February 2017 Wine of the Month Club

[Jericurl]

Holy Cats! Where did January go?!


Welcome to our monthly club!


This is the official thread for our unofficial club, open to anyone who is interested in making a one gallon (or larger) test/experimental batch and sharing the recipe, process, ups and downs with the rest of the club.

We like:
a) full recipes with all ingredients and steps as you go along
b) pictures
c) helpful suggestions on recipe ideas, stumped members
d) thinking outside the box
e) pictures! (did I say that already?)

At the end of the month, we would appreciate a recap of the good, the bad and the ugly of the primary fermentation, as well as periodic updates throughout the year as you go along. Recaps aren't required, but they could assist you or others later on down the road.

At the one year mark, we will all pop open a bottle of the previous year's wine and take pictures, post comments on how it turned out, and hopefully have a tried and true recipe to post in the recipes section.

Some months we have a lot of people participate, and sometimes life catches up with us and we aren't able to ferment as much as we might like. Feel free to drop in, drop by, drop a comment, whatever.
We welcome questions and suggestions from participants and casual observers alike.

If you aren't participating in this months thread, feel free to share your thoughts and ideas for any WOTM wines you have planned for this year.

 

[Jericurl]

Well, February is almost gone and I still haven't decided what to make for this month's entry.


Option 1: some sort of mead/wine hybrid using hibiscus, honey, piloncillo sugar, and ceylon cinnamon

Option 2: pomegranate juice, honey, and dates. And maybe some rose petals. Something that makes you think of Song of Solomon or Jerusalem.

Any suggestions or votes here?

 

[hounddawg]

I made a sweet strawberry once just a basisc EC Krass recipe but back sweened with granular honey not for me but I get tons of more to this day that was almost four years ago, I keep planing to make sum to shut people up, I even got hit up today about that hybryd/blend, my problem is except for about 5 or 6 wines I make for me and close friends I'm still making new fruits and berriy wines, I make different wines every year, its a virtual wine trip, crushing thru all the different flavors, this year my new ones are, sour cherry, peach, pineapple, sour cherry/peach blend plum, and will be starting this fall a sassafras, persimmon, an some sort of raspberry, so many new flavors and so little time,,,
Good luck,,,
Dawg
I'll be watching this thread,,,,,,

 

[Stressbaby]

Well, February is almost gone and I still haven't decided what to make for this month's entry.


Option 1: some sort of mead/wine hybrid using hibiscus, honey, piloncillo sugar, and ceylon cinnamon

Option 2: pomegranate juice, honey, and dates. And maybe some rose petals. Something that makes you think of Song of Solomon or Jerusalem.

Any suggestions or votes here?

I vote for #2. I made a fig/pomegranate wine once, it was good early.

 

[CheerfulHeart]

@Jericurl: Option 2 sounds wonderful. Very exotic!

 

[Jericurl]

Despite my best intentions, February completely got away from me!

I'll move my idea forward and perhaps will have a chance to start it in March.

 

[Jericurl]

I felt sorry for this poor neglected no participants month, so I went ahead and started, albeit 14 days late!

I want to keep in a style of using ingredients available in ancient Babylon or Jerusalem, so I'm using pomegranate juice, dates, and honey. I'd like to add another herb or spice but I'm at a loss.

And this one is going to have a very high ABV.


3 quarts pomegranate juice
1 lb of dates, halved
1 quart of honey
1/2 quart of water (used to rinse out then honey jar, shake, shake, shake)
KV-1116 yeast

 

[BernardSmith]

Carob (powder)?

 

[BernardSmith]

Jericurl, How is your mead turning out? The pomegranate seems to be dominating mine at this time but I was hoping for a far more balanced flavor profile. I think what I will do is backsweeten this with more date syrup.

 

[Jericurl]

Same here. It's very good but mostly pomegranate. Very rich though, and I assuem that is the date contribution.

 

[patwik101]

Allspice, Clove, Black Pepper, Cinnamon. Maybe some Orange Zest. All would add great undertone for this kind of wine. Just throwing it out there. Just stumbled on this form. I want to keep up on it and I think I'm going to try this wine within the next week or so. Sounds so out there I'm sure it must be good.

 

[patwik101]

I just started a batch.


2 1.5 Gallon bottles of POM pomegranate juice

2 lb Wildflower Honey

1 lb Dried dates that were pitted

2 cups warm water

LALVIN 71B-1122 yeast

I took the pitted dates and cut them in half and put them in a bowl.

Added 1st bottle of POM into the carboy than add the honey.

Than I added the warm water to get the residual honey from the jar by shaking it. After I got the rest of the honey out of the bottle I used it to hydrate the dates for 30 minuets in the bowl after I covered them in plastic wrap.

Added that to the carboy and shook it up a little to incorporate everything. Finally I added the second bottle of POM juice and shook it a second time than took a read before pitching the yeast.

SG was 1.120

 

[patwik101]

3rd day in. Its fermenting away. Decided to degas it. Jericurl. BernardSmith. When you guys made yours last year did you degas yours ?

Sense you made your batches last year have you tried them yet ?

 

[BernardSmith]

I did not view my batch as a real success. At least not initially. I have made pomegranate wine before and it can be delicious but I was not looking for pomegranate to take over this mead and it did. I solved the problem by adding more date and more honey until the pomegranate agreed to back down a little. I had added 3 T of carob powder (and not a couple of ounces) because someone said that carob was very high in tannins and so with the pomegranate I thought that that would be too much but in the end the carob hid behind the curtain and refused to reveal more of itself except for the toes of its shoes peeping out beneath the curtain.
Bottom line. Cracked open a bottle last week and my wife loved it.

Degassing? I tend to view degassing when I make a wine sized ABV as quite critical. CO2 increases acidity and if the mead is saturated with gas it creates unnecessary pressure on the yeast cells (much like the pressure faced by a scuba diver who dives too deep) so I routinely degas a couple of times a day. When I make session meads (about 1 lb to 1.5 lbs of honey per gallon) I am not so assiduous. In part because with such low ABV you don't have a great deal of flavor coming from the honey so I actually look for ways of creating more complexity by forcing the yeast to ferment at higher temperatures and otherwise providing opportunities to add a little stress to the yeast so that they may produce compounds that I would otherwise not especially look for.