It's Cold Outside....

Yep, definitely getting a bit colder now.
And things are starting to slow down a bit brewing wise. Much has been left in demi-johns to carry on the good work. So what have we got on the go?
1) 1 gallon of Blackberry, Elderberry and Rose
2) 3 gallons of Elderberry
3) 2 gallons of Damson (still not sure this will turn out okay but I'll go with for now)
4) 2 gallons of Apple & Blackberry.

So it looks like all I have to do is rack it off every now and again and get it to clear and then fun with the bottling.
And then I got given a huge box of quinces (Cheers Zoe)! Quinces. Funny little badgers they are. I'd been told that the best way to get the flesh is to grate the quince but not get any of hard heart in the mix. Fortunately Chief Taster came up with idea of cutting off the main flesh then putting it through the food processor which I duly did. Have you ever put quinces through a food processor?
Wood. It's wood, with no juice what-so-ever.
Next the recipe called for me to boil the quince gunk in water for 15 minutes, the only problem was that it was 11 at night and I had enough gunk to occupy me for the next 2 hours. So no, I was going to take a different route and hope for the best. So I boiled enough water to bring the gunk up to 4 gallons (which took awhile) and basically left it to stand for 30 minutes. 

I then had fun getting the wood out of the gunk leaving behind the quincey-juicy stuff. Added 8 lemons and the usual nutrients, yeast and sugar. And there you go.
It was a bit reluctant to start fermenting as the kitchen is a bit cool this time of year so I used a Brewing Belt to get it going, which seemed to do the trick. Really don't know if this wine will be up for it but we'll see.




I finally managed to get a Mead going (hopefully in time for Christmas).  For a gallon of Mead I used 4 jars of standard honey from a standard supermarket. As I'm making a spiced Mead (Metheglin) I didn't use a wildflower or any other fancy type of honey. One day I'd like to try making a Mead using a flavoured honey, but I wouldn't use any other flavours as this would lose the subtle flavours of the more expensive honey, might be quite nice. Anyway back to Metheglin.

So what did I flavour it with?
I've got some Mace, cloves, ginger, nutmeg and zest/juice of 1 lemon & orange. So that's now in a tub doing it's start off.
And no, the bread didn't go in, that was for our tea.










Hmm, mist rising off the river Wye. Hope no monsters are in there....

Still much to do, there's 2 gallons of Rose petal wine to start at some point.

W

Summer Ends

I'm still behind on posts so imagine it's just starting to get a bit chilly in morning.
Summer draws to an end, it's a bit sad really. Don't get me wrong, weather wise it's been great and produced some fantastic stuff to make wine wit,h but I can't say that I've had much of the time to enjoy the good weather. Ah well, maybe next year.
Still, there's plenty to do. The Elderberry wines are still in their demi-johns and are doing well, best just leave them alone I think. The Elderberry, Blackberry and Rose seems to be incredibly smooth so I'm hoping that it will stay the same. Hoping to start clearing and bottling in mid November.

Riiiiight this is a Damson, or what I mean is that it MIGHT be a Damson...  Thing is, you're supposed to get the damson flesh then add barley and water then leave for four to five days. Yeah... I left it for a week and the smell was a bit funky....
Nevermind! Got two gallons of the 'stuff' going in the demi-johns, we'll just have to see how that we goes.....

Now this one is Blackberry and Apple, it's not strong on the Blackberry so it could come out quite subtle. Again, it's now in the demi-johns doing its thing. Total shot in the dark on this one.


















On another note I cracked open one of the elderflower champagne bottles to see how it was getting on. Very nice I think, dry with a bit of fizz which hopefully will increase as we get closer to Christmas. It's cleared nicely too, Chief Taster exclaimed "It tastes like real alcohol!" Yeah, cheers.

I recently got given a box of quinces so there's a good chance that'll find itself in a demi-john before to long. That's IF I get the time. Got the kit to make two gallons of Rose petal wine too :)

W