(http://www.commonsensewithmoney.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/welchs-juice.jpg)

Believe it or not, you can make wine out of Welch's grape juice (normal juice or frozen concentrate), and rumor has it that it's not bad stuff. We're going to give it a shot! Also it is cheap...mead, as one juror suggested, would be a lot of fun. However mead is honey wine, and unfortunately, honey is effing expensive!

After the weekend, as of Sunday night, we will be at the one week mark for our strawberry wine. There will be pictures and an update of how it's going, along with information on whether or not we are growing mold, fungus, or bacteria instead of just yeast! Hopefully we're not turning into vinegar over there...

24 Hour Mark

We reached Fermentation Phase 2 tonight when we added water to 5 gallons, 8 lbs of sugar, yeast nutrient and champagne yeast to our monster mash. It didn't take too long, and here are some pictures, courtesy of Joe:

This is what we started with tonight: a watery, runny mixture of strawberries, tannin, pectin enzyme, and sodium metabisulfite. I think.

This is after adding the water to almost 5 gallons. Foamy on top!

Joe creating a vortex to stir in the sugar really well. It actually dissolved better than we thought it might.

This is what's going to sit on the dining room table for the next week as it ferments. It reminds me of traditional men's Saudi Arabian head wear. Current hydrometer reading/specific gravity: 1.083.

Now we wait. Over the next week, it will ferment. When the specific gravity reaches between 1.025 and 1.035, we'll be ready to rack (siphon) and airlock it for three months. At that point, we will decide if we want to start another wine. Hopefully our first one turns out to be a success (as far as we can tell) and will encourage us to make more in the future!

New Adventure: Making Wine!

Hello again! It's been a while since I've posted, mostly due to a lack of adventures. But I've begun a new one with my friend Joe. We're making strawberry wine!

Tonight we bought 13 lbs of frozen strawberries, 5 gallons of water, and a bunch of different wine making chemicals which were all for sale in the liquor department of a grocery store. Then we got to work microwaving the strawberries in batches to make them soft enough to mash. My triceps received a workout, and the potato masher we used to mash the fruit seems, in Joe's words, "a little more concave." The strawberries won a small victory after all...but mostly they lost the war to my mashing skills. I laughed evilly and Joe cowered in terror as I crushed squishy chunks of red nastiness. Pouring it into the primary fermenter made an even grosser noise...kind of like diarrhea. =) I know you really want to drink it now.

The strawberries are beginning their fermentation, without the help of yeast, in a huge 5 gallon food stock pail. That's right - we are making 5 GALLONS of strawberry wine. It is currently being sterilized and breaking down into a syrup. It looks like a monster mash that should go on a shortcake. After the first ~24 hours, depending on what the gravity meter tells us (I still don't know what it tests for), the syrup will be ready to go into full swing fermentation mode with the champagne yeast. And then it will sit for a week and Joe will buy a secondary fermenter to transfer the beginning wine. After that, since we have to wait about three months to siphon the crap out, we will decide whether we want to make another kind of wine, and if so, when to start.

Any thoughts on what we should make next if the strawberry wine turns out to be a success? Anyone know other easy things to start with?