December 2013 Wine of the Month Club

[vernsgal]

Kim,

Easy on trying to eat all those beets, lol. I took a call a few days ago from a woman that thought she had internal bleeding. It took about 5 minutes to get her calmed down enough to figure out what the issue was....she was fine. She just ate a lot of pickled beets at the Christmas dinner.

hahaha! ya I've heard of that happening!

 

[the_rayway]

hahaha! ya I've heard of that happening!

Lol, gave me a scare after drinking beet juice one time!

Jeri - I'll take a turn doing the stuff for the thing in January. Just for the fun of trying to figure out what the $#%& I'm doing. Lol, I loved how your conversation with Manthing went in my head. Bryan and I have similar conversations all the time. Why do they never do what we tell them?

James - I took the last bit of port from the fridge, poured it off the sediment right on top of an entire jar of dried apricots. Just in case there wasn't enough flavour in there . I'll use it to top off as I go along. (Jeri - port rocks, just sayin'!)

Kim - I so want to have a taste of that beet wine. Can you send me a bottle when you're done!?! I'm planting more beets for next summer just so I can do up a batch myself. Beet Mead anyone?

 

[Jericurl]

I can't decide what to do for next month.

I'm torn between a sweet onion wine or a mead.
But then, I also have several pounds of frozen tomatoes in the freezer as well. I could do a tomato/basil wine for cooking.
But I reeeeeeeeeaaaallllly want to try mead.

 

[the_rayway]

Do the mead!!! January thread will be up momentarily...

 

[Jericurl]

Ahhhhh....gotta figure out what kind of honey to use.
Where to buy it from.
Do I want to do a show mead?
Or a fantasy novel inspired mead?

Too many choices....

 

[Winenoob66]

Dragon Fantasy Mead ftw!!!

 

[the_rayway]

Agreed with Winenoob!!

 

[Jericurl]

Lol.....so that means it has got to have some sting and/or heat to the batch.
Which means either ginger or peppers. Or both.
And I would think oak would be a must as well.


And what kind of dragon? One from Pern? One from Game of Thrones? One from Deverry?
Beowulf? Melisande?
Jabberwocky? Smaug?
It's enough to make my mind go crazy.

 

[the_rayway]

Start with a dragon you like, but aren't too attached to.

Then as you get better, work your way up!

I've always wanted to do one for the crystal dragon in Fionavar Tapestry. Need to find something that will ferment to perfectly white before I get there though.

 

[Stressbaby]

Lol.....so that means it has got to have some sting and/or heat to the batch.
Which means either ginger or peppers. Or both.
And I would think oak would be a must as well.


And what kind of dragon? One from Pern? One from Game of Thrones? One from Deverry?
Beowulf? Melisande?
Jabberwocky? Smaug?
It's enough to make my mind go crazy.

Ginger, no contest.

 

[Stressbaby]

I don't have much in the way of lessons learned this month. It is just too early.
The Costa Rican Hibiscus wine smells pretty spicy. It should settle down.
I don't know what to think of the spiced sweet potato. Could be really good, could be awful.

 

[buckhorn]

What I experienced (it's all learning for me right now...)

Cranberry-Cutie Wine: It fermented well, I have racked it into the secondary. When I was racking from the primary, and now in the secondary - I noticed some spots on the surface of my must. It looks like oil spots (imagine oil on the top of a bowl of water), not sure if this is some how coming from the cutie peels or the cranberry skins or anything... we will continue and see what ensues. Unless anyone has seen this and has an idea of what it could be.....

Cranberry Dragons Blood: I missed squeezing/stirring this a couple days at the holiday and when I got back to it, fermentation seemed to have really slowed/stopped. Since I was racking the Cran-Cutie wine, I took a chance to learn.... I added yeast energizer and yeast nutrient per package directions. I also added the lees that were racked out of the Cran-Cutie wine, stirred really well - and now the fermentation is back and SG is dropping again.

 

[kryptonitewine]

I made a raspberry chocolate this month. Didn't post a recipe as I used lori's from last month which was a chocolate strawberry.

Between the two I like the raspberry version much better. Seems to be a better companion to each other.

 

[Jericurl]

Wow.

This is an unexpected amount of sediment.
I just put everything in secondary. I guess I will wait a week, check SG to make sure it's completely dry, then rack off again.
I have an apple/chamomile wine I can top off with. Or I can open a bottle of my mezza luna white.
Probably going to go with the mezza luna so that I don't mess about with the flavor profile.

 

[vernsgal]

No 1/2 gal Jeri? Rather than topping up that much I would try to rack down.Maybe buy a cheap 1/2 gal of wine, pour that into mason jars for top ups and put yours in the bottle? I'm sure yours would be better than any store bought cheapy! It'll all work out, worry about it another day! (like next year lol)

Happy New Year

 

[the_rayway]

Stressbaby: from what I've heard about vegetable wines - they really take some time to come around. In the ballpark of several years. so be patient with it!

buckhorn: good thinking on adding some of the lees, energizer and nutrient. Sounds like you didn't panic (happens more often than you would think), and made a good decision.

Jeri: I agree with Kim - try to rack down if you can. Check out your LHBS, mine has 1/2 gal jugs for $3ish.

 

[Stressbaby]

Happy New Year everyone!
Thanks Raelene, I am very patient. I learned my lesson with a batch of crabapple from 2012. It was so bad I didn't even bother picking any this year. Then I started tweaking, and with a little vanilla, wee bit of oak cubes, and some backsweetening, it is a pretty decent wine and I will be bottling this weekend!

 

[LoneStarLori]

Wow.

This is an unexpected amount of sediment.
I just put everything in secondary. I guess I will wait a week, check SG to make sure it's completely dry, then rack off again.
I have an apple/chamomile wine I can top off with. Or I can open a bottle of my mezza luna white.
Probably going to go with the mezza luna so that I don't mess about with the flavor profile.

My strawberry chocolate looked kind of like that after the first 2 weeks. I think I racked it earlier than I should have because the overflow in the 1/2 gallon I let sit, compacted to 1/2 as much. I would wait a couple of weeks
if I had to do it again. I think I lost a lot of the 'good stuff'.

 

[Jericurl]

Thanks Lori.
I will let it sit for a bit then.

 

[buckhorn]

Thanks for the encouragement Raelene. Reading here I have learned there are little things that can be done to help resurrect something that seems to have stopped. I thought I would try - what did I have to lose -- that's part of what makes these 1 gallon batches so great, an opportunity to learn, try and test things you wouldn't want to experiment with on a larger batch.