January 2014 Wine of the Month Club

[the_rayway]

Wow Kim, excellent colour on that one! Is the chocolate pulling through enough? Do you think it will pull through more as it ages?

My apricot port was finished at 1.045ish (I think.) so you have some room with sweetening. What about rigging up a chocolate/vanilla f-pac? I'm thinking about extracts, so it wouldn't cloud it up again. Using pure vanilla, sugar, and chocolate extract perhaps? You might even be able to mix it up with concentrated cherry juice instead of water.

Can we ship booze across Canada? We should have a Canadian Experiment Tasting!

 

[jethro]

I have been looking over the recipes to see if I could make a gallon of wine in about 8 months or so left. (God knows I need the practice!) However, because it's winter fresh fruit availability is really questionable. Any wine I make is going to be dry. That will save a step (backsweetening).

The plum wine I found here http://winemaking.jackkeller.net/reques12.asp
sounds worth trying. However, I doubt I can find fresh or frozen plums this time of year. Most of the recipes don't look anything like the commerical wines I like. I am thinking of maybe making DangerDave's Dragon Blood since it uses frozen fruit that should available year-round. Is this a wine I can pull-off in 8 mos. or so? I don't want to end up with something that tastes like soda pop. But I also have an empty fermenting container and empty gallon glass jug. So I've no reason to let them sit empty for the next 8 mos. I want to try something other than the Welch's grape juice wine I now have aging in carboys. Plus I've never drunk wine made from concord grapes, so I don't know whether I will like it or whether my wait will be in vain. Any ideas?

 

[the_rayway]

I have been looking over the recipes to see if I could make a gallon of wine in about 8 months or so left. (God knows I need the practice!) However, because it's winter fresh fruit availability is really questionable. Any wine I make is going to be dry. That will save a step (backsweetening).

The plum wine I found here http://winemaking.jackkeller.net/reques12.asp
sounds worth trying. However, I doubt I can find fresh or frozen plums this time of year. Most of the recipes don't look anything like the commerical wines I like. I am thinking of maybe making DangerDave's Dragon Blood since it uses frozen fruit that should available year-round. Is this a wine I can pull-off in 8 mos. or so? I don't want to end up with something that tastes like soda pop. But I also have an empty fermenting container and empty gallon glass jug. So I've no reason to let them sit empty for the next 8 mos. I want to try something other than the Welch's grape juice wine I now have aging in carboys. Plus I've never drunk wine made from concord grapes, so I don't know whether I will like it or whether my wait will be in vain. Any ideas?

Hey jethro - I don't understand - why do you have an 8 month timeline?

When we do these experimental batches for the 'club' it's a new batch each month, then we are going to taste test at the year mark from that month (February 2014 WOTM taste testing is in Feb. 2015).

Also, the awesome thing about 1 gallon batches is that you can go wild! Try anything you like! Plum wine? great! Coffee-chocolate-caramel mead? Awesome! Concord-vanilla wine? You bet! If we end up hating it, we haven't invested a lot of money and have to dump 6 gallons of wine. We're only out a few dollars and 1 gallon.

If it's really good, we can share the recipe and it's fairly easily replicable (side note: is that a real word? Sour_Grapes?) by multiplying the amounts by however many gallons you would like to make. And frozen fruit is just as good as fresh - sometimes better. Often we freeze our fresh fruit before making it into wine to assist in breaking it down for better extraction.

That's the basic premise for us starting these threads - just to have some fun, experiment, and learn from our own (and other's) mistakes.

So...what's it gonna be?

 

[vernsgal]

ok so I finally got around to backsweetening my port. I added a cup of sugar (made into simple syrup using 1/2 cup of the port). It brought my SG up to 1.030 which is a good sweetness for me.
I also added 1 bottle of cherry brandy flavoring to pull out more cherry and at bottling time(about 6 mos.) I'll add a bit of chocolate flavoring for taste. I don't want it up front, just as an after taste

 

[the_rayway]

Ah! I didn't know you were using extracts on these. I'm interested to see how that will age out. I used Caramel extract on my Caramel Apple Wine and it was GOOD at bottling. Haven't had any since though, so I don't know if it's still that good.

May have to pop into the cellar and find out.

 

[the_rayway]

I added the oak chips and vanilla to this one today. I decided to go with 2 Madagascar Bourbon vanilla beans, split, instead of the vanilla extract.

Basically because my extract isn't ready! I plonked 25 new beans into my vodka only last month, so it's going to be awhile before it's good to do anything with. Total lack of foresight on my part.

I gave a little sip when I racked the half gallon and was very surprised: it tastes like beer. Flat beer. I sure hope it starts losing that yeasty taste sometime soon, I definitely didn't expect that.

Colour is still a funny sort of orangey-type thing.

After it clears a bit more, I think I'll add the hazelnut extract I've had on the make since November-ish. It should be close to ready by now

 

[cintipam]

Rayway, learning possibility here. I remember reading a while back that a beer taste/smell can occur when fermentation is too fast. Could you please check your notes and let us know how long primary fermentation lasted? Also just in case which yeast you used in case that turns out to be relevant.

BTW I love that chocolate extract. Bought it bec hubby loves chocolate, but in bench taste tests that choc ext did a great job of smoothing out harsh young wines and adding subtle flavor. Yes, I am trying making my own choc ext but that brand has worked wonders for me in cranberry wine specifically.

Pam in cinti

 

[the_rayway]

Hey Pam,
It looks like it took 24 days from yeast pitching (ICV D254) to dry. Not an exceptionally long fermentation for a mead, but not super fast either.

It should be noted that the sample I tasted was from the 1/2 gallon jug which had a solid 1.5" of lees in it. It sat on those lees for around 2 months, so that could be where the yeasty flavour is coming from. I sucked up a fair amount of lees into that jug and was waiting for them to settle out before I racked again.

 

[LoneStarLori]

Blood Orange wine update;
I racked this today for the first time in a couple of months. I don't know where all the wine wen,t But i am down to a 1/2 gal and a 750ml bottle.
The taste is pretty nice, but boy it is strong. I this is the one I over added sugar on so I guess I should expect that. The color is nice and you can actually taste the orange. I think in the end, I can't see myself sipping this. It's just not my style. But it sure is pretty!

the date is slightly dyslexic, but it is 2014.

 

[the_rayway]

Pretty!! I love that colour. Did you sweeten it at all?

IS it not a sipping wine because it's too strong? Or because you don't yet like the flavour?

 

[LoneStarLori]

I think the flavor is not bad at all. But it's a really strong wine right now. I didn't back sweeten or anything to it. It's not supersweet it's just strong.
I'm starting to wonder if I'm just not into country fruit wines.

 

[ckvchestnut]

I think it looks beautiful Lori! I think of you backsweeten it a bit to your liking now, and bottle it and leave it alone for awhile you may have a different opinion of it! The strongness should mellow out and sweetening it a tad might also soften it a bit...

 

[Stressbaby]

January WotM update:
Hibiscitrus Wine is clearing slowly. Orange is not as prominent as I had hoped. This wine will need some tweaking but still has potential.

 

[the_rayway]

Update on the Pumpkin Mead:
Really clear after dosing with the dual clarifier, then I racked it and added stuff, so it's cloudy again.

Simmered down 1/4 cup Hazelnut extract, and 1/4 cup vanilla (both home made extracts) with a cinnamon stick until reduced by half and added it to the 1 gallon. There are still two vanilla beans sitting in the 1/2 gallon.

Smells less like pumpkin barf and more like something that might be yummy one day...the picture is after I racked and added stuff. You can kind of see the crazy orange colour - it's more pronounced when racking.

I'm going to leave it alone for a few months now - maybe till the fall if the sediment doesn't build up too deep.

 

[Jericurl]

Racked my onion wine. It still smells...onioney and something else. I poured a bit into a shot glass and tasted it. I think it'll really be fantastic with a roast in a few months. I had Manthing taste it and he proceeded to say the grossest thing I've ever heard come out of his mouth. I gagged.

I'm hoping to do a hot pepper wine for May's WOTM. I think that will pair nicely as a set with the onion wine.

Now I've got to start looking for the 375 ml bottles for my cooking wines.

 

[vernsgal]

January Choco-cherry Banana Port Style Wine update

I tried to show in pic how well it has cleared but just couldn't capture it. Took a taste-definitely cherry with after taste of chocolate. I would say it's a good med.-heavy body. Alc. still has a bite but I think by Christmas this'll be pretty good!

 

[Stressbaby]

Update:
Hibiscitrus (Hibiscus/Citrus) is quite disapppointing. Time to get some grapefruit and start tweaking.

 

[the_rayway]

Keep us updated on the tweaks Stressbaby!

 

[Stressbaby]

Keep us updated on the tweaks Stressbaby!

Resurrection!

Tweak lesson #1: you don't need a whole grapefruit worth of rind for 1 gallon of wine. If you use an entire rind, watch it really closely; you might only need the rind in the wine for a day or so.

 

[vernsgal]

so I racked my port today and without sounding too smug I have to say "wow!" on the taste. The cherries are up front with an after taste of chocolate. Body is med-heavy.Because I only had a taste, well ,okay maybe 2, I can't say for sure but I think this is one of the best I've done to date.Looking forward to another taste in 3 more months!