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.