Made batch #2 of wine today. :)

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PopPopT

PopPopT

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I made a batch of wine about a month ago, some a bit longer. Several different flavors of juice to start with. A plain red grape juice was good wine. We liked that. Cran-watermelon was interesting, pretty good. Cherry was one I was hoping to like but didn't care for it as much. Can't remember the other one, I know there was another one.

New batch was a plain white grape, a white grape peach, and an apple-kiwi-strawberry... oh, now I remember, that was the other one from a month ago and was our favorite so far, after the plain red grape.

Simple formula... a quart of juice, a cup of sugar, a quarter teaspoon of plain ol' yeast. Keeping the lid cracked just enough to allow gasses to escape, a month in the water heater closet makes us wine. :) Some of the ones I'm not liking as well from last month are still sitting there. I wondered whether the taste would mellow over time. We're gonna find out... if we can leave 'em alone long enough. LOL!! Patience is a virtue, after all, but dang it, it can be hard to wait! ;)

Now... I gotta get busy. Stuff to do and I'm sittin' here lookin' at a computer screen. And it's a beautiful day out there! Hope it's a good day for you, too!
 
PopPopT said:
I made a batch of wine about a month ago, some a bit longer. Several different flavors of juice to start with. A plain red grape juice was good wine. We liked that. Cran-watermelon was interesting, pretty good. Cherry was one I was hoping to like but didn't care for it as much. Can't remember the other one, I know there was another one.

New batch was a plain white grape, a white grape peach, and an apple-kiwi-strawberry... oh, now I remember, that was the other one from a month ago and was our favorite so far, after the plain red grape.

Simple formula... a quart of juice, a cup of sugar, a quarter teaspoon of plain ol' yeast. Keeping the lid cracked just enough to allow gasses to escape, a month in the water heater closet makes us wine. :) Some of the ones I'm not liking as well from last month are still sitting there. I wondered whether the taste would mellow over time. We're gonna find out... if we can leave 'em alone long enough. LOL!! Patience is a virtue, after all, but dang it, it can be hard to wait! ;)

Now... I gotta get busy. Stuff to do and I'm sittin' here lookin' at a computer screen. And it's a beautiful day out there! Hope it's a good day for you, too!
Click to expand...

Have you ever tried Blackberry wine?
A friend of mine made some.
Best I ever had.

Jim
 
+1 on the blackberry wine - that stuff is really good. We made it a couple summers ago.

I tend to use wine kits just because they come with fresh yeast, clarifier, etc. I'll be bottling the current batch of Pinot Grigio this weekend.
 
phideaux said:
Have you ever tried Blackberry wine?
A friend of mine made some.
Best I ever had.
Click to expand...

I definitely wanna try some!! So far, I haven't seen blackberry juice for sale anywhere but blackberry season is coming. :)

I also have some blackberry plants on order that I hope will be here in the next week or so. Got some advice from one of the Docs at UT on what varieties do well here so hopefully, they'll make me some berries.

I'm told that my dad used to make blackberry wine when he was young, long before I arrived. Can't ask him anymore, he passed last January.
 
bkt said:
+1 on the blackberry wine - that stuff is really good. We made it a couple summers ago.

I tend to use wine kits just because they come with fresh yeast, clarifier, etc.
Click to expand...

Hoping I'll find some blackberries this year to make some happen.

Have never tried a kit. Every so often, I think about getting some real wine yeast as opposed to just regular off-the-shelf Fleischmann's yeast that's in pretty much every grocery store. I should pick some up and compare two identical bottles of juice, one with the wine yeast, one with the grocery store yeast.
 
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phideaux said:
Have you ever tried Blackberry wine?
A friend of mine made some.
Best I ever had.

Jim
Click to expand...
All I can add from personal experience is, don't try to get drunk on it.
It don't know it ain't prune-juice.
It's no fun being drunk if you can't get away from the commode.
brickwall100.gif
 
Supervisor42 said:
don't try to get drunk on it.
It don't know it ain't prune-juice.
Click to expand...

LOL!! Haven't tried to get drunk on it. Don't really drink that much at a time. A few ounces before bed and I sleep really well. Or, occasionally, a little with dinner when we have somethin' special for dessert. Hmmm... it's about that time here. Maybe I'll have a little swig before I toddle off to bed. :)
 
PopPopT said:
Hoping I'll find some blackberries this year to make some happen.

Have never tried a kit. Every so often, I think about getting some real wine yeast as opposed to just regular off-the-shelf Fleischmann's yeast that's in pretty much every grocery store. I should pick some up and compare two identical bottles of juice, one with the wine yeast, one with the grocery store yeast.
Click to expand...
Lalvin EC-1118 yeast is what I tend to use. You can get a two-pack for $7 on Amazon. It's cheaper at a local homebrew store. Yeast does flavor the wine, so you will almost certainly notice a difference between bread yeast and wine yeast.
 
PoppopT, Have you made mead ?
I have kin who made it, I read up on it, but have not tasted it.
 
phideaux said:
Have you ever tried Blackberry wine?
A friend of mine made some.
Best I ever had.

Jim
Click to expand...
Back in the late 1980's we made blackberry wine from Evergreen and Himalayan berries both have very large berries with a lot of juice, our process was to put the berries in a large stock pot, bring to a light boil, mash with a potato masher and pour the mash into a jelly bag clipped to the mouth of a gallon jar ( pickle jar from a restaurant my wife worked in), by the time the bag was fully pulled out of the jar we had close to one gallon of concentrated juice, we would put this in a sterilized 5 gallon glass water jug filling the balance with cooled down boiled water, appropriate amount of sugar and champagne yeast. We use boiled water to sterilize and kill stray yeasts and even use boiled water for the water lock, anyway we sometimes up to six 5 gallon jug of wine working, now days the blackberry crops aren't producing like they did back then. In the process of making the berry juice concentrate, we stumbled across the reduction jelly making process, we still have gourmet level blackberry jelly from 1987 that's still in excellent condition.
 
viking said:
Back in the late 1980's we made blackberry wine ...

In the process of making the berry juice concentrate, we stumbled across the reduction jelly making process, we still have gourmet level blackberry jelly from 1987 that's still in excellent condition.
Click to expand...

That was quite the process! Would love to have seen it happen. :)

Oh, blackberry jelly is one of the best. Maybe 18 or 19 years ago, my dear wife and I went on a little blackberry picking expedition to a small out of the way place in Louisiana that had a nice little patch of them growing wild. We picked maybe a gallon or so of them and made some blackberry jelly. Some of the best stuff we ever made. Funny thing, the kids (teenagers) decided to turn their noses up with the typical, "Ewwww." But one of 'em finally tasted it. And then the other. And then it was scarfed up like no other. Now, they wanna know when we're gonna make blackberry jelly. As it stands, that'll happen when we can get our hands on enough blackberries to make it happen. :) Jelly, wine, maybe some of both. :)
 
Mead has to age about 5 years before it is good to drink.
Ii's good but you need a whole lot of patience.
 
SheepDog said:
good but you need a whole lot of patience.
Click to expand...

LOL!!

Actually, that's why I decided to make a bigger batch the last two times. First time was one bottle. Second time was 5 bottles. This last time was 4 bottles. Of the second batch, we've drunk about half of one bottle (it was apple strawberry kiwi, I paid attention last night before I had a swig or two). But the others continue to "age". I guess the point is, it's easier to have patience when I still have somethin' to drink. ;)
 
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