How many wine makers do we have here?

[sacrifice]

I make wine, mead, and beer. We are in the process of picking blueberries for wine and mead. I generally use 24 pounds of berries per 6 gallon batch, so we do a lot of picking

, but we live in a place that has an abundance of berries, so they are easy to get.

 

[2overeasy000]

Currently have 5 gallons of Lemon-Ginger Mead in the Carboy (almost ready to rack).
Just finished drinking my last bottle of my Raisin-Brown Sugar-Oat-Barley-Molasses-Honey kinda "ale" thing I made 5 gallons of in April.
And just picked a mess of blueberries that I was fixin on turning into a Blueberry Mead, but now am leaning towards turning them into a Blueberry Ale instead.

 

[Dawn419]

Well, doc and I are back to the drawing board...

We didn't get any blue- or blackberries from our patches this year due to the excessive heat and lack of rain, so no Black-n-Blue wine for us.

Checked my aunt's persimmon tree and no fruit there either but her pear tree is loaded again this year so I guess we'll atleast do another 5 gallon batch of pear wine this year and hopefully a 5 gallon batch of apple wine with apples from the farmers market.

 

[muddstopper]

Didnt know I had a group of fellow wineo's here to talk to. LOL. Actually, I drink very little Alcohol. I like good Brandy every now and then and I like my home made wine.

For those wishing to get started in this hobby, forget the kits you buy at the hobby stores. You need a fermenting bucket, which I get for free at the bakery at Ingles grocery store. The buckets come full of cake iceing and are food grade. Drill the lid with a half inch drill bit and buy a rubber grommet at Lowes or home depot, for about 25cents, to put in the hole, and then pay a dollar for the air lock and you have a very cheap fermenting bucket for less than $2.

Now you need a carbouy. I dont like the big 6 gallon glass jars, they simply weight to much when full and sooner or later you have to pick the full jug up. Instead I like the glass gallon jars you can buy apple juice in. Buy the juice and you get the glass jug for free. You will need a number 6 1/2 rubber stopper with a hole in it which cost $1.25, and another air lock and you now have a glass carbouy for $2.50 and enough apple juice to make a couple of gallons of wine. You will also need a hose to help rack the wine, 1/2inch clear plastic tubing works very well as a siphon hose and cost pennies per foot. You now have a complete wine making kit for less than $5.

Heres another tip if you feel you really need to make 5 gal of wine at a time, but dont want to pay $30 for a big glass carbouy. Some of the 5 gal water bottles are safe to use in makeing wine. Some also arent a very good choice. It boils down to the kind of plastic it is made with. Its very easy to tell the good water jugs from the bad. On the bottm of the bottle it will have a diamond shaped symbol with a numer inside the diamond. If the number is a Seven (7), its no good to use for makeing wine. The cake iceing buckets have a (5) inside the diamond and are safe to use. Any number, 5 or lower, is safe for makeing wine. The number (1) being the best to find. At any rate, you can probably get the plastic water bottles for free or for the cost of deposit any place that sells the large size water jugs.

 

[2overeasy000]

Thanks for the tips on 6 1/2 rubber stopper for 1 gallon batches and the number on the plastic bottles...very good to know.

 

[kuntrygirl]

Quote:
How does pear wine taste? I have been offered a BUNCH of pears and was thinking about pear wine.

 

[Dawn419]

Hi kuntrygirl!

Our pear wine turned out surprisingly well, it was our first attempt at wine making together and we basically winged it by using several recipes as a guide.

It has a very light, yet noticable pear flavor which surprised us! It's wonderful with lightly seasoned chicken or fish, with a side of salad and rice.

We used a full 5 gallon bucket of pears to make a 5 gallon batch of wine. I'll post back later today with the "recipe" and process that we used and some pictures. The pix are on hubby's laptop and he has it at work with him.

 

[kuntrygirl]

Quote:
Sounds goods. A co-worker bought me a box full of pears this morning and said that I can have as many as I want. Someone she knows has some pear trees and they don't pick them. So, I will probably load up a truck load full.

 

[Dawn419]

Kuntrygirl,

Those pears look yummy!

I don't know if you do any canning but my mom makes pear sauce every year when the pears come in. It's made just like apple sauce.

The main recipe we followed for our pear wine:

4 pounds of pears
2 pounds sugar
1 teaspoon citric acid
1 gallon of water
Yeast and yeast nutrient

The above ingredients are for a 1 gallon batch of wine.

October 31st:

We cut our pears into small chunks and placed them in a large cooking pot. We didn't bother to peel them or remove seeds and stems, only cut out bad spots. We took part of our measured water and barely covered the pear chunks then put the pot on the stove. Bring this slowly to a boil and gently simmer for 20 minutes ( any longer than 20 minutes and the wine may not clear later). Let cool. Once this was cool, we ran it through a strainer.

We had our sugar in the fermentation bucket and poured the pears and water from the pot into a mesh fermentation bag that we had stretched over the bucket opening. Once we were done cooking down our pears, we added the citric acid and yeast nutrient to the pear juice and sugar in the bucket. Then we added the rest of the water to the fermentation bucket (ours is 6 gallon which is perfect for making 5 gallon batches as you need to make sure that there is "breathing room" for the fermentation process to take place.

November 2nd:

We let this sit for 24 hours, then added the wine yeast and nutrient.

November 3rd:

Fermentation bubbles in the airlock!

November 8th:

Siphoned wine to 5 gallon carboy for 2nd/continued fermentation.

December 5th:

Siphoned wine from carboy into bucket (strained through fine mesh bag to avaid any sediment), then from bucket back into carboy. We could have bottled at this time but decided not to, just incase it decided to start fermenting again.

January 8, 2011:

Bottled the wine!

Here's some of the pix of the process, can't find the ones from cutting up the pears and straining them but will add them to the album when I find them:

Pear Wine

 

[muddstopper]

Dawn, I see from your pics you are already using the large water bottles as your carbouy. I cant tell from the pic, but is the one you using plastic or glass?

We did a small batch, (1gal) of pear mead last year. My wife had picked up some white grapes at the fruit stand that had just about ruined but there wasnt enought for a run of grape wine, so as the saying goes, we improvised. We had the pears, 6 or 8, and a quart of honey, so we decided to mix it all together and see how it turns out. I dont remember exactly how much of anything was aded to the mix, but it turned out very good.

We do do one thing I think is different than how most folks make their wines. We never mix all the sugar at the start of the fermenting process. If the recipie calls for 3 lbs of sugar, we only use half at the first fermenting. When we rack the wine, we will add half of the remaining sugar and let it work off all over again. then we will add the remaining sugar when we rack it a second time. I feel that if all the sugar is added at the beginning, the yeast will focus on consuming the refined sugar and not the natural sugars found in the fruit. Not adding all the sugar at once seems to give the wine a more fruit taste, while adding the extra sugar after the taste has developed will raise the alcohol content to the level you wish for.